TAMPA — In a college football coaching fraternity increasingly populated by serious men making serious money who are as glib as a Buckingham Palace guard, Pete Golding delivered a blast of rough-hewn swagger at his first SEC media days. The 42-year-old Southern bro with an unruly mop of graying hair has a mouth on him, and he’s not afraid to use it. This was a podium debut that conjured memories of the league’s patron saint of sass, Steve Spurrier.
The Mississippi coach was flippant when asked about NCAA tampering rules regarding transfers. He has been publicly accused of violating those rules by Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, who alleged that Golding personally contacted one of his players to talk money after he enrolled at Clemson, in an effort to flip him to Ole Miss. (It worked; linebacker Luke Ferrelli left the Tigers for the Rebels in January.)
“Let me put it to you this way,” Golding said, launching a long response. “You’re a reporter. Would you quit your job before interviewing for another job or being offered another job? No. Nobody would. But we have a [transfer] portal we can go in with a ‘do not contact’ [designation].
“What have we created? So we’ve created it on top of [agent] representation for these players, right, that it’s their responsibility to make sure they get paid really well and they also have opportunities. So by design it’s put a lot of people in bad positions. Let’s not act like recruiting in college football for the last 100 years is the most moral thing. What are we talking about here?”
What we are talking about here is this: Golding essentially cited the old laws of the recruiting jungle, many of which were coined in the South because the SEC was what it was.
If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.
More from Golding: “I’m not going to get into my feelings. I’ve been educated to answer this question. Does that make sense? That’s why we have a great compliance department and all those things. No, the model obviously has been broken. I’m all for everybody being on the same playing field and doing the same things. I get it.
“But that’s in any job. Like coaches, we’re under contract. You don’t think other ADs are calling us during the year? Same ones that are bitching about all this stuff are the same ones calling coaches to come to other schools, so it’s everywhere in every profession. I am not saying I have all the answers.”
If there are 16 teams in the league, 15 are cheating and the one that isn’t is in last place.
Go on, Pete: “We go by the rules of the program and the flow. Like when you’re on the interstate and people are flying by you, what do you start doing? Damn right. Or you’re going to get hit. In this profession you’re going to get fired.”
Rubbin’ is racin’.
This all came in the same interview session in which Golding declared that the first rule of his program is, “Be a good dude.” Clemson folks may question Golding’s own commitment to good dudeness.
But aside from giving a scofflaw’s justification soliloquy on tampering, Golding was notably supportive of his former Ole Miss boss, Lane Kiffin, whose acrimonious, in-season bailout on a playoff team last year gave Golding his chance to move up from defensive coordinator to head coach. There is absolutely no way Kiffin’s Sept. 19 return to Oxford as coach at LSU is going to be anything other than unchained anger, but Golding (for now) isn’t going to be stirring that toxic pot.
“Lane and I are good,” Golding said. “I did not know Coach Kiffin prior to taking the Ole Miss job. So our relationship really grew in those three and a half years, and he did a lot for me and I was very, very appreciative how he treated me and my family. I learned a lot from him.
“I have no ill will towards Coach Kiffin. He texts me on a regular basis and there are certain things we’ll talk about and certain things we don’t talk about. … So I can separate the two. Some people can’t.
“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I don’t care, all right? Like I told an Ole Miss group the other day, ‘All right, in 2021 [Kiffin’s second season] if you said you could look in 2025 and you’re about to be 11–1 and go to the playoff, would you take it if your coach was leaving?’ Hell yeah, you would. Everybody won from it. It’s O.K.”
All those niceties aside, Golding also told ESPN Wednesday that he used Kiffin’s instant villain status in Mississippi against him in trying to keep two star players, quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy, from leaving to join Kiffin at LSU.
“Go google Lane Kiffin,” Golding said he told Chambliss and Lacy. “I had them both do it in my office. Google Lane Kiffin, the dude they’d have built a statue of here three days ago. Google his name right now. They wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. They’ll do the same thing to y’all, too [if you leave].”
Surviving the Kiffin departure to win two College Football Playoff games and keeping the program’s best two players from leaving has earned Golding a 100% approval rating with Ole Miss fans. Now he’s just got to keep that going. He got a vote of confidence from another SEC head coach newcomer Wednesday, Florida’s Jon Sumrall. He lost to an Ole Miss team coached by Kiffin in the regular season, and then to an Ole Miss team coached by Golding in the playoff.
“Pete is going to be himself,” Sumrall said. “He’s not going to change. I have an appreciation for that. We played them the first time at Tulane and they beat the s--- out of us. We played them the second time, different head coach, still beat the s--- out of us. So, didn’t matter who the head coach was. They were still pretty good.”
In addition to the Armageddon LSU game Sept. 19, the Rebels must face the top two teams in the SEC preseason pecking order in Georgia (at home) and Texas (in Austin). There are trips to play two 10-win teams in 2025 (Oklahoma and Vanderbilt) and a season opener in Nashville against a nine-win team (Louisville). And of course, there is the throw-out-the-records Egg Bowl at the end of the regular season.
That’s a gauntlet. If the Rebels handle it with the same cocksure confidence that Pete Golding displays at the podium, they’re going to be back in the Top 10 and the College Football Playoff.
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