Jaxson Dart is back at Ole Miss to leave the best ‘legacy’ he could as a player — and a recruiter?

Everyone knows how good Jaxson Dart the player is but Ole Miss benefited from a skill many did not realize Dart excelled at — recruiting.

New Year’s Day saw Dart announce his return for a final season in Oxford and lead the Ole Miss offense in 2024 for ‘The Last Dance.’ The major domino fifth year head coach Lane Kiffin was waiting on to fall to get a feel for how the upcoming season would go.

Kiffin spilled the beans, as it were, by announcing during a November episode of RebTalk that Dart had intentions to return, but the quarterback was not ready to make his future plans public. After Kiffin walked his comments back the following Saturday it was Dart who got to make his decision with a video on his social media platforms months later on January 1.

While the cat was let out of the bag, internally Ole Miss felt good with getting Dart back for a third season with how he was approaching things with the current team and also players who were considering making the move to Oxford via the transfer portal or traditional recruiting paths.

“I kind of knew he was coming back, obviously, and he recruited like he was coming back and helped put together his team,” Kiffin said on Tuesday. “I don’t know if I’ve seen a player actively recruit more to put together a team on both sides of the ball than Jaxson did this offseason.

“Says a lot about him. Says a lot about him as a leader and I even said potentially someday a head coach if he wants to be. Because he has really special qualities and one of them is getting people to follow him.”

Current players recruiting is the new form of attack in the transfer portal era and Dart is leading the charge at Ole Miss.

Though when it comes to building the future of the football program Dart is also keeping his focus on the present.

Due to Dart’s efforts along with Kiffin and defensive coordinator Pete Golding the Rebels are a College Football Playoff darling pick for 2024. This comes just months after Ole Miss secured one of its best seasons of college football in program history.

A return to a New Year’s Six Bowl, a Peach Bowl victory and the first 11-win season would have been plenty of icing on the cake for Dart if he chose to head to the next stage of his playing career. But Dart wants to eat that cake, too.

With the potential and possibilities that Kiffin describes as a ‘talented’ roster, Dart returned to Ole Miss with the chance to cement his legacy and leave little doubt as being one of the best quarterbacks the Rebels have ever put on the field.

“I really just looked at it as the excitement surrounding the program,” Dart said after Tuesday’s practice. “We had just come off of doing something that’s never been done in school history. I saw the little pieces that had the potential coming back and, I think, just the more and more conversations that we had amongst each other as players, we saw the potential of what we could do and what the future looked like here.

“And all in all, when all was said and done, we just felt as a team — with how many returners that we had back — that it was going to be the best option for us to leave a legacy here. We want to continue to make a legacy and do something that people will always remember and something that we can be really proud of. So, I’m just really happy that I made that decision, and I’m really happy for the pieces and the guys that came back to follow.”

As for Kiffin’s comments about Dart potentially taking the coaching path later in his career? That is to be determined.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Dart said with a grin. “I see how much time they put into it and I got all the respect towards them but I’m going to ride my career out as long as I can. But, yeah, we’ll see. It’s definitely appealing because I love the game and I love being a part of it.”

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