Will Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin address Auburn speculation with his players?
Less than an hour after Auburn officially announced the departure of head coach Bryan Harsin on Monday, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin's name started floating around in media reports amid speculation about the vacancy.
Brandon Marcello of 247Sports called Kiffin the "top name" to watch. Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports included Kiffin on his list of coaching candidates, too, speculating that agent Jimmy Sexton might use the opportunity to land a contract extension.
The coaching carousel and the media circus it drives present a dynamic the well-traveled Rebels (8-1, 4-1 Southeastern Conference) head coach is familiar with by now.
He's developed a process for dealing with it. Asked whether he'll discuss the speculation with his players, Kiffin replied that he wouldn't.
"I never do with the team," he said at his weekly press conference Monday. "Never have."
The recruiting trail harbors some more obstacles. The Rebels signed the No. 17 and No. 15 classes in the 2021 and 2022 recruiting cycles, according to 247Sports. Their Class of 2023 currently ranks 26th in the country.
The early signing period opens on Dec. 21. It's a safe bet that Kiffin's peers will be using the speculation against him on the recruiting trail until then — but that won't be anything new.
"You deal with that all the time," he said. "I would guess any time that you've probably taken jobs and haven't been at one place forever, I bet every coach gets that. I get that all the time from recruits. That's just part of it. Recruiting is competitive and that gets used against us. We've been dealing with that for a long time."
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Kiffin said he didn't know about Harsin's departure until fielding a question about it on the podium, having arrived straight from a meeting.
As a coach who has experienced that before, Kiffin said he felt empathy for Harsin.
"I'm not complaining because this profession gets paid a lot of money and it's part of it," Kiffin said. "... I understand why fans root for it, I get it all, but there's a very personal side to it. A lot of adults, kids that when something like that happens are going to be affected."
David Eckert covers Southern Miss for The Hattiesburg American. Contact him at deckert@gannett.com or on Twitter @davideckert98.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Lane Kiffin won't address Auburn talk with Ole Miss football players
