Ole Miss has given Lane Kiffin an ultimatum and the head coach is expected to announce his future after the Egg Bowl, the Rebels’ season finale. Over the last month of the season, the question of if Kiffin will leave Oxford for Florida or LSU has dominated college football news just as much as whether he’ll get to coach in the College Football Playoff or not.
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban proposed an idea during his segment on College GameDay that would solve this issue. He proposed teams holding off interviews with college coaches for openings until after their season is over, which is how the NFL handles it. It’s a great idea and one that fits the current mold of college football. The once amateur sport is heading more to being a developmental league for the NFL so why not adopt some of its rules?
"This is not a Lane Kiffin conundrum. This is a college football conundrum that we need some leadership to step up and change the rules on how this gets done."
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) November 22, 2025
Nick Saban weighs in on Lane Kiffin potentially leaving Ole Miss ✍️ pic.twitter.com/oNAaBqNqHW
Nick Saban is right, coaching hires shouldn’t be discussed during the season
It makes a lot of sense to hold off these conversations until after the season, especially now with the state of college football. It should not be reported a week before a massive rivalry game for Kiffin and Ole Miss that LSU is trying to court him with a $90 million contract and committing to an NIL investment. That’s not fair to Kiffin, who’s trying to finish out Ole Miss’s best season since he took over, and it’s not fair to the team.
In the NFL, sure there are rumors that swirl about whether a coach will leave, but it’s all speculation. Teams can’t formally interview or meet with active coaches until their respective seasons are concluded. College should adopt that same mentality, especially with how important the CFP is.
With everything at stake for teams fighting for the College Football Playoff, it doesn’t make sense to allow distractions like coaching hiring cycles to affect teams, players and coaches during the most important time of the season. The most important thing should be how they finish the season, not what’s going to happen in the offseason.
Why adopting a coaching rule similar to the NFL is beneficial for college football
NFL coaches can’t leave midseason for a new job and can’t speak with teams until the season is over. That’s important for college football because how many times have coaches like Brian Kelly abruptly left their current team before the bowl game to start their new job. I get that recruiting and the transfer portal add another dynamic to new coaching hires, but that’s why transfer windows exist.
Coaches aren’t allowed to talk to players until they officially enter the portal anyway, and high school recruits typically decommit or are usually granted out of their national letter of intent when coaching turnover happens. This wouldn’t affect the recruiting process, both in high school and in the transfer portal.
It also protects college players, specifically at the smaller school too. For example, it wasn’t fair to Ohio University that as they won their first MAC championship in program history last year, their then coach, Tim Albin, was essentially arranging his flight to Charlotte for his new job. He abandoned them and that’s not what college football is about. That’s why rules must be put in place to prevent things like this from happening.
Just as college football is changing with NIL, the transfer portal and players making money in college athletics, the sport has to adapt with handling coaching hires. This has been the most chaotic cycle and it will only get crazier. Maybe college football doesn’t have to be as strict as the NFL’s, but there should be some guard rails in place to improve the current, chaotic regulations.