Trinidad Chambliss led Ole Miss within one play of the national championship game while throwing for 3,937 yards and 22 touchdowns. But less than 24 hours after the Rebels’ heartbreaking 31-27 semifinal loss to Miami, Chambliss and the program received another gut-punch: the NCAA officially denied his waiver request for a sixth year of eligibility. The ruling effectively ends his college career, and Pete Golding isn’t wasting any time moving on to find a replacement.​

According to college football insider Chris Hummer, the writing was on the wall for Chambliss’ waiver chances all along.

“I think Trinidad Chambliss’ shot at a waiver was always going to be kind of low. I don’t think that was the expectation that he would get it around Oxford,” Hummer explained. “And they’ve been recruiting other quarterbacks. The quarterback I’m keeping an eye on right now is Deuce Knight, the Auburn transfer.

He’s a former top-50 recruit who was once committed to Notre Dame and had a standout performance for Auburn this year as a starter for one week against an FCS opponent. He’s supposed to be on the Ole Miss campus at some point in the next couple of days. And I think the rebels are in a great position there.” 

The NCAA’s reasoning for denying Chambliss came down to one critical issue: lack of contemporaneous medical documentation from his 2022 season at Division II Ferris State.

“Ole Miss filed the waiver because Chambliss didn’t play his second season at Ferris State, dealing with persistent respiratory issues,” ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported. The 23-year-old signal-caller had argued that respiratory problems, ultimately resolved through tonsil removal surgery, prevented him from playing that season after he’d already used his redshirt year as a freshman in 2021. 

But the NCAA wasn’t buying it. In their official statement, the governing body noted that “the documents provided by Ole Miss and the student’s prior school include a physician’s note from a December 2022 visit, which stated the student-athlete was ‘doing very well’ since he was seen in August 2022.” Even more damaging, Ferris State indicated it had no documentation of medical treatment or injury reports during that timeframe. All of that leads to Deuce Knight.

Knight, a Mississippi native from Lucedale, was the No. 5-ranked quarterback and No. 28-ranked player nationally in the class of 2025 according to 247Sports composite rankings. The 6-foot-4, 217-lb player was once committed to Notre Dame before signing with Auburn. In Auburn, he saw limited action as a true freshman this past season. In two games, Knight completed 17 of 25 passes for 259 yards and two touchdowns with zero interceptions. He also added 178 rushing yards and four more scores on the ground. 

Auburn interim coach DJ Durkin raved about his performance, saying, “To see Deuce get out there and get his first snaps and play like that was pretty amazing. It was awesome to see his teammates rally around him and really respond.”

Now, with Chambliss’s college career over, Knight represents Ole Miss’s best chance at maintaining continuity at the sport’s most important position. And with four years of eligibility remaining, he could be the Rebels’ quarterback for the long haul. 

Pete Golding’s remarkable run amid chaos

Pete Golding’s first few weeks as a head coach will go down as one of the most improbable stories in college football history. When Lane Kiffin bolted for LSU on November 30, it looked like Ole Miss’ season might unravel completely. Instead, Golding, who had never been a head coach at any level, held everything together and led the Rebels to back-to-back CFP victories.

After the heartbreaking 31-27 loss to Miami in the Fiesta Bowl, a game in which the Rebels led with just over three minutes left before Carson Beck’s rushing touchdown dashed their dreams, Golding showed exactly why athletic director Keith Carter made the right call in promoting him. 

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“Super proud of this group,” Golding said in the locker room. “This is a group that created this legacy for this team and an expectation for this program that—what I told them in the locker room—we’re pissed off in a semifinal game because we feel like we should have won the game because we didn’t play our best and we didn’t coach our best. Really proud of their effort and proud of the year they had.” 

He knows the 2025 season will be remembered fondly in Oxford, even with the sting of coming so close, saying his players “made memories in this year in that locker room that will last a lifetime.” Now, with Trinidad Chambliss’ waiver denied and the quarterback carousel already spinning toward Deuce Knight, Golding faces his first major test as the permanent head coach: rebuilding an offense that just lost its breakout star while maintaining the defensive identity that got him the job in the first place.​