Despite being on the brink of starting a new season under first-year head coach Pete Golding, the Ole Miss Rebels just can't get away from headlines involving Lane Kiffin.
According to reports from CBS Sports , Kiffin "fed intel" to Dabo Swinney to help the Clemson head coach go on a public tirade about how Ole Miss tampered with Cal transfer linebacker Luke Ferrelli in order to lure him away from the Tigers.
Ferrelli had already started going to classes at Clemson but flipped to Ole Miss after Rebels linebacker TJ Dottery followed Kiffin to LSU . This opened up a spot for Ferrelli, and Golding took advantage.
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney after the team's first preseason scrimmage in 2026 | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
According to the report, the intel that Swinney received from Kiffin allowed him to publicly demand the NCAA look into the situation around Ferrelli's departure from Clemson.
This led to Swinney calling out what he viewed as "a whole other level of tampering."
"This is a whole other level of tampering. It's total hypocrisy," Swinney said while speaking to the media in January. " ...We have a broken system, and if there are no consequences for tampering, then we have no rules and we have no governance."
This decision by Kiffin was seen as nothing more than an attempt at revenge toward Ole Miss following his departure. He went to these lengths despite reportedly viewing Swinney as "a fraud."
"Dabo's one of the main guys when (Kiffin) was at Ole Miss he would always say that guy's a fraud and I don't like that. And of course, he's feeding him all this stuff," an Ole Miss official said, per CBS Sports.
LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin speaks to the press during SEC Football Kickoff Media Day at the Tampa Marriott. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Ahead of his coaching debut with LSU, Kiffin talked about the matchup with Clemson and Swinney while speaking with the media during the SEC Teleconference.
This certainly makes the timing of this all even more interesting.
"We only played him once over time, and Dabo's done one of the best jobs in college football of sustaining over a long period of time that's really hard to do, and to be as dominant as he's been, win as much as he has, about as good as anybody's ever done," Kiffin said of Swinney. "And so his teams are always well coached, well prepared. They play really hard, and so we know we're gonna have our hands full Saturday."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/olemiss as Lane Kiffin Reportedly "Fed Intel" to Dabo Swinney Amid Ole Miss Tampering Scandal .
