OXFORD — Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium will be a USC reunion of sorts.
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin was the Trojans’ head coach from 2010-13 — and served as an assistant with USC before that — and hired Clay Helton as his quarterback coach in 2010. Helton, now head coach at Georgia Southern, became Kiffin’s offensive coordinator in 2013 and served as USC’s full-time head coach from 2016-21.
As many things in his coaching career have, Kiffin’s hiring of Helton involved his late father, Monte. When Lane was the head coach at Tennessee in 2009, the Volunteers played against Memphis, where Helton was offensive coordinator. Monte was Tennessee’s defensive coordinator and, when his son took the head job at USC, he told his son he needed to hire Helton.
Fast forward almost a decade and a half from their first time working together, and Kiffin and Helton will be leading their respective teams into battle against each other this weekend. No. 5 Ole Miss (3-0) hosts Georgia Southern (2-1) Saturday at 6:45 p.m. The game will be broadcast on SEC Network.
“Clay is awesome. One of the finest people I’ve ever met, been around,” Kiffin said. “A wonderful human being. … I was telling this story because they were asking, the staff, about, ‘How’d you first come about Clay?’ And it’s another one of … my dad’s things where, he just had a way of finding really good coaches and things. I didn’t know anything about him, who he was.
“We were at USC and were looking for a quarterback coach and (my father’s) like, ‘You need to interview this Clay Helton.’ … (Helton) was at Arkansas State, sleeping on his office couch at the time, he had just taken a job there, and (we) interviewed him. Was just really impressed and, really good coach, great person.”
Ole Miss and Georgia Southern have played once previously, a 37-27 win by the Rebels in Oxford in 2016 that has since been vacated. The Rebels currently rank second nationally at 56 points per game and are tied for first in the FBS in scoring defense at three points per game allowed. Ole Miss has not allowed a touchdown through three games for the first time since 1961.
Dart, Ivey earn SEC weekly honors
Ole Miss senior quarterback Jaxson Dart and senior defensive end Jared Ivey have been named the SEC Co-Offensive Player of the Week and Co-Defensive Lineman of the Week, respectively. Dart threw for 377 yards and had three total touchdowns in the Rebels’ 40-6 victory at Wake Forest. Dart currently leads the nation in passing yards and total offense. Ivey recorded two sacks in the victory.
Kiffin talks 2025 Wake Forest cancelation
Following the Rebels’ blowout win at Wake Forest, Kiffin told media next year’s scheduled matchup with the Demon Deacons in Oxford was off due to Wake Forest pulling out of the game. Ole Miss confirmed the news shortly after Kiffin’s press conference.
According to the terms of contract, Wake Forest must pay Ole Miss $750,000 for backing out of the contract because it was more than a year out from when the game was scheduled to be played. The game was set for Sept. 13, 2025. SEC rules state that, in its current eight-game conference schedule, teams must play one Power 4 school or major independent in its nonconference schedule.
Kiffin expressed more of his displeasure with the game’s cancelation Monday.
“Really, a very abnormal thing for Wake to do … You usually don’t do that in the season before. It’s hard. There’s not people to play,” Kiffin said. “So, it’s why you do scheduling in advance and you make deals and you go and play there and they come back. And so, that was really something not — I would just say that’s rarely ever done. I’ve never really heard of doing it, and it really puts us at a big disadvantage. And, it is what it is. Obviously wasn’t appreciated very much.”
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