The saga of Lane Kiffin losing what could have been a splendid College Football Playoff run is just starting.
The whole spectacle is just turning out to be more and more of Kiffin's loss, and the CFP committee did not heed any of his poaching charades or demands to coach in the CFP.
Instead, the Rebels moved up the ladder in the penultimate CFP rankings to No. 6 spot from their No. 7 spot last week.
When asked about it, CFP chair Hunter Yurachek said that Ole Miss should not be the one getting punished for a head coaching change. Especially when they don't have a precedent of the team not performing well in the CFP after a head coaching change.
"It's impossible for us, at this time as a committee, to evaluate what the impact is of losing your head coach," Yurachek said. "Specifically, Ole Miss, because we don't have a game that we can compare Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin vs. without him."
"Without that data point, it really did not become part of our thought process in how we evaluated Ole Miss this week," Yurachek said.
More importantly, they now have Pete Golding handling the head coaching reins.
"We don't have any way to evaluate what Ole Miss looks like, plays like without their head coach," Yurachek said. "It looks like they stabilized that program by appointing their defensive coordinator as head coach. Their offensive coordinator, we were told, was going to come back and call the plays. So we can only evaluate what we know, and what we know now is that Ole Miss is an 11-1 football team."
That has been the whole point; Ole Miss is an 11-1 team.
And now that the whole Kiffin drama is finally over, the focus can finally be on the incredible season the Rebels had, and what awaits them in the CFP.