Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin says that Wake Forest broke “an unwritten rule” by buying its way out of their scheduled game for next year, leaving the Rebels looking for another major-conference opponent.
The fifth-ranked Rebels defeated the Demon Deacons 40-6 on Saturday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as part of a planned home-and-home series. However, the return game next season in Oxford, Mississippi, will not happen.
A source familiar with the situation confirmed that Wake Forest has canceled its trip to Ole Miss next year and mentioned that the school is working on finding alternative scheduling options.
This person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the school has not publicly commented on the details.
Kiffin announced the cancellation in his postgame news conference and expressed his dissatisfaction with the timing of the decision two days later.
“That’s rarely ever done,” Kiffin said Monday. “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.
“Now we’ve got to go find somebody and most people are all scheduled up. And even when you find somebody, you’ve got to go pay them. It’s kind of an unwritten rule not to do that, actually.”
This decision forces Ole Miss to look for another opponent from a major conference or a major independent team for next season, or to seek a waiver from the Southeastern Conference for that requirement. If they get a waiver, they would have to face four nonconference teams instead of one from a major league.
“That’s not what we want to do, but they may have put us in an unavoidable situation not to,” Kiffin said.
He criticized the timing of the decision.
