DAVID COOK / OPINION EDITOR

On Nov. 30, Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin announced he was leaving the Rebels for LSU, and everything unfolded on cue. Fans accused him of abandoning a playoff team. College football fans across America called him a selfish sellout. Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter responded by announcing he wouldn’t coach the program’s first trip to the College Football Playoff  (CFP) — the best shot at a national title the school has ever had. 

As dramatic as this looks, Lane Kiffin isn’t the only coach doing this. He’s just the one who happened to do it at a school with playoff implications and an in-conference destination. Tulane’s coach, John Sumrall, left for Florida under the same compressed timeline. A Group of Five program to an SEC giant is a massive upgrade in NIL resources, facilities and recruiting power, so no one blinked. 

Unlike Kiffin, Sumrall is still coaching Tulane in the playoffs, attempting to do what many believe is impossible — win a national title as a Group of Five team.  

Plenty of other coaches across the country have done the same in recent weeks, and no one has batted an eye. 

What makes the Kiffin situation different is the internal dynamic at Ole Miss. Weeks before the announcement, Kiffin already knew the rule from Carter.  If  he  accepted  another job — especially  to  an  SEC  rival — he  would  not  coach  the  Rebels in the CFP. Carter saw it as a conflict of interest. And whether fans  agree  or  not,  it’s  not  an unreasonable  stance.  From an administrator’s perspective, letting a departing coach game-plan with the players that he both recruited and coached is awkward at best. Carter made a call he believed protected his  program’s  interests.

Kiffin made a call that protected his best interests. Leaving Ole Miss for LSU means more NIL backing, stronger recruiting classes, deeper institutional resources and thus, a much clearer path to competing for national championships. Coaches don’t get unlimited windows to make moves like that. If he stayed through the postseason and arrived at LSU three weeks late, he’d be starting his tenure with  a  gutted  recruiting  class and a roster already behind in portal negotiations. In today’s college football economy, that’s a self-inflicted wound you may never recover from.

So, what is the reason for all of this chaos? Why is it possible for a coach to get up and leave their program right before a chance to play  for  a  national championship?   The    problem   isn’t   Kiffin nor Carter. The problem is college football’s calendar.

The entire sport is operating under a calendar that creates chaos by design. Before 2017, recruits signed in February. That gave everyone time to finish the season, hire coaches and make decisions with some level of stability. Then came the “early” signing period in late December. And  last  year,  the  date  was  moved  up  again, now landing in the first week of December, right in the dead center of the playoff chase.

This shift forces coaches to make job decisions before their seasons are over. Athletic directors accelerate hiring to avoid losing recruiting classes. Coaches juggle postseason game-planning with staff hires, NIL planning and keeping players from being poached in the portal. The system creates a situation where  staying loyal to your current program almost guarantees falling behind at your next one.

Layer on the NIL era, and everything moves even faster. Roster building now involves actual financial negotiations, collective coordination and constant communication with donors and boosters who expect their contributions to yield immediate results. A coach who shows up late, even by a week, risks losing the entire foundation of his first season. 

One of the most significant factors in this flawed calendar is the influence of ESPN and other networks, which dictate kickoff times, conference schedules, bowl slots and the postseason calendar. When the season  stretches  deep  into  late  December,  and  the  sport  is   locked  into  TV  windows worth billions, it squeezes everything else into a smaller and smaller box. The coaching carousel, the transfer portal and early signing day, all collide because the broadcast partners say the games must be played when they’re played. It is indeed “just business,” but the unintended consequences shape  every decision that follows.

Framing  Kiffin  as  the singular  villain  in  all  this misses the point. While his departure was still full of unnecessary drama, Kiffin isn’t a villain. Neither are the other dozens  of  coaches  who  have made similar moves this month. And Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter isn’t wrong  for  holding  firm on  his policy, just as Kiffin isn’t wrong for wanting a better long-term opportunity. Both sides made decisions  that  make  sense  within the world of college football.

If the sport wants to end these annual controversies, it needs to fix the structure that creates them.  As  long  as  early  signing day occurs during  the  postseason,  as long as NIL accelerates roster turnover and as long as ESPN’s broadcast calendar stretches the season into a logistical pretzel, coaches will keep leaving early. Athletic directors will keep creating boundaries around what happens next.

Lane Kiffin didn’t invent this  problem,  and  he  isn’t the only one making these decisions. He’s just the latest coach caught in a system where loyalty often loses to reality,  and  where  the  calendar,  more than any individual choice, is the real source of all the chaos.

Ole Miss Coach Lane Kiffin says farewell to the fans in Oxford, Mississippi, departing for SEC rival LSU. Photo courtesy of @olemissfb/Instagram