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.Head coach Lane Kiffin of the LSU Tigers in action against the Clemson Tigers at Tiger Stadium on September 5, 2026 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
(Photo by Gus Stark/LSU/University Images via Getty Images) (Gus Stark/LSU/University Images via Getty Images)THE CRAIG CARTON SHOW–UNFILTERED, UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNMISSABLE.DOWNLOAD HIS DAILY PODCAST NOW!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.Head coach Pete Goldi...