'Rat Poison': Lane Kiffin Addresses High Expectations For Ole Miss in 2024 Season

Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin was made available to the media in a private session before he took the podium at SEC Media Days on Monday.

Nov 23, 2023; Starkville, Mississippi, USA; Mississippi Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin reacts during the second half against the Mississippi State Bulldogs at Davis Wade Stadium at Scott Field. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-USA TODAY Sports / Petre Thomas-USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS -- SEC Media Days is officially here, and coach Lane Kiffin and the Ole Miss Rebels are taking centerstage in the afternoon portion of Monday's event.

Prior to taking the podium in the ballroom on Monday, Kiffin was made available to select media in a private session at the Omni Hotel in Dallas, and, inevitably, his team's high expectations were one of the first topics discussed in the interview setting.

The Rebels have a legitimate chance to be a preseason Top 10 team entering the fall campaign, but Kiffin stressed that he doesn't invest too much in expectations. Instead, he's focused on the daily process in making his team better.

"I don't deal in a whole lot in 'expecting,'" Kiffin said. "It's more of the thought process of daily work with our players, and I do think we have a really good collection of players that decided to return, including all three that are here today.

"We were able to add some really intriguing portal pieces to that, but, again, there's a lot of work to do, and all those expectations and stuff out there, those mean nothing."

Kiffin has been known to borrow former Alabama coach Nick Saban's term of "rat poison" when hype begins to circulate around his roster, and Monday was no different.

"As Coach Saban used to say, that's truly the rat poison, especially in the preseason," Kiffin said. "There have been plenty of teams not ranked high that end up high and plenty of high-ranked teams that end up low."

This isn't the first time that Kiffin has led a team with lofty preseason expectations. In 2012, he was the head coach of the USC Trojans who came into the year ranked No. 1 nationally, but that team finished with an overall record of 7-6 and a loss in the Sun Bowl to Georgia Tech.

The Trojans were coming off of issues surrounding an NCAA investigation, but Kiffin still hopes to draw some lessons from that lackluster season.

"That was, I think, a different situation because that truly was rat poison of where we shouldn't have been due to scholarship limitations and how low our roster was," Kiffin said, "but you still want to learn from every obstacle that happens in your life. I think we probably leaned into that too much at the time.

"[Quarterback] Matt Barkley was coming back, and [USC was] preseason No. 1 after a strong finish the year before. We kind of embraced that and leaned into that. It didn't work, so as you look back, you say you probably shouldn't have and resisted that more."

Ole Miss hopes to reach the first edition of the newly-expanded College Football Playoff this season, and its campaign will begin at home on Aug. 31 against the FCS Furman Paladins.