Time to go ahead and say it before the playoff starts, the year ends and memories fade. Auburn won the 2022 college football coaching carousel. Not because it hired Hugh Freeze. Because it didn’t hire Lane Kiffin.

Given the way Kiffin’s comet has crashed to earth at lightning speed, this is one old acquaintance that should be forgot and never brought to mind.

Two months ago, on the day Auburn finally pulled the plug on Bryan Harsin, a lot of signs pointed to Kiffin as the solution to the problem on the Plains. Two months and one Ole Miss embarrassment after another later, Auburn should feel fortunate that Kiffin is Mississippi’s $9 million-a-year problem.

Imagine getting a raise of about $2 million a year, as Kiffin did thanks to his Auburn flirtation, while falling on your face. The last two months have been the story of Kiffin’s career taken to the extreme.

Which SEC team will carry the longest losing streak into the 2023 season? It’s not Vanderbilt or Missouri. It’s Ole Miss. The Rebels dropped their fourth straight game Wednesday night — or every game they’ve played since the Auburn job officially came open – in a 42-25 Texas Bowl woodshedding by Texas Tech.

That defeat made Kiffin look less like the boy genius he once was considered to be and more like a teenage boy playing a video game without a care in the world. In the first half alone, the Rebels went for it five times on fourth down and converted only once. The one they made was a fourth-and-1 – from their own 11. Jaxson Dart threw an interception on the next play.