Jackson Jambalaya

The plot thickens up in Oxford as 24/7 Sports announced several former Ole Miss assistant football coaches will stay at LSU: 

Running backs and associate head coach Kevin Smith, tight ends coach Joe Cox, quarterbacks coach Dane Stevens, wide receivers coach George McDonald and inside receivers coach Sawyer Jordan will all be staying at LSU to start constructing the portal class in 2026. The one exception is offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who will head back to Oxford and be the playcaller for the Rebels for the Fiesta Bowl. Article

Head Football Coach Pete Golding said he had no problem with them coaching at Ole Miss through the end of the playoffs.  24/7 reported: 

Communication has been constant the entire time," Golding said. "Everybody does this. Everybody’s targeting us on this. There are multiple teams that have coordinators that have other jobs. They’ve taken head coaching jobs everywhere else. Every year that I was at Alabama when we went to the playoffs, we had coordinators and assistants that had other jobs.

“So all they’re doing is they’re doing two jobs. They have a responsibility to the next institution they’re going to work at. It’s the portal, recruiting, other things. They’re still doing the gameplan prep and they’ll be at practices and all those other things. It’s the big thing for the play-callers and people with significant roles from a practice standpoint to make sure those guys are at the practices, but the idea is the same guys who have coached the same positions all year will do that in this game like they have up to this point.”

Asked to clarify if that meant the six coaches would coach through the national championship game, should Ole Miss reach that point, Golding said this: “They have every opportunity, like they have up to this point, to be able to make that decision. Week in and week out, I don’t dictate whether they do that or not because they’re not employed by me. Up to this point, that is how it’s been and that is my expectation.