Lane Kiffin flexes new muscle on Oklahoma’s Brent Venables, ignites rivalry

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables was trying to make a point, but Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin was not going to stand for it to be made at his program’s expense.

Kiffin unloaded on the well-respected veteran Sooners coach after Venables said he “felt like we were the better team” after the Rebels beat Oklahoma 34-26 on Saturday.

Venables said the loss was a matter of Ole Miss executing better in the game, leading Kiffin to deal out a public execution, of sorts, of Venables.

“That’s an interesting take, that’s a hot take, they have the better team,” Kiffin said. “I wouldn’t have thought people watching would say that.”

Kiffin pointed out Ole Miss won the game in Oklahoma’s stadium, amid weather that favored the Sooners’ defense, and by eight points.

“So I don’t know how he evaluated that game that they were the better team,” Kiffin said. “Maybe they had the better team last year, too, when we beat them.”

Kiffin didn’t stop there, taking his argument to his days as an assistant at USC and Alabama when Venables was a defensive coordinator earlier in his career at Oklahoma and Clemson.

“Maybe he had the better team in Oklahoma, when we (Kiffin was a USC assistant) beat him 55-19 in the national championship (2004 season) — maybe,” Kiffin said. “Maybe he had the better team at Clemson, when we beat him 45-40 in the national championship (2016) at Alabama.”

Mississippi head coach Lane Kiffin watches his team play against Oklahoma on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025 in Norman, Okla. Kiffin pointed out Ole Miss won the game in Oklahoma’s stadium, amid weather that favored the Sooners’ defense, and by eight points. (Alonzo Adams/AP)

The 50-year-old Kiffin no longer is the butt of veteran coach’s jokes — and resentment — as he was earlier in his career after he infamously resigned from the Tennessee head coaching job in 2009 only to be fired on an airplane tarmac at his next job as USC’s head coach in 2013.

Instead, Kiffin has taken a spot at the head table as the most sought-after head coach amid all the current job openings after turning Ole Miss into a top-10 program with his coaching and talent acquisition through the transfer portal.

“If you’re a bottom conference team one year, you can fix your problems, right away, through the portal,” Kiffin said earlier this season in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. “Where before you had high school kids, it’d take a couple years, so a team might be down for two or three years.”

And Kiffin, the self-anointed “Portal King,” is the head coach who fans and boosters at LSU and Florida believe could turn their programs into instant championship contenders.

But if Kiffin stays at Ole Miss, where his family life is thriving and he has the complete support of an administration giving him the means to complete for titles, a new rivalry appears on tap.

It was just over a month ago Kiffin declared it “unfortunate” that Ole Miss had been assigned Oklahoma as an annual opponent in its nine-game schedule makeover.

“We don’t have anything in common with them or our fans,” Kiffin said of the schools, which are 566 miles (and about 10½ hours of drive time) apart.

One month later, Kiffin has done his part to ignite a new rivalry, as Venables surely will not take kindly to Kiffin’s verbal jabs.

Kiffin, meanwhile, has talked to his team about the speculation and rumors surrounding his coaching future.

“I just thought last week it was important late in the week to address it on Friday, just because we have so many new players, they hadn’t been here last year or the year before that when these job rumors and stuff would come up,” Kiffin said on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”

“I think it’s easier for them nowadays, because remember, basically the same thing happens to them,” Kiffin said. “… Our freshman receiver has a good game on Saturday night, he’s got three calls from places telling him, ‘Hey come here, we’ll give you more money,’ pre-portaling before the portal opens, that’s what happens.

“So they deal with this all the time, places saying ‘come here, you’ll get more money,’ so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to them.”

But as college football has seen play out, Kiffin has become a big deal — his Rebels ranked No. 7 and favored to win out and make the College Football Playoff field.