Oxford is not going to be polite about this.
RL
No. 7 LSU walks into a tripled-trooper Magnolia Bowl Kiffin’s return, a parking-lot lawsuit serve, and Oxfords first top-10 LSU night.
By Rhett Landry
Oxford is not going to be polite about this.
No. 7 LSU walks into Vaught-Hemingway on Saturday night as a 2-0 team that still has to prove it can win in that stadium. The Tigers have not left Oxford with a W since the 2019 national championship season. The series there sits knotted at 11-11-1. This one is also the first top-10 LSU–Ole Miss pairing in Oxford in the history of the place, and the first top-10 meeting in the whole rivalry since 1962. ABC gets the show. The SEC opener for both programs gets the weight.
Lane Kiffin knows the soundtrack. He spent six seasons building Ole Miss into a playoff outfit, then took the LSU job last Nov. 30 — a week before the Rebels got their first College Football Playoff bid under the program he left behind. Pete Golding finished that run with CFP wins and a semifinal trip. Kiffin said this week he expects “hatred” when he comes back. He is not wrong. Oxford already booed him out at the airport in December. Mustard bottles and golf balls have followed him into other returns. This one sits closer to home.
Mississippi is treating the night like a security problem, not a pep rally. Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter told reporters the National Guard is not on alert. That is the calm sentence. The operational sentence is uglier: Mississippi State Police presence for the game is being tripled from what LSU saw last week in Oxford against Charlotte — roughly 60 troopers instead of the usual 20 — with Louisiana State Police looping in and plainclothes officers spotted around the bowl. Escorting Kiffin to and from the field is a two-state job. Rivalry football always sells tickets. This version is selling overtime for state police.
The paper trail got louder Tuesday. LSU defensive end Princewill Umanmielen one of the transfers who followed the coaching tree across the state line, along with linebacker T.J. Dottery and others — was served discovery papers in the parking lot outside the Tigers’ football facility, according to ESPN and court records out of Lafayette County. Ole Miss sued Umanmielen and LSU offensive lineman Devin Harper in July, seeking about $550,000 from Umanmielen and $400,000 from Harper in a breach-of-contract fight over revenue-sharing deals the Rebels say the players signed in early January before hitting the portal and landing in Baton Rouge. Interrogatories, document requests, admissions the dry legal stack — dropped five days before kickoff. LSU said it knew Ole Miss had been trying to serve him. Timing still does what timing always does in this rivalry: it pours gasoline.
Ole Miss players are trying to keep the public quotes about Kiffin small. The game is the SEC opener. The rankings are real. The film is mutual. That is the adult version. The adult version still has to survive a Saturday night in Oxford when the visiting coach used to own the headset on the home sideline, half the building wants his head, and one of LSU’s defensive ends just got handed a stack of court paper outside the practice barn.
Purple and gold do not apologize for walking into hostile country. They pack for it. Magnolia Bowl week just stopped being a preview and started being a scene. See you in Oxford.
Related:
- Kiffin won’t throw a touchdown: https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/kiffin-wont-throw-a-touchdown-chambliss-might
- Baton Rouge woke up 2–0: https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/baton-rouge-woke-up-2-0-oxford-already-has-the-lights-on