If Lane Kiffin bolts Oxford, could the CFP committee ding Ole Miss … or leave them out of the playoff altogether?

In the game of leverage being played between Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss over his future, Kiffin owns a trump card that hasn’t been widely discussed.

Right there, tucked into the College Football Playoff selection committee protocols, is the following bullet point the committee is supposed to consider when selecting teams:

“Other relevant factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance.”

If Lane Kiffin took another job in the next two weeks or was somehow pushed out the door before the College Football Playoff, would the selection committee have enough of a reason to snub the Rebels even at 11-1?

It’s a relevant question at the moment due to the lack of clarity surrounding Kiffin’s intentions while he very publicly flirts with both LSU and Florida.

Different reports this week have characterized the situation in slightly different ways, but the bottom line is the same: Ole Miss wants (perhaps needs) an answer from Kiffin as soon as possible, and preferably before next Friday’s Egg Bowl, so it can figure out what’s next if he leaves.

Given the way the coaching carousel works and the opening of the transfer portal on Jan. 2, there is simply no way this purgatory can last all the way through a potential Ole Miss playoff game on Dec. 20 (and perhaps beyond).

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter understands — and rightly so — that most of the candidates he’d want to replace Kiffin with would be off the board by then. Plus, when you factor at least a few more days to make a hire, you’re already pushing up against the opening of the portal, which could result in an exodus of players without any plan in place to replace them.

In other words, it could set Ole Miss back a couple years.

Kiffin seems to be resisting this level of urgency, even as reports about his family members visiting Baton Rouge and Gainesville exploded on Monday. His Tuesday appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show,” where he wasn’t asked at all about those details, was strategically scripted to project the image of a normal bye week in Oxford.

Unfortunately for Kiffin, he’s not that good of an actor, and his uncharacteristically chipper demeanor was a dead giveaway that he’s trying really hard to calm the waters while he deliberates on what is surely a difficult life decision.

But this is the real world, Kiffin is a 50-year old man, and sometimes grownups are forced to make a call on a less-than-ideal timetable.

Kiffin wants to have his cake and eat it too while feeding Ole Miss a plate of fecal matter. That’s simply not going to work for much longer.

The question of the day is whether Ole Miss would do something to force the issue. Is there truly a hard deadline or ultimatum? We don’t know for sure, but the idea Kiffin could coach against Mississippi State next week and announce he’s taking either LSU or Florida shortly after is clearly one of the scenarios Ole Miss has gamed out in recent days.

In that situation, it’s hard to imagine Kiffin being allowed to coach the Rebels in the CFP.

And yet, it would be an abdication of responsibility for Ole Miss officials not to consider whether a messy Kiffin departure in the next couple weeks would give the committee a reason to leave them out of the playoff altogether.

While it seems absurd at first, it’s not that far-fetched considering what happened in 2023 when 13-0 ACC champion Florida State was left out of the four-team CFP in favor of 12-1 Alabama because quarterback Jordan Travis suffered a devastating injury late in the season.

In fact, if that’s now considered precedent, the case for removing a Lane-less Ole Miss team from the CFP would be somewhat compelling. While Kiffin isn’t recording tackles or making throws, he has an integral role in play calling and game planning. It’s his offense and his show. The committee wouldn’t be doing its job if it didn’t consider whether losing a head coach, particularly one who is so involved with the offense at a granular level, would make Ole Miss a fundamentally different team than the one it evaluated up to this point.

Would the blowback be severe for snubbing an 11-1 Ole Miss? Absolutely. Would Greg Sankey declare a fatwa on the rest of college football? There’s no doubt. And maybe that threat alone would be enough to protect Ole Miss.

The Rebels’ players wouldn’t deserve such a cruel fate. But Florida State’s didn’t either two years ago, and look at what happened.

Hey, with this committee, you never know. Based on the comments Tuesday night of chairman Hunter Yurachek, the current group of committee members seems to put a lot more stock into projections of what they think a team is than previous committees where résumé tended to win the day.

And that’s dangerous for a team like Ole Miss, which would clearly belong in the CFP at 11-1 but isn’t some undeniable juggernaut that anyone off the street could coach. A seven-point win over Kentucky, a five-point win over LSU, a three-point win over Washington State and a close 10-point win last weekend over Florida paint the picture of a team that would be out of the playoff entirely if a handful of plays over the course of the season go another direction.

Is there a scenario where the committee looks at Ole Miss and says it’s just a different, lesser team without Kiffin at the controls?

It seems unlikely, but it’s not impossible given the system, the precedent and the committee’s written protocols.

And that seed of doubt may be just enough leverage for Ole Miss to consider whether it’s wise to play a game of chicken with a mercurial coach having a fit of wanderlust at the worst possible time.