OXFORD, Mississippi — For one night at least, the football gods believed karma was real.
After 10 months of drama and hurt feelings, Ole Miss won the breakup on Saturday night.
Ole Miss 32, Lane Kiffin’s LSU Tigers 24.
There was an unprecedented level of buildup to Lane Kiffin’s return to Oxford for the first time since leaving the program for LSU. On a blisteringly hot day, it was all anyone could talk about in the school’s famous Grove tailgating scene. Everywhere you looked, there were signs and pins with funny, sometimes crude, messages about the man they once worshipped, only to become their biggest villain.
It wasn’t simply that he left, but how he left. Kiffin left a College Football Playoff-bound Ole Miss team because, ultimately, he didn’t believe he could win a national championship in Oxford. Ole Miss fans couldn’t believe he’d ditch a playoff team; Kiffin couldn’t believe the school wouldn’t let him keep coaching the team after taking the LSU job. It left both sides feeling aggrieved, even if Kiffin was the one who departed. Those feelings only intensified as Kiffin tried to strip his former program for parts as it was preparing for a national semifinal game against Miami.
The greener pastures of LSU, a place that Nick Saban, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron all hoisted national titles at, proved too irresistible for Kiffin. It was the kind of job he didn’t know if he’d ever get another shot at after he was fired from USC. There was something about coaching a blue-blood program that was just different for him. Lane couldn’t see Ole Miss for what he was helping it become; he could only fixate on what it had been.
On Saturday night, with a record crowd inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Lane’s former program was the better team. The star power of Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss overwhelmed all the advantages that lured Lane away from Oxford, including what some believe is the most expensive roster in college football. Chambliss finished with 363 passing yards, three passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown. He looked like the best player on any field Saturday night, the rare special player whose performance always seems to improve when it mattered most.
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“The whole nation kind of disrespects Ole Miss,” Chambliss said. “When they compare LSU and Ole Miss, they always say LSU has more money and nicer facilities, a bigger fan base and bigger stadium. So, there’s more to it than just Kiffin being on the other side of the ball.”
Chambliss couldn’t hide the fact that this one meant more. After each of his three passing touchdowns, the Ole Miss quarterback looked over at his former coach. It wasn’t anything intentional, he says, just the emotions of it all taking over. Kiffin had wanted to take Chambliss with him to Baton Rouge, even soliciting a lawyer’s help in his fight for another year of eligibility, and spoke glowingly of him after the game. Kiffin said Chambliss was the hardest player in the nation to defend, a strong statement that gained key resume points on Saturday night.
After the game, in a cramped visiting team press conference room, Kiffin spoke quietly in almost hushed tones. The emotions of the return impacted him more than he expected. It was an interesting week for Kiffin, who had been texting with more than a few people associated with the Ole Miss program in the lead-up to Saturday night. It’s all part of the Kiffin experience, quirky behavior that seems fun when the results are great and gets questioned as unnecessary distraction when they aren’t. For the first half especially, Kiffin looked low energy and out of rhythm as Ole Miss built a 24-7 halftime lead. The moment seemed to overwhelm him.
He had been through a situation like this before — twice, really, at Tennessee in his returns as an assistant and then head coach — and perhaps thought he could better handle it. It’s never easy, however, to walk into a stadium full of 70,000 fans chanting “F— Lane Kiffin” over and over again. As much as his line “I needed Oxford more than Oxford needed me” has been derided as a facade since he left, it was still a life-changing six years for him. It’s where he got sober, where he reconnected with family and where he proved he could still be a great football coach.
“There’s a lot of stuff six years here…a lot of life-changing experiences and a lot of really good people (who) helped me through some really hard times,” Kiffin said. “I just thought I would probably be more in competitive mode and just kind of embrace it. I don’t know, sometimes you can’t predict your emotions.
“I know that sometimes I don’t act like it, but I’m a human too, you know.”
Of course, Lane being Lane meant he still had a little jab for his former program when he was asked about the raucous crowd Saturday night. “The stadium was full an hour early,” he said. “I guess I had to leave to get them to do that. So you’re welcome.” For as magnanimous as he was trying to be in defeat, he still couldn’t help himself.
Ole Miss gave him a taste of his own medicine.
After Ole Miss defensive back Jaylon Braxton intercepted Sam Leavitt on 4th-and-goal to end LSU’s furious rally efforts, Braxton ran right past Kiffin with his pointer finger aimed at the former Ole Miss coach to let him know.
When it was all over, they played LSU staples “Callin’ Baton Rouge” over the PA system, and the Ole Miss band played “Neck.” And, yes, the Ole Miss student section excitedly sang those special lyrics.
Ole Miss once embraced the trolling and pestering that Kiffin made an art form on social media and elsewhere. How could it resist a little trolling as a forlorn Lane walked off, surrounded by Louisiana state troopers?
Now that the spectacle of Kiffin’s return was over, each side could, hopefully, focus on the future and not each other. All around town in the days preceding the game, as more and more visitors arrived to pack the college town, there was a frequent refrain, “I can’t wait for Sunday.” There was intense anticipation for the game, one that could go down as one of the greatest revenge wins for a program ever, but also the sweet relief of moving past the topic that has hung around the program like an albatross from the minute Kiffin left.
Ole Miss just vanquished its enemy, is 3-0 and has as good an argument as any team to be the No. 1 team in the country now. But the Rebels are only a quarter of the way through the regular season with a surging Florida team up next. If this season were only about beating Lane Kiffin, disappointment awaits around the corner.
“It wasn’t our Super Bowl, and we didn’t make it out to be our Super Bowl,” Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding said. He couldn’t deny how sweet the win was, though.
Golding, the greatest beneficiary of Lane’s decision to leave, is now 5-1 as a head coach. Four of those wins have come against top 25 opponents, and two of them (Georgia, LSU) were ranked in the top 10. It’s very early in Golding’s tenure, obviously, but he may possess the big-game coaching gene that Kiffin has struggled with throughout his career. After Saturday, Kiffin is now 13-25 against top 25 teams and has only a 1-6 record against top 25 opponents when his team is ranked in the top 10. As Ole Miss fan Patrick Dockery emphatically told me in The Grove before the game started, “He can’t win the big one. He’s a perennial choke artist.”
Lane Kiffin elevated the Ole Miss program to heights it hadn’t reached in years, capitalizing on the NIL and transfer portal eras to win 55 games over six seasons and become one of the country’s top programs. And then, program insiders claim, he tried to burn it down on the way out as he raged against the indignity of not being allowed to coach the team he built in the playoff. It’s why there was far more anger than gratitude for Kiffin in Oxford, a sentiment on emphatic display in every way inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
On Saturday night, Ole Miss football’s foundation looked as strong as ever. And as elated Ole Miss fans stood and danced to “Callin Baton Rouge,” no one seemed to miss the former coach.
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