Lane Kiffin Discusses Wake Forest Backing Out of 2025 Game; Talks Ulysses Bentley’s Playing Time
OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss came home from Wake Forest Saturday with a 40-6 win. The Rebels also came home with a loss.
During the trip, the Demon Deacons disclosed they would not be returning the trip to Oxford next season. Instead, Wake Forest opted to pay a $1 million buyout to get out of the contract.
It’s not unusual for a team to utilize a buyout clause, but the timing of this maneuver has Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin wondering about the motivation.
“I find it really amazing you wait until the week of the game to tell the team. I mean was it like they thought that was going to disrupt us? And you know (Wake Forest athletic director) was John Currie like, ‘oh we’re going to tell them the week of and disrupt them,’ so maybe that was their game plan for the game?“
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin on Wake buying out game
Ole Miss got the victory, but also the headache of how to fill the void in the 2025 schedule. The problem is so new, the Rebels’ have not even had time to look at it.
“No, obviously we’ve got a lot of stuff going,” Kiffin said.
“It’s really a very abnormal thing for Wake to do…You usually don’t do that a year in the season before. It’s hard, there’s not people to play, so it’s why you do scheduling in advance and you make deals, and you go play there and they come back. So that was really not something — 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. It is what it is. It obviously wasn’t appreciated very much, them putting us in that situation, and now we’ve got to go find somebody and most people are all scheduled up. And even when you find them you’ve got to pay them, so it’s kind of an unwritten rule not to do that actually.”
Lane Kiffin on Wake Forest reneging on schedule
To make matters worse, it will be extremely hard to find a Power Four school that does not have a full schedule for next season. And Southeastern Conference rules state each team must play a Power Four team as one of its non-conference games.
“We’re looking into things, but again it’s hard because everybody’s got schedules,” Kiffin said. “There’s a lot of dominoes in there. We had a Power Four team scheduled…so I guess teams before when they’ve had an issue, got a waiver to get passed the SEC rule of a Power Five team at the time on your schedule. It’s not what we want to do, but again they may have put us in an unavoidable situation not to.”
Ole Miss running backs room: Where is Bentley IV?
On the field Saturday, Ole Miss gained 650 yards of total offense, 272 of them coming from the ground game.
Henry Parrish, Jr., led the way with 133 yards and a pair of touchdowns, while Matt Jones chipped in 65. Ulysses Bentley IV had 17 yards on three carries, but that begged a question. Many thought Bentley would begin the season as the Rebels’ starting running back, but he was relegated to third-back status against Wake Forest.
“That’s nothing negative about Bentley,” Kiffin said.
“I think there’s some of that in our program, you know we have a really good roster and I’ve told our players it’s a cost and benefit to everything. And there’s a huge benefit to having all these good players — we’ve got a chance to be really good — the cost is everybody doesn’t get to play as much as they like, and that’s happening all over the place. I shouldn’t say but that’s happening with a number of our players, and so this is not anything Bentley’s done and the other two guys have played extremely well.“
Coach Kiffin on Ulysses Bentley IV
Parrish leads the team with 338 yards rushing, while Jones has 165. Bentley is at 53 yards on the season.
“You know, Bentley missed time in the spring and we have great confidence in him and just in that game (Wake Forest) it was kind of pass heavy and we were really just going,” Kiffin continued. “It really hadn’t gone to the third back, which right now he is, so that’s why it was. The good thing is when you have to make those hard decisions like that and somebody, a veteran player, isn’t playing as much as they like, at least we’re playing really well,” he added.
Bentley finished the 2023 season with 540 yards on 95 carries (5.7 yards per carry). Coach Kiffin discussed how Bentley is handling the situation.
“He’s done a good job, played some special teams. I feel for the players when it happens — happens all the time in the NFL. He’s done a good job and that’s not easy to do.“
Lane Kiffin on Ulysses Bentley
Up Next
The Rebels are back in action Saturday when they host Georgia Southern at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Kickoff is set for 6:45 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.
Steve Barnes
Steve Barnes joins The Rebel Walk staff as a senior writer and brings a trifecta of journalistic experience. As a writer, he has covered college sports for Rivals.com, Football.com and SaturdayDownSouth.com as well as served as a beat writer for various traditional newspapers.
He has been a broadcaster for arena football and several national tournament events for the National Junior College Athletic Association as well as hosting various shows on radio.
A former sports information director at Albany (Ga.) State University and an assistant at Troy and West Florida, he has helped host many NCAA conference, regional and national events, including serving five years on the media committee of the NCAA Division II World Series.
Barnes, a native of Pensacola, Fla., attended Ole Miss in 1983-84, where his first journalism teacher was David Kellum. The duo has come a long way since that time.
He will bring a proven journalistic track record, along with a knack for finding the out-of-the-ordinary story angles to The Rebel Walk.
Barnes continues to reside in Pensacola a mere ten minutes from the beach because he does have taste and a brain.
