RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The whole FBI thing didn’t feel right from the jump. Which fits with just about everything else in this crazy college football offseason .
Walker Jones, president of the Grove NIL collective — which raises money to support Ole Miss athletes — told the Assorted Crackers podcast he had the FBI sweep his offices for recording devices after Lane Kiffin left for the LSU job .
And yet another layer to the suddenly hottest and wildest rivalry in college football began to unravel.
Until, that is, Jones’ story unraveled first.
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I called Jones, he called back and the next thing you know, the truth arrived ― and more important, there was an olive branch from the man who did more to give Kiffin everything he could possibly ask for, to the coach who gave Ole Miss everything it could possibly need.
Ten months into this bitter breakup, and Jones — a former Ole Miss star linebacker in the 1990s — took the high road. Look, someone has to at this point.
Why not the guy who doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the evolution of Ole Miss football since 2020? The one person who, since Kiffin arrived during the Covid season, has made sure Ole Miss can swing with the heaviest of hitters in the cash-fluid SEC.
Jones has made sure Ole Miss won't be outspent or outworked in the NIL space, or at the very least, can field a championship-level program. The Rebels won at least 10 games in four of the five full seasons since 2020, something that had happened twice since 1972.
And now here was Jones, after getting caught up in the heat of the rivalry and maybe exaggerating with the FBI talk, grabbing the wheel and finding an exit.
“Lane did a great job of making our program nationally relevant and competitive,” Jones said. “We’d be fools to not recognize that. We just had deep disappointment in how it all ended.”
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So the story he told on the podcast about crawling on the floor looking for recording devices? OK, maybe a stretch.
They didn’t make an official complaint with the FBI, and didn’t have secret information on Kiffin and his whereabouts on specific days to connect dots with any number of conspiracies in the ether. Even though it sounds absolutely delicious.
But Jones said he did reach out to the FBI and local law enforcement and asked about procedures to protect data, passwords and relative information in the Grove Collective. A handful of assistant coaches were initially allowed to coach at both schools during the Kiffin transition to LSU, so you can never be too careful.
There’s too much at stake in the world of high school recruiting and the transfer portal, and players holding leverage over schools in contract negotiations. Don’t think for a second that Kiffin wouldn’t have used that information if it were (still) readily available ― as would most any other former staff in college football.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Coaching Change 101. It never ends well.
Coaches are hired to be fired, or hired and perform so well, they leave for what they believe are better jobs. Kiffin left for LSU, and wanted to have his cake (the LSU job) and eat it too (coach Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff).
At that point, Ole Miss — from the university, to athletic director Keith Carter, to the Grove Collective — had seen enough and done enough and moved on.
That’s it, people, in a nutshell.
But that doesn’t mean the game next month in Oxford isn't the most anticipated in the history of the program. Bigger than the CFP game last year, and bigger than just about any other time these two longtime rivals play — unless they one day play for the SEC and/or national championship.
Then the FBI may actually have to get involved with that deal.
“There will always be storylines and drama because it’s Ole Miss-LSU,” Jones said. “Lane is intelligent and he loves the chaos. Every now and then, he’ll find a way to poke the bear and reenergize the drama.”
Jones just simply beat him to the punch this time around.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB . Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: FBI story was a stretch. The feelings between Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin are not
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