- See more Daily Mail on Google – save us as a Preferred Source
By BEN NAGLE, US SPORTS EDITOR
Published: | Updated:
Ole Miss staff were so worried about Lane Kiffin stealing the program’s secrets on his way out that they called in the FBI to check for bugging devices, it has been revealed.
Kiffin stunned the world of college football in November when he quit playoff-bound Ole Miss to join LSU on a $91 million contract, leading to weeks of furious fallout.
The outgoing head coach even claimed he was nearly ‘run off the road’ by scorned Ole Miss fans as he left Mississippi under a cloud, and now a program insider has revealed some stunning details about the exit.
Speaking to the Assorted Crackers podcast, Walker Jones – executive director of Grove Collective, Ole Miss’s exclusive NIL program – opened up about LSU’s attempts to poach assistant coaches and staff members to join Kiffin in Louisiana.
He described it as ‘weeks and months of fending off’ LSU, claiming they were ‘literally trying to burn [Ole Miss] to the ground.’
‘I guess that’s what you do if you’re the LSU head coach,’ he added. ‘You try to destroy your opponent, your rival. So I guess that’s probably the way. Again, shame on me to think it was going to be anything other than what it was, but we battled and we were able to hold on to the majority of our roster and our players.
Lane Kiffin speaks to the media in Baton Rouge ahead of his first season as LSU head coach
Ole Miss NIL exec Walker Jones (top right) revealed the FBI were called to the team’s facility
‘What people don’t realize too is half the staff was going to LSU, so we literally had to have two different text threads, two different staff meetings. We had to ask coaches to leave the room.
‘We had to no hall room conversations, nothing written down, nothing written on the grease boards in the office, because half the staff, we literally were going to be competing against.
‘We actually had the FBI come through and walk the building for bugs and for everything. 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? Somebody was like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “You just trust me. You don’t know this guy like I did”.’
It was reported at the time that Kiffin had given his then-Ole Miss staff an ultimatum when he left the program: join him immediately on the plane to Baton Rouge or forfeit the opportunity to get a job with him at LSU.
A few joined, but others stayed to finish the season with Ole Miss, who at the time were still in contention for the national championship and eventually went on to lose narrowly to Miami in the semifinals.
In the wake of Kiffin’s high-profile exit, the Rebels decided on Pete Golding as the new head coach, promoting from within.
‘Our athletic director and our chancellor did a great job hiring Pete,’ Jones explained. ‘He was the logical hire. He was the the locker room hire. That’s what the players wanted.
Kiffin spent six seasons as head coach of Ole Miss before taking a $91m contract at LSU
Pete Golding has taken over as head coach of Ole Miss after previously being DC under Kiffin
‘We knew we had a chance to retain a ton of talent and be a top 10 team coming into this year, which we are. So it was all about the players at that time and giving them the best chance to almost win the national championship, which we were a minute away from playing for it, and then rebuilding it.
‘And so, a lot of sleepless nights. As a matter of fact, I spent several nights sleeping at the Manning Center, and we worked 24/7 to keep our roster and to keep keep the program going.’
All that hard work leads the program to the start of the 2026 season, which begins on September 6 when Louisville come to town.
Most eyes, though, will be on September 19 and the return of Kiffin to Oxford, Mississippi, when he brings his LSU Tigers to face Ole Miss.
