The Josh Innes Show - The Attack On Lane Kiffin Part 1: Lazy Media Dweebs

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

I'm in no way some staunch defender of Lane Kiffin. I don't even know if I like the guy. But, the attack on Kiffin paired with the love fest for Pete Golding and Ole Miss is nauseating. First off, Golding is getting blown for how he's handing the situation and for all the things he's saying. Of course he is! It's politics. He cannot lose. Lane cannot win. Let's read this embarrassing story from USA Today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, friends, welcome in all up in this. Hello. I know I talk a lot about this Ole Miss Lane Kiff and shit. I get it. I'm aware I talk way too much about it, but it is a hot thing. And again, my social media is loaded with just people that are talking about it nonstop. And I'm listening to podcasts from my buddy Matt about it nonstop. And there's all this drama and all this shit. So every day I see some new story I want to riff on.

Today's story has a headline of, did Lane Kiffin make Old Miss? Or did Ole Miss make Kiffin? This is where we are now. We are at a point now where Lane Kiffin, who three months ago, the entire college football world is talking about his reformation and this project. He's done at Ole Miss, and he's turned Ole Miss into a power and he's got him in position. Remember, when people wanted Lane Kiffin to stay at Ole Miss before they all decided he was the biggest piece of shit on the planet, when people wanted him to stay at Ole Miss, their main selling point is he had built this amazing team that he had gotten into the playoff.

How would he not want to finish what he started? Now all of a sudden, it's like Lane Kiffin didn't do a fucking thing, and he's the biggest scumbag on the planet. So let me play a couple of commercials here, and I'm going to read this. This is an opinion piece. It sounds like it's going to be a moronic opinion piece. Did Lane Kiffin make Ole Miss or did Ole Miss make Kiffin? This is going to be preposterous. Absolutely preposterous.

But let's take a list. Let's at least read this story here after these words. Ready to take on Canada's worst invasive plant, the call for proposals for the invasive Fragmites Control Fund is open. These funds support collaborative projects led by municipalities, conservation authorities, indigenous communities, and non-profits that focus on Fragmite's mapping, monitoring, planning, control, and innovation. Applications must be submitted electronically by January 23, 2026 at 1159 p.m. For more information, and to apply, visit our website. All right, so here's the question. Did Lane Kiffin make Ole Miss or did Ole Miss make Kiffin?

The Ole Miss team, the program is more than Kiffin. In fact, it may very well be better off without him. Again, two months ago, whenever all the rumors started about LSU and would Lane Kiffin leave for LSU, the LSU job is open? Could he take the job when they go to Florida? All of these people kept saying, why would you leave this? You've built this amazing thing and you've recreated your image and all this shit. All we heard about was how great Lane Kiffin has done. there and how he's a different guy and Lane Kiffin has made this program into something and

now it's a powerhouse. Why would you leave for LSU if you've built this powerhouse at Ole Miss? That was the talking point, right? So obviously if he built a powerhouse at Ole Miss or if Ole Miss is a current powerhouse in the minds of people, obviously he had a huge hand in that, right? Apparently not. He's clearly tired of getting dragged into these hypotheticals, the delicious sound bites feeding the starving masses. But since everyone wants an answer, Pete Golding finally relented the day before the biggest game in Ole Miss history before we find out if this storybook screw you right continues for a team, a university, and a community hell-bent on exposing the one thing we've all overlooked. Did Lane Kiffin make Ole Miss or did Ole Miss make Kiffin? Quote, I don't have a message for anybody else, Golding said, because that's how he has played the past, because that's how he has played the past month as the new Ole Miss coach.

stick to the script, coach the team, win the day. And then it happened. Quote, I do think I'm replaceable, Golding continued. You're replaceable. Our players are replaceable. You want to build a program where it's headed in the right direction, and one person or one player is not going to derail that. Let me explain, for those not skilled at reading between the lines,

the Ole Miss team, the program is more than Lane Kiffin, says the person who wrote this story. First off, to all the people who are right, this little wave here of, boy, let me tell you, Laying Kiffin handles everything poorly and Pete Golding's winning every day. Well, how can he lose? Are you really winning if you are in a position where you can not lose? It's politics. All you have to do is go up to the podium and say yokel-ass fucking like humble shit and everybody's going to tell you that you're the greatest guy that's ever walked the face of the earth. It's political. It's all. It's political. It's

all politics. That's all we are dealing with right now with Pete Golly. I'm not going to tell he's not going to be a good coach. He might be an amazing head coach. He may end up being better than laying Kiff and will be at LSU. It's very possible. And I get where people kind of dig him and like him. But stop blowing the guy for feeding you political bullshit. Like, do you believe the politics when they tell you shit too? Do you believe the stripper really thinks you're cute? Do you think the waitress at Hooters would date you? Because that's essentially what you're believing when you take a guy who's in a situation like this where he can not lose. Lane Kiffin has already made his bed at LSU and he looks like the biggest villain on the

planet. So everything Pete Golding does, he looks like a hero relative and compared to what Lane Kiffin is doing. So the idea that like, oh, I can't believe Pete Golding, he's just winning the day. Pete Golding says everything right. It's politics. This isn't hard. Like the fact that these people suckle this up and, like, the fact that these people suckle this up and

like consume it and gobble it up like it's real is preposterous. Everything is politics. Everything we are seen. Now, I'm not saying that he's a bad guy or anything like that. What I am saying is you are easily duped if you listen to everything this guy says and go, boy, this is some authentic shit. What a guy. Oh, I'm replaceable and this guy is replaceable.

Like, I mean, my God, it's like he read a handbook. It's like he has a political strategist with him. It's like James Carville is hanging out with him. He's got George Stephanopoulos and James Carville hanging out with him, writing the shit he should do. It's all politics. While Lane Kiffin is being burned at the stake and LSU's being accused of tampering and DeMond Williams Jr. And all this shit over here in the corner, Ole Miss just gets to play the Aw Shucks team. That's what Old Miss gets to be.

Everybody's against us and our coach abandoned us. but we're just going to go out there and play for each other. It is an un-loseable spot if you are Pete Golding. You can't lose. Even if they lose tonight, what are people at Ole Miss going to do? They're not going to turn on you if you lose tonight. The team's already advanced farther than it ever has. Up to this point, the most successful thing they've done in the last 50 years

is claim a share of the SEC West Championship in 2003. Oh, by the way, they lost to LSU that year, the year that LSU won that and the national title. But they claimed that they were the co-SEC West champions. Fuck off. So, like, and you've got everybody on your side. No one's going to write anything bad about Pete Golding. This guy is in the best spot ever.

So sit here and suck him off and act like he's the greatest coach ever and keep shitting on Kiffin. But next year, if you start out 0 and 1, you lose your first game, you start out 1 and 2. All of a sudden, you're not a cute story anymore and people want to burn you at the stake as well. But let's continue this story. In fact, they may be better off without him. If this team was built Kiffin-centric, it falls apart in the college football playoff instead of winning two games to set up a Fiesta Bowl semifinal showdown with Miami. Instead of the team's biggest and brightest players, including star quarterback Trinidad,

Chambliss, and Kowan Lacey committing to return to Oxford next season, they and many others on the Ole Miss roster have been actively recruited by Kiffin to join him at LSU, not long after he left Oxford for the bright lights and championship history. of the school. It just fired its coach after he won 34 games in three and a half years. Christ. We're going back to that. Like, I can't believe they fired a coach who did this. People will just do anything they can at this current point to shit on LSU and shit on Kiffin. And I'll shit on Kiffin and LSU if I feel it necessary. But some of the shit that's being put out there is so sanctimonious. It is drivel. It is absolute drivel. Fun fact. I want to say the

number of somewhere around like 18 or 19 players that have left I think it's uh have left Iowa state to go to Penn State with the new coach who happened to be the coach at Iowa State takes the Penn State job like 20 dudes have left that school and gone and followed their coach there is it absolutely absurd to think that Lane Kiffin who recruited all those guys to Ole Miss would be like hey come with me to LSU why is laying Kiffin the only piece of shit and I understand the optics and I understand that this is a unique situation where one guy was the coach of a team that was in the college football playoff and he opted to leave for a better job

and the calendar played it out that way and the school wouldn't let him coach and I get why they didn't let him coach I understand all of this but the idea that Lane Kiffin is the only human that does any of this shit in college football the most corrupt world out there is so absurd and

it's lazy and it's boring and it's tired and that's what we're dealing with here when you think about it there's really no decision to be made. Stay at Ole Miss or leave for LSU and play for the coach who flat left you to fend for yourself in the biggest moments of your playing careers, or leave for the coach who prior to this season hadn't proven to be an elite coach, hadn't proven to build a championship roster at the power conference level. So now Lane Kiven's a shitty coach. So now Lane Kiven's

not a good coach because he's never gone to the college football playoff. You know who else has never been the head coach for a team to go to a college football playoff? Pete Golding. Pete Golding has also not proven to be an elite coach. But obviously, Pete Golding, some sort of god of coaching now because he says a bunch of folksy shit and rah-rah sys boom-bah because he cannot lose.

It is a 100% winnable position. He can not lose. You know who hired Pete Golding? Lane Kiffin. Pretty fucking smart, right? You know who hired Charlie Weiss, the offensive coordinator? Fucking Lane Kiffin.

Pretty smart, right? Like, cut the disingenuous bullshit. Cut it. I don't care if you like, Lane Kiffin. I don't know that I like him. Real talk. I don't know that I like him, but I don't like all this LSU drama. But cut the shit. It's tiresome. It's boring. It's obvious. It's lazy. You want me to believe that Lane Kiffin somehow had now nothing to do with the success of Ole Miss. And then an Ole Miss program, which for most of its existence has been a skid mark

on the underpants of life, it's now all of a sudden a player and in the college football playoff and now lane kiffin has nothing to do with that now they're better off without the guy that you were begging to stay two weeks ago two weeks ago all of these me or two months ago all these media people were so adamant and saying how could lane kiffin leave and abandon these poor kids he's built this thing go finish it out now he sucks now he's a shitty coach now he's bad at his job now old miss made lane kiffin and lane kiffin didn't make old miss his best team even better than this year's White Hot group, did what his team seemed to always do. Play down to competition.

Oh, now the 2024 Ole Miss team sucks, too. The 2024 Ole Miss team could have made the college football playoff in advance this far if it didn't collapse at home against an awful Kentucky team and to a reeling Florida team in Gainesville. Yeah, they lost those games. And while Kiffin was set on the transition of former five-star quarterback recruit Austin Simmons for 2025, old miss offensive coordinator charlie wise junior found chambliss at division two fair estate and convinced him to join the rebels as a backup hey you never know what could happen there's a plan for everything chambliss said so now so now lane kiffin not only had nothing to do with the success of olmiss

old miss created lane kiffin lane was not an elite coach before this season which okay you want to make that argument fine and never won a championship fine there's a lot of guys you consider elite coaches that haven't won championships, but fine. But now not only is Lane Kiffin not responsible for any of the success. Now Lane Kiffin has no responsibility for a team with a backup quarterback from Division 3, taking them to the college football playoff. Now Lane has nothing to do with that. So just to be clear, so when, here's an example,

so when Dick Vermeel was the coach of the St. Louis Rams and his starting quarterback, was Trent Green. They chose Trent Green. It's actually a very comparable thing. They chose Trent Green and Trent Green got hurt in the preseason of the 99th season. And Dick Vermeel cried when he got hurt, sobbed when he got hurt. And this unknown guy from middle of nowhere, Iowa, Iowa barnstormer, Kurt Warner comes in and leads them into the Super Bowl and eventually becomes a Hall of Fame player. So do we just discredit Dick Vermeal? You know, really, Dick Vermeal's clearly a shithead because Dick Vermeal chose Trent Green over Kurt Warner. What a fucking moron, right?

You people are scum. And not only you scum, you're lazy. This is beginning to feel like Ole Miss's plan all along. Find the one coach who can illuminate the path to winning and convince high-rolling boosters to bankroll it and then get there and squeeze the life out of the moment. Kiffin showed the path, did the heavy lifting, and got Old Miss to the party, then Golding took over and began producing a sweet symphony

that only underscored the undeniable reality of sports. It's always about the players, said Ole Miss Associate head coach Joe Judge. There's a reason coaches aren't out there playing. We're here drinking coffee and eating potato chips. Bro, they're politicking. This is not difficult. It's politics. They get what they're doing.

They want Kiffin to look like shit. They want to undermine anything Lane Kiffin ever did. And by they, I mean the people that are still at Ole Miss. Of course they want that. He's their arch enemy now. He's at their quote unquote rival now. He's a guy you're competing with now. Of course they want to make Kiffin look like shit.

How do you not see through that? You choose not to see through it because you want to hop on board this America's team bullshit about Ole Miss. Look, I'm not trying to minimize. what Kiffin accomplished at Ole Miss. The results paint a clear picture of where it was in Oxford before he arrived in 2020 and what it became. He had four double-digit win seasons in the past five, an unheard-of string of success at the school that has never played in the SEC championship game and hasn't won a conference

championship game since the days of the legendary Johnny Vaught. He marketed the hell out of the program, come to the sip, and made it hip to play in a tiny southern town where life moves slow and sweet as sugar-kine molasses. He embraced the transfer portal quickly and with the robust intent, while other coaches complained about it. But understand this. He was given free reign at Ole Miss by an athletic director and president that said yes to everything. Oh, shame on him.

Oh, dear God. Shame on Lane Kiffin for taking advantage of the fact that he had good people ahead of him that said, hey, do this. We'll give you whatever you want. Oh, shame on Lane Kiffin. Boy, what a piece of shit. We want to place a Ferrari in front of the carrier house, the stately Oxford mansion, and home of the university president for decades to attract recruits.

Why not? Or an expanded staff of analysts to help build out recruiting and development. A staff so deep with coaching experience that some of those analysts could move on to on-field roles with Kiffin played while Kiffin played games with what coaches would be allowed to leave LSU and coach Ole Miss during the college football playoff. Or an NIL war chest so deep, Ole Miss could annually rebuild and turn over a roster through the transfer portal and then supplement it with high school recruiting or the exact opposite of how championship teams are typically built. give all that to many FBS coaches and watch what happens. For every kiffin, there will obviously be a Billy Napier who received the same framework from Florida and failed miserably. But there are also coaches like Golding who busts their tails for years in the NCAA lower divisions, get a job at the FBS level as an assistant, and then one day find themselves staring at an opportunity they can only do.

So great. So because Pete Golding happened to be there and they just gave him the game. gig because someone had to take the gig now Pete Golding is a wonderful human and the smartest guy in the room and has had to coach three fucking games and is now a genius and Lane

Kiffin's a piece of shit who really had nothing to do with it because if you really think about it he wanted to play Austin Simmons instead of Trinidad Chamblez and that's revisionist history or A he he got given all these great resources from the people at Ole Miss

any coach of that maybe not Billy Napier. But almost any coach could have done that. People are doing anything they possibly can to pile on Kiffin because it's the sexy thing to do and it's easy clickbait bullshit. That's what we're dealing with here. Easy, lazy, clickbaity horseshit. I'm not telling you to like Kiffin as I told you. I don't even know that I like Kiffin. We've talked about this. I don't I honestly don't think I like him. I don't like that LSU. I don't like that LSU. is being shit on by everybody. And I don't like that LSU is considered this kind of scummy place

in this way, like the biggest scumbags in a world full of scumbags. That said, I hope for two things. Actually, let me finish this story and then we'll get. Ole Miss lost at Georgia in October under Kiffin and came back two months later against an improved Georgia defense and beat the Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl. Cool. Does that mean the rebels are better off without Kiffin? Not by a long shot.

But it does mean everybody is replaceable. Cool. So you mean to tell me, so just to be clear, the whole premise of this story was asking the question, did Lane Kiffin make Ole Miss or did Ole Miss make Lane Kiffin? And you were setting up this whole story basically telling us why Lane Kiffin really didn't have a lot to do with the success at Ole Miss. And then you ask the question, does that mean the rebels are better off without Kiffin? And you say, not by a long shot. These people are inconsistent, untalented fuckheads.

The people that write these stories are uninteresting, untalented fuckheads.