Ole Miss HC Pete Golding on the Satisfaction of Beating Lane Kiffin & LSU

Pete Golding's job interview at Alabama lasted from about 1:10 in the afternoon until 6:55 that evening, ended with a cold Miller Lite on Nick Saban's couch, and never once included a discussion of salary. It's a fitting origin story for a coach who just beat Lane Kiffin and LSU and now heads to the Swamp.

The Ole Miss head coach made his first appearance on The Rich Eisen Show fresh off that win, and Rich opened with the Saban story.

Before the 2018 season, Golding was at UTSA and had already accepted a job at Ole Miss under Matt Luke. Two days later, Alabama called. Jeremy Pruitt, the defensive coordinator, had taken the Tennessee job, and nobody knew yet. A plane picked Golding up on a Sunday. He landed in Tuscaloosa around 12:30 and met Saban at 1:00.

Saban's office connects to the staff room, which Golding didn't know. "I walk in behind him and there's 35 people sitting in this room," he said. Saban told him to hop up on the whiteboard and started drawing offensive formations and plays. Halfway through, Golding realized, "Man, this is Clemson's offense." Alabama was playing Clemson in the Sugar Bowl semifinal three weeks later.

He was on the whiteboard until 6:55, when Saban announced he had to leave for his granddaughter's dance sign-up. "Miss Terry is going to divorce me if I don't hit this dance sign-up," Golding recalled him saying. The staff then went through Golding's UTSA tape. At dinner with Tosh Lupoi, Saban called and said to bring him by.

At the house around 9:15, Miss Terry opened the door and offered a beer. "I was drinking a cold Miller Lite on Saban's couch. Didn't realize that he didn't drink at the time," Golding said. Upstairs in the pool room, Saban offered him the job. Did he want to know what position he'd coach? "Coach, I'm good." How much he'd make? "Coach, I'm good, man." Then he called his family: "Put Oxford on hold. We're going to Tuscaloosa."

Rich compared it to arriving at ESPN in 1996 from a small station in Redding, California. Golding topped it: the staff room probably had more people than "UTSA, Southern Miss and Southeastern combined."

Golding also got a front-row seat to one of the famous quarterback stories in college football. He arrived as Jalen Hurts was preparing to start the Sugar Bowl against Clemson, and he was there at halftime of the national championship game against Georgia when Alabama switched to Tua. What stuck with him was the next year. Hurts showed up "with good energy, good attitude, good body language," preparing "like he was still the starter." Then in the SEC championship game, Tua went down late and Hurts led the comeback. "It was just an awesome story for a dude that kept the good Lord first and was an unbelievable teammate," Golding said.

Rich asked what he doesn't already know about Trinidad Chambliss. "An elite competitor," Golding started. "I think he's quieter than people think." Chambliss arrived with "that D2 mindset," humble and prepared, and people forget he wasn't the starter for the first two games of last season. He got his chance when Austin Simmons went down against Kentucky "and didn't look back."

Golding credited Chambliss' attention to detail, his faith and his leadership, adding that he hopes his own sons are someday talked about the way he talks about his quarterback.

Rich admitted few college players make him jump off the couch quite like Chambliss. Golding said the defense learned that early, when Chambliss was running with the twos in scrimmages. "I'm like, man, this dude is Houdini," he said. "You think you got him caged up." He stressed that Chambliss is more than an athletic runner. "He's got elite arm talent. He makes good decisions." And "the play is just getting started when he decides to escape a little bit." Golding believes he has elevated his game this year.

Then Rich asked how badly he wanted last week's game. Golding tried the diplomatic route first. "I want to win every game, man. I hate losing." He said he was happy for chancellor Glenn Boyce and athletic director Keith Carter, who "caught a lot of flak" through the Kiffin situation and "stayed strong," and for players who had options to leave and chose to stay.

Rich took another swing. This was the coach who left, and the coach who gave Golding his opportunity. Golding said he put Kiffin in the same category as facing Kirby in the Sugar Bowl, a good coach with a good team, and insisted he didn't treat it like the Super Bowl or a big-brother game. But was there a feeling afterward?

"You're damn right," he said. "Whether I'm playing Kiffin in pickleball or football, I'm trying to whoop his ass." The reward, he joked, is going "to play Florida in the Swamp as a top 25 team."

And yes, the pickleball is real. It happened during a filming project, with Golding and Kiffin's brother against Kiffin and a partner, and somehow the footage never aired. "I think there's a reason why." He also said the two talked after the game. "He's a good buddy of mine," Golding said. "No hard feelings there."

Florida is next, and Golding isn't buying any hype. Rich asked about Jon Sumrall's comment on the Vegas betting line, and Golding went to history. His last trip to the Swamp was in 2024, when Ole Miss was ranked 14th against a 5-5 Florida team, and "we didn't win the game." This Florida team is 3-0 and ranked.

"If we read all the press clippings all week and we don't prepare really well and practice really well, it's going to be hard to win," he said. He called this "one of the better Florida offenses that I've seen," praised Buster's work, and said he has "a lot of respect" for Sumrall and the toughness his team plays with.

Asked whether he'd warn his team against celebrating the LSU win, Golding said that message was really for last week. "Once you start making one game bigger than another," he said, how do you get them back up for the next one? "If you're not at your best in this league, you're going to get your ass beat." His self-aware line: "They're building statues right now and I'll have for sale signs next week." When Rich called it rat poison, Golding added his own version: "Traps are done by ourselves in our own building, not somebody else."

Last question: has he caught himself sounding like Saban? Other people have noticed his hands in press conferences, he said. But the bigger point was the notebooks. "There's two notebooks you're taking, the because of and in spite of." He was around "the best one to ever do it, in my opinion," and he's determined to bring what worked into his own program, because he saw what it did for young players "not only on the football field, but more importantly, in life."