Notes, quotes and a thought or two……
I have covered sports in Mississippi for 33 years now and I don’t think I have ever or will ever see anything like I saw this past weekend with the Lane Kiffin saga.
First off, how often do you see ESPN send a reporter to just sit and wait at the school’s athletic facilities. They may have done this in the past but not that I can remember. Then Marty Smith had to basically chase down Kiffin at the airport to finally get an interview and asked the coach some tough question. Kudos to Smith, he earned his salary for the year with that weekend worth of work.
Everybody seems to have a different opinion on whether Kiffin was right or wrong in leaving for LSU and whether he should be allowed to coach the team or not in the playoffs. It made for some good drama over the weekend and probably broke records on Twitter for our part of the country.
While I could really care less about Kiffin and where he goes and what he does, the person that I think deserves a lot of credit in this situation is Ole Miss Athletics Director Keith Carter. I can’t imagine what Carter has been going through in the last few weeks since LSU fired Brian Kelly. The moment Kelly was fired, Kiffin became LSU’s prime target and Carter’s job got a lot tougher. Not only did he have to deal with the drama of is Lane staying or going, he also had to think about the next step. If he does go, who’s going to be the head coach?
Carter named Pete Golding the school’s head coach on Sunday after deciding that he wouldn’t allow Kiffin to coach the team in the playoffs. Golding, a Hammond, La., native, has deep Mississippi ties. He played at Delta State and was a graduate assistant there and later came back to be the defensive coordinator there. He made a stop at Southern Miss and was on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama from 2018 to 2022 before he took the defensive coordinator job at Ole Miss in 2023. While the majority of the offensive staff is moving on with Kiffin, Golding was an easy choice for Carter.
Carter did what he had to do to keep the team together by promoting from within. I hope for Carter’s sake that the Golding’s promotion does not yield similar results as Zach Arnett did at Mississippi State. But both are similar situations. Both coaches are defensive coordinators and taking over for head coaches who were offensive-minded. I hope for Carter’s sake that it turns out better than the Arnett experiment did at MSU because that was a train wreck of monumental proportions.
And after what Carter has gone through in the last month and the last few days, he deserves better.
Also, in the news
While Ole Miss was the talk of the sports world this past week, it overshadowed a few things that happened in our own state the week before Christmas.
The first was the curious case of Marshall Academy, who essentially lost a district championship game to Washington School so they could play in the easier Division II bracket in the MAIS Class 3A playoffs. That incident drew national headlines as national pundits who blasted Marshall for not trying to play the game in good faith just so they could compete in an easier division. Well, karma came back to bite Marshall, who lost in the championship game to Adams County Christian. I can honestly say I was glad to see that result.
And then there was the incident between Lamar School and Brookhaven Academy. Lamar quarterback and Mississippi State baseball commit Sullivan Reed was shoved on the Brookhaven sideline by a player — not a coach like everyone thinks — after he was well out of bounds. Reed then threw the football and hit another Brookhaven player and a melee ensued that ended with a Brookhaven coach ripping off Reed’s helmet. That incident drew national media attention as well. NFL Hall of Fame Shannon Sharpe said on his national talk show that he would have done the same thing and said he was going to send Reed a care package. While Reed may not have done everything right and had every right to be mad, a coach cannot put his hands on a player, especially an opposing player. Just think of Woody Hayes at Ohio State. He never coached again after his sideline incident.
All three of these incidents showed me a few things. Just when you thought you had seen it all, there’s always something new. And just like the Kiffin saga, we see how social media has changed the world of reporting. It’s just different now than it was 20 years ago. There is an army of so-called reporters out there trying to make a name for themselves and all you need is an iPhone to make your dreams come true.
As for me, I chose long ago to try and stay in the background. And after being in coaching myself for 14 years now, I’m fine with being the behind-the-scenes guy. Because, if you are the one out front, there’s no telling when you might be in some viral video and on social media and on the Shannon Sharpe show. Just a thought.
Robbie Robertson is sports editor for The Newton County Appeal. You can reach him at rrobertson12811@yahoo.com
