By Marc LAWRENCE, PlaybookSports.com — — The 10-month storm of his own making had finally blown through.
“Walked into a storm,” Kiffin said, emotions buttoned up.Ole Miss defeated LSU 32-24 in a game dripping with drama, revenge and Southern catharsis.
The Rebels beat the coach who built them into a national contender, deserted them during a College Football Playoff run and returned wearing a rival’s colors.
Kiffin went 55-19 in six seasons at Ole Miss, but his exit added another smoke-filled departure to a career full of them. Tennessee remembers his one-year escape.
Alabama remembers his wandering eye in the 2016 playoff. USC remembers firing him before his fourth season finished. Oxford will remember this night.
The venom might have swallowed the state had No. 7 LSU completed its comeback from 17 points down. Instead, No. 8 Ole Miss served its former coach a heaping plate of comeuppance.
The Rebels raced to a 24-7 lead behind Trinidad Chambliss, the quarterback Kiffin once fought to keep eligible. Talk about chickens coming home to roost. Chambliss tormented LSU with arm, legs and swagger, finishing with 365 total yards and three touchdowns.
LSU refused to fold, grinding out drives until the game was tied at 24.
Then Chambliss wrote the final chapter, capping the decisive march with a 14-yard touchdown run with 6:14 remaining. The roar nearly knocked Mississippi off the map.
“This one meant a lot more than the other games,” Chambliss said. “I wanted this one really bad, and our team did, too.”
Pete Golding supplied the blunt postscript after a critical short-yardage conversion protected the win: “If we can’t get half a yard… then we shouldn’t win the game.”
Golding is now 5-1 at Ole Miss, with four wins over ranked opponents—not bad for the man handed the keys after Kiffin drove away.Everything about Saturday was overheated: the stakes, the tickets, the temperature, the emotions.
An estimated 300,000 people poured into Oxford, a town of 28,000 residents and 26,000 students. What does that tell you?
By kickoff, every corner seemed packed with Rebels fans waiting to collect the debt Kiffin left behind.They came for football. They stayed for vengeance.
When the final seconds vanished, the stadium speakers blasted Garth Brooks’ “Callin’ Baton Rouge.”
Game, set and needle.
“Kiffin got his comeuppance—that’s all we wanted,” fan Keith Johnson said. “I’m glad the guy’s gone. I think he and LSU deserve each other.”
Oxford received exactly what it had waited 10 months to collect: closure, revenge and a scoreboard that will sting all the way back to Baton Rouge.
Lane Kiffin walked into a storm. Ole Miss made sure he left beneath a black cloud.
