Cut-throats rule this Top 10 list of offseason infamy.
Lane Kiffin took his talents to Baton Rouge just before the end of the season, but back in Oxford the Ole Miss rebels are gearing up for a shot at a national championship.It’s Super Bowl week. The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are out in San Francisco preparing for the game and everything that revolves around it.
Imagine if Klint Kubiak, the offensive coordinator for Seattle, suddenly left his team on Monday morning to go be the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Sound too psycho to ever happen? That’s college football these days, and the SEC is the dirtiest league of extraordinary cut-throats since the golden age of piracy.College football is without rules, but in the SEC there isn’t even a code of ethics. Nothing is sacred and the more dastardly the better. Ole Miss had its best team in school history. That banner year was set afire by rival LSU when the Tigers stole coach Lane Kiffin before playoffs even started.Blackbeard, Jean Lafitte and Sinbad the Sailor would be proud. The SEC is the most cold-blooded league in the world that hasn’t been banned for being a crime against humanity. It’s getting pretty close to the edge, though. For example, the most celebrated quarterback in the sport recently lost his roommate to an archrival. That’s right. His roommate. Why did receiver Parker Livingstone of Texas ditch former roomie Arch Manning for the Oklahoma Sooners? Because Texas swiped Auburn’s best receiver in the dead of night. College football has never been more corrupt, and that’s saying a lot. We are living among assassins, guns for hire and privateers. Naturally, because it’s my job to now celebrate this villainy, I’ve put together a Top 10 list of the SEC’s pitiless offseason savagery.We’ll start with Auburn, which is rebuilding its entire team after firing coach Hugh Freeze. Freeze was a bandit from a cleaner time. He wasn’t made for this new form of barbarism. Freeze could work a burner phone, sure, but commissioner Greg Sankey has the SEC’s refs on speed dial and the fix was always in. Freeze should have taken his chances last season with freshman quarterback Deuce Knight instead of dying a slow death with transfer quarterback Jackson Arnold. Arnold was terrible and all Knight ever learned at Auburn was that loyalty is for fools. Auburn replaced Knight with USF transfer quarterback Byrum Brown, so no one is crying for the Tigers.Receiver Isaiah Horton led Alabama with eight touchdown catches in 2025. All that did was make him a target for Texas A&M. Remember when guys like Amari Cooper, DeVonta Smith and Julio Jones spent their entire careers catching passes in Tuscaloosa? Gone are the days. Horton, who started his career at Miami, is off to Aggieland after spending only one season with the Tide.Former five-star receiver Cam Coleman once had dreams of a statue outside Jordan-Hare Stadium alongside Auburn greats Bo Jackson, Pat Sullivan and Cam Newton. Now it’s like Coleman was never even there. Coleman instantly became the top receiver target in the transfer portal when Auburn fired Freeze. The Tigers’ NIL collective tried to keep him, but Coleman reportedly turned down a $2 million offer for even more from Texas.Coleman’s betrayal of Auburn got all the headlines, but losing a former five-star edge rusher to a rival might be worse. Amaris Williams spent his first two seasons at Auburn, but now he’s with Georgia. Auburn has lost nine games in a row to Georgia. Will it ever end?6. LSU takes what it wants Does it get any more shockingly morbid than a captain leaving for a mainline rival? Well, yes, in the SEC that’s just child’s play.Linebacker TJ Dottery led Ole Miss in tackles last season . He also was the player who set the defense for two years as the Rebels’ de facto defensive leader. There truly is no limit to Lane Kiffin’s treachery. LSU pried Dottery out of Ole Miss’ cold dead hands.We mentioned this one at the beginning of the column. It’s one thing to take a receiver from a rival, but receiver Parker Livingstone was roommates with Texas quarterback Arch Manning. Now Livingstone is an arch enemy. He transferred to Oklahoma. Livingstone is from Texas, which somehow makes this even worse. Traitor!Kiffin is the portal king, and here’s why. Not only did Kiffin take Ole Miss’ best linebacker, but he got the top defensive lineman, too. Princewill Umanmielen was the top-rated defender in the transfer portal. If you’re keeping score, LSU landed the portal’s best quarterback , top offensive lineman and best pass rusher.It didn’t get any juicer over the last month than Clemson coach Dabo Swinney calling out new Ole Miss coach Pete Golding. Golding needed a linebacker to replace the guy who left for LSU. Can you really blame him for texting Clemson’s top transfer while he was in class? As the story goes, Golding sent a screenshot of a $1 million contract to transfer linebacker Luke Ferrelli while he was in class.Swinney lost more than his mind that day. Ferrelli will be wearing powder blue next season.Texas didn’t really need a running back when it plucked Hollywood Smothers away from Alabama. That’s the evil genius of it all. Texas already had plenty of running backs, including Arizona transfer Raleek Brown. The Longhorns just didn’t want the Tide to land their top target, and so Texas outbid Alabama for a player who could very well end up being a backup. Now that’s cold-blooded. Nick Saban and Paul Bryant were famous for out-recruiting top prospects from rival teams and making them backups at Alabama. Now Texas has turned the tables on Tuscaloosa.OK, so it does get worse than Hollywood Smothers leaving desperate Alabama to be a backup at Texas … much worse. The SEC has seen plenty of crazy stuff through the years, but nothing prepared the league of outlaws for what Kiffin did to Ole Miss. Kiffin to LSU marked a new era of immoral behavior for the SEC. Kiffin’s name will live infamy in Oxford for all time and longer after walking out on Ole Miss before the 2025 playoffs. Babies will never be named Lane again in the state of Mississippi. Children already named Lane are now legally required to change their identities.Joseph is the lead sports columnist for AL.com and author of the highly controversial book "We Want Bama." SEC provocateur and expert in the field game management, Joseph's columns have been voted the best in...
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