Four days out from LSU, and the two men at the center of the biggest game in college football spent Monday saying nice things about each other — and that should worry you more than any grudge would. On Tuesday’s Locked On Ole Miss I got into why a week with no bulletin-board material is the scariest possible version of this one, why Lane Kiffin walked into Baton Rouge and called Ole Miss’s quarterback, running back and kicker the best in America, and why the only people in the state who have already moved on are the 22 guys who actually have to play Saturday night. Hotty Toddy.
The Respect-Off Is More Dangerous Than a Grudge
Two podiums on Monday, two states, and not one shot fired on purpose. Pete Golding got asked about facing the staff he worked under for three and a half years — the guys who hired him — and said he loves going against people he has worked with, that the competitive part is no different than golf with your buddies. Six hundred miles away, Kiffin told the room a lot would be made about him but it is about the players, then delivered the line of the week: Pete is not going to tackle anybody, and he is not going to throw any touchdowns. Each of them was handed an advantage — the familiarity, the emotion — and neither one picked it up.
Here is my take, and it sounds like a compliment but it is not: a grudge is cheap fuel. It gets a team through 60 minutes on adrenaline it did not earn, and both staffs just took that off the table. Which means Saturday gets decided by preparation, execution and about four plays — a much colder way to lose than getting beaten by a team that hates you. For the history: the last time these two walked in both ranked in the top 10 was 1962, the year of Ole Miss’s perfect season, when the Rebels won 15-7 in Baton Rouge. Sixty-four years later, the two men at the middle of it spent Monday trading compliments. That is not the reason Saturday will be loud. The reason is what happened last November and December, when Kiffin’s exit hung over a playoff run the fans never got to fully enjoy. Saturday is Ole Miss getting its closure.
Kiffin Called Our Guys the Best in America
Read it as one sentence, because that is how he said it: the best playing quarterback, running back and kicker in the country, all coming back, all at Ole Miss. The kicker is the tell — nobody lands on the place kicker by accident. Kiffin has been running this play for 15 years: praise the other roster into the stratosphere, take the weight off your own locker room, and hand the favorite the whole building. He even told his own players the pressure is on Ole Miss, not on them. He reached all the way back to Matt Leinart handing off to Reggie Bush to describe a backfield with two Heisman-caliber players in it.
And here is the honest part: every word of it is true. Trinidad Chambliss was the hottest quarterback in America down the stretch and does not make many mistakes. Kewan Lacy ran for nearly 1,600 yards and 24 scores. The kicker hit from 57 on Saturday, connected from 62 in camp, and is on preseason All-American lists. Kiffin did not have to stretch a single word of it. But I would rather be the team that actually has the best quarterback, the best back and the best kicker than the team saying the pressure is on the other guys. He handed us the weight on his way out the door. Fine — pick it up.
The Locker Room Already Moved On
I went back through every player interview after Charlotte looking for one line about Kiffin, one line about December, one line about any of it — and there is almost nothing there. Chambliss said it is going to be a crazy weekend in Oxford but it is just another game, and everything outside of football does not matter to this team. Asked directly what it would be like to see his old head coach, he gave six words: it is going to be weird. Then he explained why. He has been seeing Pete Golding, John David Baker and Joe Judge every day for eight months. Those are his guys now. The other ones left. Nick Cull gave the defense’s version of the same answer: no storyline, a ton of work left.
The one thing they actually lit up about had nothing to do with LSU: Deuce Knight’s hurdle. Chambliss called him a freak athlete, said the vertical is insane, and gave up the detail that turns a highlight into a story — Knight had been calling his shot in practice all week, and then Saturday night, with the game already decided, he cleared another human being clean. As for the number, FanDuel has Ole Miss as a 3.5-point home underdog with the total sitting around 58.5. A home dog in September is being told something real about the road in front of it, and around here every season that ever meant anything was built on winning a game or two this program was not supposed to win, in a place it was not supposed to win it. The players figured that out eight months ago. Kickoff is 6:30 Central in Vaught-Hemingway on ABC.
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