As Ole Miss emerged victorious over Florida to end any bowl hopes for the Gators, all eyes turned towards Lane Kiffin. He gave a short post-game interview on the field, where he looked rather uncomfortable before departing for the locker rooms and his official post-game press conference.
And while Kiffin hasn't shied away from any questions involving the rumors that he might take the job at Florida, there are still six simple words he has yet to say that would end all of this speculation.
Lane Kiffin loves Ole Miss, but not enough to say he is staying
In his post-game interview, Kiffin said that he loves Ole Miss when asked about the Florida job:
"I love what we're doing here. Today was awesome. To even talk about it right now would be so disrespectful to our players and how well they played today. We've got a lot of things going here. Doing really well, and I love it here."
You know what six words he has still not said:
"I am staying at Ole Miss."
Because the longer this drags on, the longer he dodges and weaves these questions, the longer he says everything except that he is 100% staying, the more likely it is that he is coming to Florida.
Ole Miss is entering a bye week before it takes on Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl to close out the regular season. We would have to imagine the Ole Miss administration is going to put some pressure on Kiffin to make up his mind one way or another.
Because if this is all a ploy by Kiffin just to get a contract extension from Ole Miss, we would have to imagine there isn't much more Ole Miss has to offer to sweeten the pot.
And if we were Ole Miss fans getting ready for the playoffs for the first time in school history, we would have to imagine it's a bummer that the biggest story around the team is whether or not the coach is going to stay.
But until Lane Kiffin says those six magic words, we are going to imagine the door to Gainesville is still very wide open.