It isn't everyday that college football gets to witness an assistant coach making head coach of a College Football Playoff-bound program right after the most insane coaching drama, and leads them to the semifinals to lose by a single, highly controversial officiating call.
The whole nation was rooting for the Rebels to pull the Fiesta Bowl win off given their cinematic storyline this season.
And Pete Golding deserves much more appreciation than he is currently getting for that.
ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum rightly pointed that out in a wake-up call that was laced with a warning on not sleeping on the Rebels head coach.
“I think he’s off to, really, an extraordinary start. It’s not so much even what we saw on the field, which was really amazing when you consider the amount of time. It’s just the commitment to him from that fanbase,” Paul Finebaum said on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning.
"You guys have been around this fanbase lately. Forget the former coach, they are all in on this guy. That’s not easy to do when you get named the interim.”
Finebaum: If Matt Luke got it, Golding should 100% get it
Finebaum then brought in the ultimate double-edged sword there could be for the Rebel Nation, a Matt Luke reference.
The SEC mouthpiece used it wisely to push all the right buttons on how Golding deserves much more appreciation from the Ole Miss fan base after the love they gave to Luke even after an unsuccessful coaching run.
“I remember when Matt Luke was elevated. It was okay. I mean, there was a little bit of enthusiasm, but there was also ‘he won’t be here in two or three years,'” Finebaum said.
“And people were right. I’m not really hearing that about Pete Golding. He handled himself so well leading up to it, during the game, and, quite frankly, I think they’re in very good shape. I think there’s a lot of momentum there and there’s no way that if we had convened six weeks ago that you could have predicted that.”
Golding is already forming a seriously threatening 2026 class with transfers and returning players. Snoozing on him will missing the boat on one of the greatest redemption story in SEC history.