Tampa, Florida (CNN) — Before each coach takes the stage for his press conference at SEC Football media days, Commissioner Greg Sankey steps to the microphone for a brief introduction.
He runs through the coach’s bona fides and adds a non-football side note—who likes to play pickleball, or who recently went whitewater rafting. It almost feels like listening to famed public address announcer Michael LaFave at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. You half-expect Sankey to wind up a bio with, “Please welcome Akita number seven,” instead of, say, Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer.
On Wednesday afternoon, Sankey set the stage for Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding. He ran through Golding’s plucky coaching start at Delta State, his stops at other far-flung places, and his rise to defensive coordinator at Alabama. He explained that the Goldings are a golfing family, noting that this summer the coach caddied for his 11-year-old son, Bentley.
Thirty minutes later, Golding had essentially upended the rules of college football “talking season,” as the glut of July media days is often called. Typically, there is a lot of talking, but no one really says much. Not Golding. He dropped a “bullsh*t” and a “crap,” suggested that people still ticked off at his predecessor get over it, and answered a question about tampering allegations (of which he and his team have been accused) by essentially saying that tampering rules were silly.
With his mop of gray hair, beard, and disarmingly refreshing candor, it was as if a Labradoodle had somehow busted into the purebred show.
“How would I describe PG?” Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss said of his head coach, a wide smile spreading across his face. “Oh, he’s a character.”
Ironically, he is exactly what Ole Miss needs, even though, before November of last year, no one wanted the school to need him.
Golding took over after the oxygen-sucking departure of Lane Kiffin finally reached its protracted conclusion. At first desperate to keep Kiffin, and then happy to shove him out the door, the jilted fan base turned Golding into its gridiron Herb Brooks, even if the narrative didn’t quite fit. The Rebels were hardly the 1980 Miracle on Ice hockey team; they were 11-1 heading into the playoffs and 7-1 in their conference, led by a quarterback who finished eighth in the Heisman Trophy balloting and a running back who rushed for more than 1,600 yards.
Yet as Ole Miss pushed on after Kiffin’s abandonment, upending Georgia in the quarterfinals and losing to Miami in an epic semifinal game, Golding went from a required replacement coach to a hero in the span of two months.
He approached his Media Days session with a perfect combination of candor and comfort. A reluctant head coach who seemingly enjoyed both the autonomy of being a coordinator and the anonymity of not being a head coach and “doing all the head coach bullsh*t that I do not enjoy doing,” Golding has waltzed into his role quite easily, simultaneously flipping the script for the Rebels.
Categorized even by their own fan base as victims at the end of 2025, Ole Miss had its swagger restored by Golding in a single press conference.
He unapologetically said he and Kiffin text regularly, poking fun at folks who routinely ask in a stage whisper how he really feels about the banished coach. “I tell a lot of these people, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I don’t care, all right?” he said. “In 2021, if you said you could look ahead to 2025 and you’re about to be 11-1 and go to the playoff, would you take it if your coach was leaving? Hell yeah, you would. Everyone won from it. It’s okay.”
As a new season dawns, the dust has hardly settled. When does it ever in Oxford? Yet rather than tamping it down, Golding seems perfectly fine kicking it up.
His quarterback returns only after earning his way back with an assist from the Mississippi courts. The NCAA twice denied Chambliss’ appeal for a sixth year, with the signal-caller arguing that an illness prevented him from playing while he was at Ferris State before transferring to Ole Miss. So Chambliss did what people do and went to a judge, who ruled in Chambliss’ favor, clearing the way for his return. Chambliss called the process “annoying at times, frustrating, and stressful.”
Others might call it distasteful, a ding to what is otherwise a rather lovely rags-to-riches story for a kid who started his career in the obscurity of Division II football. At Ole Miss, the school rolled out its Heisman campaign featuring Chambliss and Kewan Lacey on mock-ups of political placards around town.
Meanwhile, Golding has already been accused of breaking rules – or at least the ones that are apparently still left to break. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney nearly called him out by name, accusing Ole Miss of “blatant” tampering over the transfer of linebacker Luke Ferrelli. “I’m not trying to get anybody fired, but when is enough enough?” Swinney said in January, adding that Golding sent the ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year a picture of a $1 million contract offer. “If we have rules, and tampering is a rule, then there should be a consequence for that.”
Ferrelli is on the Ole Miss roster, but the NCAA has subsequently opened an investigation. Golding was asked how he felt about the accusation and what, if anything, he might suggest doing about tampering. Other coaches might have channeled Crash Davis as schooled in Bull Durham, opting to cliché their way out of the tricky spot.
Golding did no such tap dance. He never said he did tamper, and he never said he didn’t. Instead, he suggested the whole concept made no sense, likening it to applying for a job without being allowed to be interviewed.
“So we’ve created (the portal) on top of representation for these players, that it’s their responsibility to make sure they get paid really well and have opportunities,” he said. “So by design, it’s put a lot of people in bad positions. Let’s not act like college football for the last 100 years has been the most moral thing. What are we talking about here?”
And then he doubled down.
“We go by the rules of the program and the flow,” he said. “You’re on the interstate and people are flying by you; what are you going to start doing?”
A reporter answered the rhetorical question, explaining that he would speed up.
Golding then added the exclamation point to the response, while perhaps landing on a new mantra for Ole Miss.
“Damn right,” Golding said. “Or you’re going to get hit.”
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