ESPN Ranks Every College Football Hire From The 2025 Coaching Carousel

ESPN's Bill Connelly ranked every College Football hire from the 2025 Coaching Carousel and gave LSU an A+ for landing former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin.

LSU's hire of Kiffin was the only A+ grade given by Connelly.

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Grade: A+ (probably the best job available, filled by the best available coach)

1. Lane Kiffin, LSU. We won't overthink this one. Everything about the run-up to Kiffin's departure from Ole Miss was dramatic and strung out, and it will forever be part of his coaching biography that he left an active playoff team for a school he had beaten weeks earlier. But in his past nine years as a head coach, he has won double-digit games six times (at schools without much, or any, recent history of doing that), and he engineered the Rebels' best three-year run in 60-plus years. He checks almost every box for a school that can afford to hire a guy who checks lots of boxes.

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Here's what they had to say about Ole Miss promoting DC Pete Golding to head coach:

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Grade: B (don't absolutely love it but won't be surprised if it works out)

15. Pete Golding, Ole Miss. After he was put in the ridiculously tough spot of trying to ensure continuity when Lane Kiffin left before the school's first playoff run, Golding's promotion makes plenty of sense. And I enjoyed his selection of East Carolina coordinator John David Baker to run the offense next year, so that's one hurdle cleared. It seems that continuity hires have lower ceilings in general, so I'm at least a smidgen skeptical, but he obviously cleared his first hurdle with aplomb thanks to Ole Miss' CFP blowout of Tulane.

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