Lane Kiffin confronts reporter Credit: Trey Wallace
By Brendon Kleen on

Ben Garrett still has a sneaking suspicion it was all staged.

Garrett is the editor and co-publisher at OMSpirit, a long-running Ole Miss blog now operated by On3. You might know him as the guy whom Lane Kiffin confronted on the field after the Egg Bowl. And, depending on who you ask, the guy who called the most high-profile college football coach of the 2025 season a “hoe.”

As Ole Miss’ regular season came to a close and Kiffin openly flirted with a number of job openings around the country, Garrett found himself thinking of a line from a famous rapper a couple of states over:

Can’t turn a hoe into a housewife. Hoes don’t act right.

Meaning, a flighty partner can’t be changed.

Perhaps an unlikely metaphor for the inventive, antisocial, extremely online head coach of the soon-to-be-six-seed in the College Football Playoff, but also, in truth, an apt one.

Kiffin caught wind that Garrett had dropped the line in a podcast episode the Tuesday of Egg Bowl week, and, according to Garrett, notified an Ole Miss official. By the time Kiffin secured a win over rival Mississippi State in what would become his final win as Rebels coach, Garrett figured it would be long gone from the coach’s mind.

Especially after the two spoke for several minutes on-field in Starkville. Suddenly, the tone changed.

Kiffin confronted Garrett, referencing the line. The face-to-face was caught on camera by a fellow reporter, as was Kiffin triumphantly marching off the field afterward.

After the game, Kiffin elaborately made like he did not know who Garrett was, then called the On3 reporter’s comments “bush league.” Within 48 hours, Kiffin was headed to Baton Rouge.

“They know how to play the virality game,” Garrett tells me, hours before Ole Miss faces Miami in the Fiesta Bowl. “He was trying to look for a way to blame anybody but himself. He was leaving since October. It was like, ‘Look what this guy did.’”

While many saw Lane being Lane, a prideful coach with his antenna up wanting to maintain his legacy, Garrett, an Ole Miss alum and Northern Mississippi native, believes the incident shows why Lane Kiffin was never comfortable in Oxford — and why the community is excited to turn the page on the Kiffin era.

If virality was the goal, Kiffin succeeded. But neither the confrontation with Garrett, nor an interview with Marty Smith, nor all the media back-channeling Kiffin and his camp put on, were successful in changing how Oxford faithful — or the college football world — absorbed Kiffin’s choice.

Now, with Lane Kiffin gone and the Rebels advancing through the College Football Playoff, Garrett has come to see it as far more than simply great content.

“This is not a story of Ole Miss vs. LSU, Lane Kiffin vs. that stupid idiot who called him a hoe,” Garrett tells me. “That’s not what this is. What this is, is a paradigm shift in college football. It’s a perfect example of it.”

Having covered Ole Miss since the mid-2000s, Garrett genuinely believes the program has leveled up. That Kiffin may not find much of anything at LSU that he didn’t have at Ole Miss, aside from attention. The paradigm shift is where Ole Miss can become a potential national champion on the back of a strong infrastructure and financial investment, and rise from the cellar of the SEC to national prominence.

It may sound unlikely, but Lane Kiffin is the one who made some in Oxford believe it. And he left just as quickly.

Garrett tells me that Kiffin has talked with Auburn and LSU over the past few years and was eager to leave Ole Miss for Florida, LSU, or Florida State as early as October. The coach, Garrett says, even pitched interim Pete Golding on moving to a bigger program on the field after a big win at Oklahoma.

Garrett believes Kiffin will be successful in Baton Rouge, but won’t be satisfied. Will never be satisfied.

“He wants constant praise and affirmation. Don’t we all?” Garrett says. “But he’s never been able to find his contentment. At Ole Miss, he had everything, and he still wasn’t content.”

The two spoke on the phone the morning after their confrontation in Starkville, a conversation that Garrett giggles while discussing. The call didn’t last long beyond Kiffin’s apology.

Since then, Kiffin has occasionally messaged Garrett, joking about the incident, sending him memes of the Ludacris line.

The whole situation has helped Garrett see the coach in a far simpler way.

“I understand Lane like I understand my 13-year-old daughter Gracie. I know what his motivations are,” Garrett says. “Do I think his No. 1 motivation is bringing a national championship to LSU, or was it bringing a national championship to Ole Miss? No. Lane’s only motivation, forever and always, first and foremost, is going to be Lane.”

In looking back at it all, Garrett seems both embarrassed and indignant. While he doesn’t want to be seen as having called Kiffin such a crude name, it’s not like he didn’t mean the insult. Still, Garrett quickly grew tired of the online attention — and not just because everyone believed he, a 40-year-old father, was a college student.

Regardless of how people see Garrett, he believes Kiffin showed his true feelings toward Ole Miss in that moment. As a stoutly religious, proudly Mississippian, longtime chronicler of the Rebels, Garrett finds it shameful that Kiffin would flip Oxford the bird on his way out of town.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t burn the place down and then go, ‘Y’all gotta love me on the way out,’” Garrett says.

That Lane Kiffin would so blatantly attempt to manipulate the perception around his self-serving move is what still bothers Garrett. He points out that while the new LSU coach poaches Ole Miss coaches, targets Rebels players in the transfer portal, and runs damage control on ESPN, fans continue to support Garrett and his work. They paid to fly him to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl.

“I was here over a decade before Lane Kiffin was here. And god willing, I’ll be here decades more until they put me in the ground. Because I’m from Northern Mississippi. This is my job. I make good money, praise be to God,” Garrett says.

The Egg Bowl incident was merely one final, lasting example for Garrett and the Ole Miss faithful that Kiffin misunderstood who they were and what their program could be.

“You know how many people give a sh*t about Ole Miss? I don’t think people quite understand,” Garrett says. “It’s different. Because for them, it’s a part of who they are.

“It matters to them. It just never was going to matter like that to Lane. And all Ole Miss people, and Ole Miss in general, wanted was for Lane to love them back. And he was just never going to.”

About Brendon Kleen

Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.

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