If this Saturday’s Florida-Ole Miss football game were a bowl game, we all know what its name would be: The Lane Kiffin Bowl. That’s because the worst kept secret in college football is that Florida has zeroed in on Kiffin to be its next head coach.

And, in keeping with the corporate sponsorship of bowl games these days – as in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, Goodyear Cotton Bowl and the Rose Bowl presented by Prudential – I’ve got the perfect name for this one: The Lane Kiffin Bowl, presented by Jimmy Sexton.

Sexton, of course, is Lane Kiffin’s agent. He also represents coaches named Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, Kalen DeBoer, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Norvell, James Franklin, Hugh Freeze and a host of others. He has negotiated hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for both coaches and athletes so he could easily fund the bowl game sponsorship. He is the Babe Ruth of sports agents. And you know he is loving Saturday’s Lane Kiffin Bowl (6 p.m. kickoff, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium).

Sexton also loves the fact that coaching vacancies exist at LSU and Auburn. The more the merrier, you know. So get your calculators out, and let the bidding begin. You get college football blue bloods Florida and LSU involved in a bidding war and no telling how high the bids will go. 

The fact Ole Miss is a 16.5-point favorite over Florida on Saturday tells you all you need to know about why the demand for Kiffin’s services is so high. Florida has won three national championships and eight SEC Championships since 1990. Ole Miss hasn’t won so much as an SEC division championship in that same period.

Yet, in his six seasons at Ole Miss, the 50-year-old Kiffin has guided the Rebels to 53 victories against just 19 defeats. Perhaps more impressively, his Ole Miss teams are 13 games over .500 in the SEC. Compare that to Tommy Tuberville, who was 12 games below .500 in the SEC when he left Ole Miss in 1998 to take the Auburn job. (Sexton was Sen. Tuberville’s agent, too.)

Little wonder Florida wants Kiffin. Gator fans look at Kiffin and see Steve Spurrier 35 years ago. They see a brash, visor-wearing, offensive-minded coach whose wide receivers always seem to run wide open through opponents’ defenses. They see what Kiffin has done at Ole Miss and can only imagine what he might do at Florida.

Ole Miss enters Saturday’s game at 8-1 and No. 7 in the college football playoff rankings. This has the potential to be the greatest season in Rebel football history. But at a time when everyone who bleeds red and blue should be focused on beating Florida, many are instead worried sick about losing their coach. Keep in mind, they have been down this road before.

The Rebels were 8-1 and ranked No. 11 about this time in 2022. The Auburn job was open then and various news reports had Kiffin headed for the Plains. And you know what happened next. Ole Miss, a clearly distracted football team, lost four straight games.

Eventually, Kiffin stayed at Ole Miss. The Rebels have won 30 games in the nearly three seasons since. Ole Miss has given Kiffin everything he has asked for – beyond a salary of  about $9.5 million per year. Ole Miss supporters are bankrolling a football NIL budget of more than $20 million a year and an assistant coaches salary pool of more than $8 million a year.

We could debate forever which is the better job. Five years ago, I would have said Florida, hands down. But not now. The transfer portal and NIL have changed everything in college football. Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter, NIL guru Walker Jones and, yes, Kiffin have been on the cutting edge in all that. 

Florida, with a bigger stadium, is located in a much larger state amid much more football talent. But with all that comes higher expectations. Remember, Dan Mullen won 60% of his games in nine seasons at Mississippi State and then took the Florida job. He won nearly 70% of his games in four seasons with the Gators – and got his butt fired.

Kiffin could end all that speculation and avoid a repeat of 2022, Instead, in a press conference earlier this week he added fuel to the fire. “There are still advantages for the traditional ‘blue bloods,’” Kiffin said. “Kids still care about stadium size, history, Heismans, national championships, and location to talent…”

I have no clue what Kiffin will do. He may not either. I do know all this speculation has really increased interest in a game in which a 9-1 team is heavily favored over a team that has won only three games and already has fired its coach. The Lane Kiffin Bowl, it is.