Hats off to Pete Golding, who opened his Ole Miss tenure with back-to-back wins and held a fourth-quarter lead over Miami in the College Football Playoff semifinals. He came up just shy of a trip to the national championship game, though, with a heartbreaking 31-27 Fiesta Bowl loss to the Hurricanes.
It was a devastating defeat for a program that was on a mission to prove itself following Lane Kiffin’s departure for LSU. Miami quarterback Carson Beck scampered across the goal line for a late go-ahead touchdown run, and although the Rebels had one shot at the end zone as time expired, Beck’s score came with too little time for Ole Miss to overcome it.
The Rebels played with fire over their final two games of the season, and they got burned in the Fiesta Bowl. One week after surrendering 34 points to Georgia, the Ole Miss defense gave up 31 to the Hurricanes and could not deliver a critical stop in the final minute.
Among Golding’s offseason tasks will be to bolster a defensive unit that just last year stood with the nation’s elites. He is a proven former defensive coordinator and may well be up to the task of rebuilding that group in short order. After all, he worked over the last three years for the “Portal King” and ought to have some transfer portal magic up his own sleeve.
If the college football world learned one thing about Ole Miss over the last few weeks, it is that this program, as currently constructed, is built to sustain adversity. More is on the way with the inevitable roster upheaval that will occur with players following Kiffin to LSU, transferring to other schools and departing for the NFL Draft. Golding was capable of weathering one storm, but can he guide the ship through another?
Trinidad Chambliss eligibility waiver decision awaitsSo long as the NCAA obliges, Ole Miss will have an elite cornerstone around which to build its 2026 roster. Star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss plans to re-sign with the Rebels, but his deal is contingent on the NCAA approving his eligibility waiver for a sixth year. Chambliss filed that waiver request in November and is still awaiting a ruling.
Of course, Chambliss could fight the ruling in court à la Diego Pavia if the NCAA turns down his request.
Chambliss is a Division II transfer who played four seasons at Ferris State, and his argument exists on the grounds that Division I redshirt rules differ from those of Division II. The eighth-place finisher in Heisman Trophy voting argues that he should receive a retroactive redshirt for the 2022 season because he played in just two games that year. DI permits players to redshirt once — so long as they play in no more than four regular-season games.
If the NCAA approves a sixth year for Chambliss, he will return to Ole Miss with an 11-2 record as the Rebels’ starter. After taking over for Austin Simmons early in the year, he orchestrated a stellar offense with 3,937 passing yards, 22 touchdowns to just three interceptions and another 527 yards and eight scores on the ground. That is an immense amount of returning production for an offense that will also welcome back All-American running back Kewan Lacy.
Pete Golding tasked with reconstructing coaching staffKiffin took six assistant coaches with him to LSU, but Golding kept most of the defensive staff intact and is expected to retain his own defensive play-calling duties in 2026. As an internal hire himself, he had the benefit of overseeing at least some continuity in his first few days as head coach. That some of the LSU-bound assistants remained on staff for the CFP run added a unique wrinkle and an element of turmoil, but with that now in the past, Golding’s primary focus can turn to finding permanent offensive coaches.
Patrick Toney is in as co-defensive coordinator. Running backs coach Frank Wilson came over from LSU. The Rebels also announced a handful of hires to the player personnel department. But the work is not done.
Identifying and hiring the right candidates on the offensive side of the ball is of critical importance for Golding, who is now a first-time head coach with no experience coaching anything but defense. The returning talent on the Ole Miss offense is too elite to waste.
Are the Rebels’ new expectations sustainable?Ole Miss raised its own bar during the Kiffin era, wherein 10-win seasons became the norm after being few and far between for the vast majority of the program’s history. The Rebels won 13 games this season for the first time ever, made their CFP debut, climbed into the top 10 of the AP Top 25 for the fifth straight season and were just two wins away from a national championship. That is an unprecedented amount of success.
Every time a coach not named John Vaught posted a double-digit win total at Ole Miss, a period of mediocrity ensued shortly thereafter. Golding has a longstanding trend to buck. He is off to a strong start having beaten a pair of playoff teams and severely threatening another, but he did so with Kiffin’s players and a staff that he, for the most part, did not hire. Can he repeat these achievements as the face of the program?
It would be one thing for Golding to prevent the floor from falling out from underneath the Rebels. To keep this program in SEC and national title contention is a completely different question and one that, frankly, only time will answer.
