Ole Miss gets sweet revenge on LSU and Lane Kiffin

Oxford, Mississippi — 

They crafted a poster that turned him into a corndog, a deadbeat on a stick if you will.

They printed T-shirts and made buttons that called him a “heaux,” hoe, or ho, depending on the preferred spelling. They cussed him for leaving but then insisted they were thrilled to see him go. They expended hours and oxygen and energy stewing in a gumbo of hate and enmity, crafting so much chaos and worry that the state’s Department of Public Safety decided to send its special ops team to a football game.

They gathered in stairways and ramps to boo him as he walked into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and heckled him on the way out even more lustily. After a Coke bottle narrowly missed his shoulder and fell to the ground, the in-house disc jockey even got into the action, sending him to the locker room the trolling strains of Garth Brooks’ “Calling Baton Rouge,” and Cameo’s “Neck,” the so-called anthem for LSU football.

Yet in the end, as delirious Ole Miss fans finally spilled into the streets of Oxford and reignited their Grove tailgates on the heels of a 32-24 win over LSU on Saturday, they really ought to consider thanking Lane Kiffin. Raise a glass or pop some champagne in his honor. Maybe send him a gift card for a year’s worth of hot yoga classes.

Were it not for Kiffin working the legal levers by making a call to attorney Tom Mars, who found the loopholes and the laws to get Trinidad Chambliss eligible for one more year in college football, the Ole Miss quarterback would be on a team that plays on Sundays, not behind center in the steam of a September Saturday night in Mississippi.

Whether Kiffin’s intentions were noble or nefarious, whether he was doing a solid for a kid he plucked from the anonymity of Ferris State or trying to lure a superstar to Baton Route, no longer matters.

It only matters that No. 6 still puts on an Ole Miss uniform. Chambliss’ dazzling display of quarterbacking, a 33 for 48, 363-yard evening that ended with a scamper into the end zone and a bit of line of scrimmage gamesmanship for a sealing 2-point conversion, exorcised Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin demon once and for all.

“Hotty F–king Toddy,” Chambliss shouted on national television moments after taking a knee in what he called the best play in all of football – victory formation.

Chambliss’ out-of-character explanation revealed the truth. When it was over, when no one had to pretend it was just another game, they all came clean.

Chambliss, after apologizing for his salty language, admitted that “yeah, this one meant a lot more than the other games. The coaches that were here, now at LSU, and some of the players, too, there was a little more to it. I wanted this one really bad, and our team did, too.”

And Kiffin admitted none of this had been fun, and he was glad it was over.

“I’ll probably get criticized for saying this, but yeah I am,” he said.

It was hard. Not being the butt of jokes so much. That much he was ready for. Besides Kiffin can give as much as he can take. When the fans booed him walking into the stadium, he actually waved at them.

But as the team bus rolled into town from Memphis, the emotions hit him hard, unexpectedly so. He figured he’d be fired up, ready to combat the fans’ anger with his own competitive fury. Instead, he found himself a little bit overcome. He thought about the six years he spent here, the work he did and the place that embraced him when he was in real need of a hug – and felt an unexpected pit.

To be clear, the folks on the other side did not feel quite the same. Oxford and Ole Miss rolled out the unwelcome mat early in the week, starting Wednesday with a Lane Kiffen (incorrect spelling intentional) Roast at the Lyric Theater.

“Lane Kiffin and LSU are a match made in the deepest parts of heaven,” said Walt Karr, a Mississippi stand-up comedian. “A narcissistic vagabond seemingly destroying every relationship that he’s ever had, and a fanbase that would understand about three words of that description.”

By Friday afternoon, town was packed. Weaving through the crowds on the Oxford Square, Jennifer Simmons turned around and laughed as a visitor lamented on a phone call, “This is not my first rodeo. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Traffic on Lamar Avenue, the main thoroughfare into town, backed up for blocks and an attempt to use a parking garage was a laughable enterprise in complete futility. By 2:15 p.m. Central time, The Library Sports Bar, the popular undergrad watering hole in town, was charging $100 cover – cash only – and people waited in line to get in, anyway.

This has always been a heated game, the rivalry burning hot long before Kiffin scorched the Earth on his way out the door.

“We’re psycho,” says Simmons, a 1997 graduate of Ole Miss, by way of explanation. “But LSU is more psycho.”

But Kiffin’s departure turned this into more than a game. It became a spectacle, an event to attend even if you weren’t planning to attend the actual event. Town officials planned on some 300,000 people in town despite a stadium that seats 64,000.

The Mississippi Department of Public Safety issued a statement on its gameday plans, including not just road closure alerts but a notice that special operations, air operations and a mobile command center would be set up. School officials erected metal fencing around the LSU team bus entrance at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and announced that anyone wearing LSU gear in the Ole Miss student section would be removed from the game.

“Are You Ready?” screamed the Daily Mississippian front-page headline, copying the question posed to get the masses rolling on their “hotty toddy” chant.

The answer, as it is responded in the chant, was “hell yeah.”

A handmade blue-and-red, spray-painted sign on Route 6 practically welcomed visitors into Lafayette County. “Beat Loser State University,” it declared, setting the tone for a weekend’s worth of vitriol, most of it directed at Kiffin more than the Tigers.

The secondary headline on that student newspaper front page reads, “The Ole Miss Rebels Seek to Silence the Agent of Chaos,” and a clever wordsmith crafted a play on Carly Simon’s lyrics onto the Sonic Drive Thru billboard. “Ur so Lame. I bet you think this game is about u.”

Reaching back to now kindred spirits at Tennessee, who hurled mustard bottles and golf balls at Kiffin when he returned to Knoxville with Ole Miss, a home near the Grove decorated its front porch with a flag of a yellow mustard bottle, the label reading, “Lame.’ The flag hung a few feet from a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Those, however, ranked as the rare G-rated digs. Folks here especially glommed on to calling Kiffin a hoe/heaux/ho, in deference to reporter Ben Garrett who declared on a podcast that you “can’t turn a hoe into a housewife” – a reference to a Ludacris song – amid Kiffin’s dithering on whether to leave for Baton Rouge.

Banners unfurled at off-campus houses ranged from the profane to the obscene. “Eenie, meenie, money moe. Catch a tiger by the toe. Lane is still a heaux,” is about the only one suitable for print.

By Saturday, Kiffin effigies were everywhere in a Grove packed to overflowing. A poster of Kiffin’s face plastered atop a corndog – for some reason, people decided years ago that LSU fans smelled like the tailgating delicacy – greeted visitors to a Grove tailgate, and his face was also at the center of a wheel, which invited guests to spin to see where he might wind up in 2027. The options include hot yoga, a sorority house, fired or banned by the SEC.

Still, despite the level of dislike, the only temperature rising in town was the one on the mercury. Either properly discouraged by the police presence or too damned hot to fight, people largely behaved. LSU fans meandered through the Grove, the famous tailgating hotspot on campus, largely unbothered.

“You can hate Lane Kiffin, but don’t hate on me,” one LSU fan said. “I didn’t do anything.”

The real savior, though, was the football.

It felt near impossible that the game itself could deliver enough drama to match the lead up. Instead, it somehow trumped it.

Ole Miss built a 24-7 lead at halftime, sending the crowd into near fits of euphoria. But early in the third, Chambliss made the only real mistake of his near masterpiece. Throwing into traffic, he was picked off by Ja’Keem Jackson, giving LSU the ball at Ole Miss’ 33-yard line. Six plays later, the Tigers found the end zone, starting a boulder downhill roll directed by quarterback Sam Leavitt.

Listed as doubtful early in the week, Leavitt was quickly elevated to questionable, prompting the Mississippi state auditor to quip on X, “If Sam leavitt mysteriously goes from doubtful to playing on Saturday I will audit the whole state of Louisiana.”

He might want to file the paperwork.

Not only did Leavitt play, he absorbed hit after hit, at one point literally flipping feet over head into the end zone for a touchdown.

Frazzled early and forced to scamper, Leavitt learned to turn his legs into weapons, he rushed for 63 yards and threw for 158 more, and when the Tigers tied the game early in the fourth, the once deafening stadium sounded like a library – and not the sports bar version.

But there came Chambliss, answering the bell with a 13-play drive capped off by his 14-yard run to the far corner of the end zone. Up six, Pete Golding kept the offense on the field for a 2-point conversion. In the stands, fans murmured beneath their breath, wondering what new math the Kiffin’s successor could be pondering.

And then Chambliss drew the Tigers offsides not once but twice, the quarterback grinning a Cheshire grin after the second, as if LSU had fallen into his trap.

Which the Tigers did.

“Yeah, we’ve been practicing that all week,” he said.

Needing mere inches, the Rebels converted easily, sending the fans into back into delirium as Abba’s “Dancing Queen” screeched through the speakers.

But Leavitt answered, driving the Tigers all the way to the Ole Miss seven. On fourth and ballgame, Jaylon Braxton picked off Leavitt to seal the victory.

Braxton sprinted clear across the field, followed by his entire defense. They danced behind the benches as the noise level reached a painful point, fans singing and screaming long after Chambliss’ final knee.

As the public address announcer reminded fans they would be fined if they rushed the field, a highway patrolman on the field given the unenviable job of stopping the onslaught chuckled. As if, he seemed to say.

Except Ole Miss fans didn’t rush the field. Maybe because they feared the fines.

Or more likely, because they didn’t want to give Kiffin the satisfaction.

“You know, a lot of people disrespect Ole Miss,” Chambliss said. “You heard all week. LSU has more money, better facilities and Kiffin on their side.”

“Well, we grind.”