OXFORD, Miss. — With “Pete!” chants ringing out loudly inside a still packed Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, a fired-up and soaking wet Pete Golding embraced the moment walking off the field with his two sons, pumped his fist to the sky and emphatically tossed his visor into the crowd.It was a move his predecessor Lane Kiffin had made before, but this was different. After Kiffin jilted Ole Miss for LSU, the Rebels faithful needed someone to direct their adoration to and they did so overwhelmingly for a first-time head coach who just delivered the first playoff win in program history. Ole Miss fans loved Pete Golding, and he loved them back. “Well, we just had a home playoff game in Oxford, decent signing day and we just won the game,” Golding deadpanned about the chants of his name. “I’m well aware how the other side goes when you don’t win the game so I’ve been on both sides of that.”
After No. 6 Ole Miss’ 43-10 blowout win over No. 11 Tulane to set up a Sugar Bowl rematch against No. 3 Georgia, it can be easy to ignore how much pressure Golding faced in his debut. In his first ever game as a head coach, Golding had to win a playoff game at home against a team the Kiffin-led Ole Miss team beat by 35 points in September. He had to do so after a chaotic stretch in which Kiffin’s will-he-or-won’t-he decision sucked all the oxygen out of the program and overshadowed the special season the Rebels were having. Losing Kiffin, who fought until the very end to coach this team through the playoff, could have imploded a lesser team. No head coach has ever left a playoff-bound team before it played in the College Football Playoff, and it may be awhile before we see another pull a Kiffin. There were a lot of emotions — some good, some bad — for a group of college-aged men to have to process in real-time over the last two weeks leading up to this game. Maybe getting Tulane as the first post-Kiffin game was the ideal scenario for Ole Miss to find its footing. It certainly looked easy from the jump as Ole Miss raced out to a 14-0 lead and didn’t give up a touchdown until a garbage-time score with four minutes left in the game.
But you can imagine how disastrous it could have been for Golding, Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter and the rest of the coaching staff if Tulane somehow won. Carter made a bold decision to hold his ground in not allowing Kiffin to continue to…
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2025-12-21 03:46:33
