Mississippi Journalist Deletes Explanation For False Report About Lane Kiffin Leaving Ole Miss To Become Head Coach At Auburn

Lane Kiffin is not the head coach at Auburn University. Lane Kiffin is the head coach at the University of Mississippi.

The 48-year-old did not leave the Rebels for the Tigers in the offseason. A report that indicated he was to do so was incorrect.

Rumors started to swirl around Oxford and on The Plains at the end of November. Auburn had just fired Bryan Harsin and made Kiffin the top candidate to replace him.

However, despite all of the smoke, there was no fire. Until Jon Sokoloff posted this:

Sokoloff, the Sports Director at WCBI/CBS in northeast Mississippi, was the first to reporter "BREAKING" news about Kiffin's future. He said that Ole Miss' head football coach was set to resign from his post to take the same role at Auburn.

That is not what happened. Kiffin re-upped his contract with the Rebels, and indirectly used all of the speculation to help ignite his fanbase toward greater contributions to the school's NIL collective.

Lane Kiffin did not leave Ole Miss for Auburn.

Kiffin was clearly frustrated with the report, which was ultimately false.

He later killed Sokoloff with kindness.

Sokoloff found himself in the middle of a storm that he never could have predicted, all from his "BREAKING" news post, and later clarified how it all went down. The explanatory tweet was posted on November 26, five days after he wrongly reported that Kiffin was leaving Ole Miss for Auburn.

It read as follows:

Our original reporting had Kiffin headed to Auburn. At the time of that report, multiple sources, independent of each other confirmed. Ole Miss denied the report and we published that. This has changed often. Our reports have included each update and also Coach Kiffin's public frustration with sources reports.
It is the job to report based on solid information. That information can and does change and we have reported that as well. All the best to Lane in this next year

That tweet, which clarified how "everything unfolded," has since been deleted. I just so happened to notice the deleted post by chance on Tuesday morning.

Why did Sokoloff delete the tweet? When did he delete the tweet?

Those are fair questions that have now been asked directly. An update will be provided if applicable but he has yet to respond as of this writing.