The things left unsaid

 "I love it here."

-- Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin

(Also a bunch of other guys right before they left "here")

Lane Kiffin is saying all the right things at the moment, and if that isn't sending the good folks of Oxford, Mississippi, screaming into the streets, it ought to be. People who say all the right things frequently are fixing to beat feet, and that's just a home truth.

I say this not just because Rick Pitino once said all the right things to my face exactly one day before the news broke that he was leaving Kentucky to take the Boston Celtics job, which taught me a valuable lesson about, for starters, trusting Rick Pitino.  But mostly I'm saying it because right now there's a lot of smoke about Kiffin ditching Ole Miss for the somewhat brighter lights of LSU or Florida, since those somewhat sexier jobs now have vacancy signs out front.

Recently Kiffin's ex-wife and sons, who still live in Oxford, went house-hunting in both Baton Rouge and Gainesville, fueling speculation that Kiffin -- who's still very much a part of his sons' lives -- was house-hunting by proxy himself. Of course, he denies it. Of course, personal experience having taught me its requisite lessons, I don't believe him.

"I love it here and it's been amazing," ESPN quoted Kiffin as saying in the weekly SEC teleconference yesterday. "And we're in the season that's the greatest run in the history of Ole Miss at this point -- never been at this point. So I think it's really exciting, and so I'm just living in the moment that amazing."

Or as Pitino said 30 years ago, in so many words: "Why would I leave Kentucky?"

In other words: Why would I leave Kentucky? FOR THE BOSTON CELTICS, SILLY.

And in Kiffin's case: I'm just living in the moment that amazing. BUT I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE MOMENT AFTER THAT.

Which of course means any day LSU (or Florida) will be calling a press conference to announce Lane Kiffin as its new head football coach.

To be sure, it would be  horsepoop thing to do, given that Lane indeed has taken Ole Miss to heights unseen since the days of Johnny Vaught, whose name now graces the Ole Miss stadium. But it's not like Lane hasn't done horsepoop things before -- like, for instance, leaving Tennessee throw bales of cash at him and then leaving almost immediately because the USC job came open.

That was a horsepoop move. Legendarily so.

It tagged Lane Kiffin as a spoiled brat who couldn't be trusted, which is kind of how he wound up in Oxford to begin with. Ole Miss took a chance on him, and Kiffin, by all accounts, fell in love with Ole Miss and Oxford's small-town charms. Now he's got the Rebels at 10-1 and No. 6 in the College Football Playoff rankings -- which means if they  beat a less-than-stellar Mississippi State team in the annual Egg Bowl, they'll be a lock to make the CFP for the first time.

The Rebels haven't breathe such rarified air since ol' Johnny V. coached Ole Miss to its only national title in 1960. So just imagine what a kick in the twigs and berries it would be if word were to leak out -- say, right before the Rebels' first playoff game -- that ol' Lane had accepted the LSU/Florida job.

Owie.

On a much smaller scale, that's what happened in 2008 at my alma mater, Ball State University, right after the 12-0 Cardinals blew their perfect season with five turnovers in a 42-24 loss to Buffalo in the Mid-American Conference title game. A week or so later the architect of that season -- head coach Brady Hoke, a Ball State and former Cardinal player himself -- announced he was leaving for San Diego State. And when I say "leaving", I mean "immediately."

Which means he didn't stick around for Ball State's bowl game, which the Cardinals lost in a torrential rainstorm to Tulsa.

This was not quite the horsepoop move Lane Kiffin leaving Ole Miss would be, however. That's because Ball State pushed Hoke out the door by criminally underpaying him and dissing him in various other ways, like not even providing him an office. And it happened so quickly Hoke never even got the chance to say all the right things Lane Kiffin is saying now.

To which I say, thank God for small mercies. Because that would have been tough to take.