Lane Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss to LSU was messy enough to send the Rebels into full security mode.
After Kiffin left for Baton Rouge, Ole Miss brought in FBI agents to sweep the football facility for recording devices, worried that he might have left behind bugs to keep tabs on what was happening in Oxford. The concern was straightforward: with the Rebels still alive in the College Football Playoff, the program did not want anything leaking while Kiffin was already assembling his LSU operation.
Walker Jones, who co-founded the Grove Collective, said the school wanted to make sure Kiffin wasn’t listening in on conversations inside the building.
"We actually had the FBI come through and walk the building for bugs and for everything," Jones told the "Assorted Crackers" podcast. "We knew kind of what was in Baton Rouge, and we knew how they operated. I remember getting on my knees and looking underneath the desk, like checking for, 'Is there some sort of bug in my office?'"
The paranoia went beyond recording devices. Ole Miss was also trying to protect its roster and staff from being picked apart in the middle of the playoff run. A handful of coaches on staff had already agreed to follow Kiffin to LSU, and Kiffin also wanted quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy to transfer.
That led to an unusual setup inside the building, with the Rebels splitting communication into separate channels to keep the LSU-bound group from getting more information than it needed.
"So, we literally had to have two different text threads, two different staff meetings," he said. "We had to ask coaches to leave the room.
No hallway conversations. Nothing written down, nothing written on the grease boards in the office, because half the staff was literally, we were going to be competing against."
Pete Golding later addressed the security sweep and framed it as part of the normal playoff process, while also saying the school had not simply hired the FBI in the way people might assume.
"Any bowl game, playoff system, you're gonna up security," Golding said. "I'm not sure was a hiring process with the FBI.
I do think we probably have a current player whose dad just so happens to work for the FBI and lives in town... You want to make sure it's secure for your players, the video access and everything.
All those things you're doing regardless of where you're at."
Ole Miss ended up playing three College Football Playoff games, beating Tulane and Georgia before losing to Miami. The odd part was the timing: there was still more than a month left in the team’s national championship push after Kiffin had already moved on to LSU.
And while Ole Miss was still trying to finish its postseason run, Kiffin was already building his LSU staff and roster for 2026. Several Ole Miss coaches, including offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., stayed with the Rebels for the playoff even though they had been committed to joining Kiffin in Baton Rouge.
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