Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss are currently being sued for up to $40 million in damages by one of his players. DeSanto Rollins filed the lawsuit which claims that he was kicked off of the team after missing team activities, including practice, during a “mental health crisis.”
Legal proceedings were paused on Friday. Magistrate Judge Roy Percy issued a stay in the civil case.
Rollins served as a backup defensive lineman since 2020. His career was largely derailed due to injuries, including a concussion, lingering LCL and an Achilles. The former three-star recruit had one tackle as a true freshman and two as a third-year sophomore.
He is suing for $10 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages. Rollins also wants to be reinstated.
Seriously. Even though he claims significant mistreatment by Lane Kiffin, and is suing the program, he wants to return to the team.
Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss want the lawsuit to be thrown out.
Obviously, the Rebels see the irony in Rollins’ demand. They also have not officially kicked him off of the team. He remains on scholarship at the University of Mississippi.
A large part of the lawsuit is focused on a meeting between Rollins and Kiffin. The latter requested to meet multiple times over a two-week span. The former was not ready to do so at that point.
Once they finally got together, Kiffin ripped into Rollins. Their conversation was recorded, legally, without the head coach’s consent. Audio of the meeting leaked on Thursday, which sparked significant division.
Some folks believed that Kiffin — who became the only head college football coach certified in mental health alongside his staff over the summer — did not take Rollins’ mental health seriously. Others thought that Kiffin was simply calling it how it is, and taught Rollins a valuable lesson.
Meanwhile, around the same time that the audio hit the internet, Ole Miss asked for the lawsuit to be thrown out. Less than 24 hours later, a one-page order filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi put a hard stop to legal proceedings. Everything is put on pause for now.