Paul Finebaum trashes new Ole Miss HC Pete Golding in comparison to Lane Kiffin

The Ole Miss Rebels are moving on from Lane Kiffin for better or worse. 

They may not have had much of a choice, and Kiffin's leaving for the LSU Tigers could not have come at a worse time. Before he left town, he had led Ole Miss to an 11-1 record and a certain spot in the College Football Playoff.

He wanted to coach the Rebels for the rest of this season, but Ole Miss wisely told him to kick rocks and instead promoted Pete Golding to be the head coach.

Golding now has a chance to make a name for himself right away by leading Ole Miss on a run through the CFP. Will he be able to do it? Like with anything in college football, we'll have to wait and see to find out. 

Will the CFP committee dock Ole Miss because of the loss of Kiffin? That's another thing that is still up in the air, but at least one talking head, SEC expert Paul Finebaum, does think the program has gotten significantly worse going from Kiffin to Golding.

Recently speaking on ESPN's "Get Up," Finebaum didn't hold back his thoughts. Speaking with Mike Greenberg about whether or not the committee would punish Ole Miss for not having the head coach who led it to the 11-1 campaign, Finebaum went hard after Goulding.

“They should look at what’s happening on the field,” Finebaum said of the CFP committee (h/t On3). “But if you want to trust this playoff committee, Greeny, do it at your own risk, because I don’t ever trust them when you put 12 or 13 people in a room. Now the difference is you would have had Lane Kiffin as your head coach. Now you have Pete Golding. Anybody heard of him? Not really. Is he a better coach than Lane Kiffin? No, he’s a far inferior coach, but he still has the same team. So what does he get out of that team? I think they should stay where they are, but I don’t trust this committee to do that.”

Pete Golding should not be counted out at Ole Miss because he's not Lane Kiffin

That's a strong take from Finebaum on the reasons Ole Miss shouldn't be docked in the CFP standings, but it is a poor take on Golding.

Remember, just about every head coach worth a darn started their career as an assistant. Kiffin cut his chops as the offensive coordinator of the USC Trojans under Pete Carroll. Heck, Nick Saban was Michigan State's defensive coordinator before landing his first head-coaching gig.

Eventually, any coach worth his salt has to make the jump from coordinator to head coach. Will it work out for Ole Miss and Golding? We'll have to wait and see.

That's no reason to completely diminish his abilities as a coach, though. Keep in mind, he does have the Ole Miss defense playing good football. Golding also has a resume that features a stint from 2018 to 2022 in which he was the defensive coordinator under Saban at Alabama.

The point is, Golding has a chance to do it, and he can't just be written off because he's not Kiffin.