The most-anticipated game of the college football regular season will take place in Oxford, Miss., on Saturday night, with a gold-and-purple-clad Lane Kiffin returning to town to take on the team and fanbase he abandoned just 10 months ago.
On paper, the LSU-Ole Miss matchup features everything a college football game could ever want. For starters, it’s a historic rivalry matchup featuring two Top 10 teams with huge SEC Championship and College Football Playoff implications on the line. You add in the Kiffin of it all, and the contest goes from just a great college football game to a full-blown spectacle.
If Kiffin’s first game against Ole Miss as the head coach at LSU were being held in Baton Rouge, it wouldn’t have nearly as much of a mystique around it. Thankfully, the football gods had it made that this game would be played in Mississippi.
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If you’re an LSU fan, there has to be something at least slightly unsettling about Kiffin and his $50 million Tigers roster coming to Oxford to take on an Ole Miss team headlined by quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy, two players Kiffin and his staff fought to come join them on the bayou. Leaving Oxford without a win would deliver a dose of reality to both Tigers fans and Kiffin himself that perhaps things aren’t quite as they seem, at least not yet.
On the other sideline, you have an Ole Miss team that not only lost key pieces from last season, but is also being coached by a man in Pete Golding, who is entering just his sixth game as a head coach. You also have a fanbase foaming at the mouth to see Kiffin squirm on the opposing sideline inside the stadium he coached in for six seasons.
In terms of question marks, Ole Miss has the most between the two teams heading into Saturday, but they could also have the answers in the form of Chambliss and Lacy, two Heisman Trophy candidates.
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The angles of what makes Saturday’s game simply so massive are virtually endless, and while the game itself will undoubtedly deliver, the contests that both teams will have to play in just seven days later could very well be the most pivotal ones of their respective seasons.
Ole Miss travels to Gainesville to take on Florida in Week 4, and if the Gators take care of Auburn on the road this Saturday, The Swamp will be absolutely jumping when the Rebels arrive. That statement will be true whether Ole Miss beats LSU or loses by three touchdowns. Florida head coach Jon Sumrall will be looking to catch an Ole Miss team at the right time, with the Rebels coming off an unbelievably emotional week.
LSU has the luxury of returning home to Death Valley in Week 4, but has to welcome Texas A&M to town. The Aggies play Kentucky at home in Week 3, meaning they’ll likely arrive in Baton Rouge unbeaten and as a Top 10 program in the nation. Many would argue that Texas A&M is the most overlooked team of the young college football season up to this point, but taking down LSU in Baton Rouge would certainly flip that narrative.
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In a world where college football chatter has become more focused on court cases and NIL money, it’s these sets of factors and matchups that still make the sport so great. The SEC adding an additional conference game to the slate this season is also being felt in this particular scenario, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how teams respond to an extra, very stiff test.
Nothing would be more college football than seeing the winner of the Ole Miss-LSU throwdown turn around and lose just seven days later. Whatever happens, we’ll all be watching.
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