OXFORD, Miss. — On Wednesday night here, in this college town’s famous entertainment district, the Square, Ole Miss fans filled the historic Lyric Theater for a special occasion.
A roast of Lane Kiffin.
Advertisement
Participants threw darts at cardboard cutouts of his effigy, unveiled a less-than-flattering bust of the coach and, from a mic’d podium, ridiculed the man who fled this place in a blaze of ever-loving glory for rival LSU.
Three days later, the football-playing Rebels roasted Lane.
Whose offensive line backpedaled all night in a trench beatdown?
Lane Kiffin’s.
Whose defensive secondary failed to cover receivers in a collapse?
Lane Kiffin’s.
Whose offense didn’t score until the final two minutes of the first half?
Lane Kiffin’s.
Whose team fell behind 24-7, stormed back with a third-quarter rally and then lost against the very school he left nine months ago?
Advertisement
Lane Kiffin’s.
Amid a hate-charged, booze-fueled sea of the angriest dang Southern folk you’d ever see, the party who was rejected in this star-crossed relationship, the one left in pieces, the lover abandoned at the altar, the Ole Miss Rebels, they exacted their revenge on the one who got (flew) away.
In the most satisfying roast imaginable, the final joke landed with quite the punchline:
For the Oxford crowd, for those madder’n hell, as they might say here, for those angrier than heck, ticked off, p’ed off and just plain unhappy, this one felt good.
You need only to watch and listen to a rocking Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. As LSU’s final play failed — on fourth-and-goal from the 6-yard line – as quarterback Sam Leavitt‘s pass whistled into the arms of an Ole Miss defensive back, fireworks exploded overhead, ‘Dancing Queen’ played over the speakers and beer flung into the air.
Advertisement
The stadium — at max capacity, no inch spared, no seat empty — remained almost completely full for more than a half-hour after the clock hit zeroes. As LSU players left the turf, the stadium operator provided some Louisiana exit music: “Callin’ Baton Rouge” and “Neck.”
The crowd here released into the muggy Mississippi air nine months of buried anger. Wearing his trademark white visor and long-sleeve shirt, in his khaki slacks and flanked by a half-dozen Louisiana highway patrol officers, Kiffin exited the stage of this dramatic motion picture.
“Get the f*** off our field!” a fan screamed his way.
“Go home!” belted another.
Advertisement
Payback’s a you know what.
This was restitution of the best kind.
A retaliation for the ages.
The man who broke hearts here had his heart broken.
Afterward, he acknowledged it too. As LSU’s team buses arrived at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium two hours before kickoff, Kiffin felt unexpected emotions, he said. Not hate, anger or fear. But gratitude for his six seasons at this place.
As he entered the stadium, he waved to Rebels fans hurling insults his way.
“Sometimes you can’t predict your emotions,” he said afterward from a small interview room within this venue’s bowels. “Sometimes I don’t act like it, but I’m human too.”
Advertisement
Kiffin lauded an atmosphere that he’d never seen before in Oxford, a stadium full an hour ahead of kickoff, a crowd so loud that his team committed a host of costly pre-snap penalties — none more significant than a false start on second-and-goal on the game’s final drive.
Amid an emotional news conference, much of it spent praising the atmosphere and his former underling, Ole Miss coach Pete Golding, Kiffin, long critical of the fickle fans here, couldn’t resist the smallest of jabs over their rambunctious behavior Saturday night.
“I guess I had to leave to get them to do that,” Kiffin said.
On the field, the Ole Miss team was even louder.
Advertisement
The Rebels won despite missing running back Kewan Lacy for the entire second half. They won despite blowing that 17-point lead (LSU, at one point, scored 17 consecutive points to tie the game). They won despite such a high-pressure affair.
Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss celebrates after scoring the game-winning touchdown against LSU on Saturday. (Petre Thomas-Imagn Images)
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / REUTERS)
They won, mostly, because of Trinidad Chambliss, who carved through his old coach’s defense like a hot switchblade through Mississippi butter: 363 passing yards, 33 completions, two touchdowns. In what served as the game-winner, he dashed for 14 yards down the LSU sideline, whistling directly by the man who signed him 18 months ago out of the Division II level, who helped turn him into a star, who, as it turns out, assisted in him gaining his additional year of eligibility.
Chambliss makes “Houdini plays,” says Kiffin. He’s the most difficult player in America to defend, he added. Some of the on-the-run, perfectly accurate, crowd-pleasing plays are inexplicable.
Advertisement
“Best player in college football,” the coach said. “I think he gets more dangerous when [Lacy] is out. Now he has the ball on every snap.”
They couldn’t catch Trinidad.
They failed to corral him.
He skipped across the turf here, whistled passes to a group of wideouts who made equally impressive catches (nine receivers caught at least one pass).
“The game was on us and we didn’t come … it’s frustrating,” an emotional Whit Weeks, LSU’s star linebacker, said afterward. “I wanted to win this one more than any of them. And we didn’t.”
“This one stings. It felt like a game that got away,” Kiffin said.
Advertisement
For instance, on that final drive -—a 14-play, 68-yard march that consumed, basically, the last 5 minutes of the game — LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt, all night running for his dear life, missed open receivers at least twice on the team’s final four downs from inside the 11-yard line.
In a stat emblematic of the performance, he had more rushing attempts (17) than completed passes (16).
“Their players made plays,” Kiffin said.
But perhaps, in December or maybe even January, these two will find one another again — Ole Miss and Lane. Maybe they are destined for a second showdown, a sequel to a blockbuster. The conference championship game or a playoff quarterfinal?
Advertisement
We can all dream. Who wouldn’t want to see the second act?
The first top-10 matchup in this storied rivalry since the 1960s delivered a box-office hit. Droves of fans lined up at the stadium gates hours before kickoff, most of them having marched down the hill from the school’s famous Grove tailgating spot, sticky and sweaty on this hotter’n hell Mississippi night.
They wore their ‘F*** Kiffin’ shirts and their ‘Go to Hell, LSU’ buttons. They drank, they ate. They screamed, they yelled.
And, in the end, they exacted some finality of justice, a retribution never seen in these parts in many moons.
The Ole Miss Rebels roasted Lane Kiffin.
You can view the original article HERE.
