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Ole Miss is one day away from a game that, fairly or unfairly, will define its football program in the eyes of the general public for the foreseeable future.
This game has become so much more than a game, beginning with the moment that Lane Kiffin decided he wanted to abandon a team that was poised to compete for a national championship and become LSU’s next head coach. Lane Kiffin didn’t believe Ole Miss could beat Georgia in the CFP quarterfinals last season. It’s fitting that the Rebels did in fact beat Georgia without Kiffin, after failing to do so in the regular season — though I am not sure how that loss in Athens could be blamed on Kiffin, as that performance from the Ole Miss offense in that loss was a masterpiece from him and Charlie Weis Jr.
Kiffin didn’t believe he could win a national championship at Ole Miss. He believed the program had reached its ceiling. He believed Ole Miss’ NIL cash flow couldn’t sustain the level it was at and would drop to the middle tier of the SEC. He believed LSU offered a better opportunity to win championships — something Kiffin has never done at the power four level anywhere he has been, though he did win two Conference-USA titles while at Florida Atlantic — and he was willing to abandon a team bound for the playoff in order to better position himself to do something he’s never done in his career: win anything of significance.
Kiffin was wrong about Ole Miss’ ability to beat Georgia last season and compete for a national title. The Rebels beat the Bulldogs in New Orleans on New Year’s Day and were one defensive stop away from playing for a national championship.
Is Kiffin right about the long-term portion of the gamble he took to go to LSU? I guess only time will tell. It would be foolish to fail to acknowledge that LSU is one of the best jobs in college football. It’s probably a top-three job, and depending on what coaches value in a job, it could be considered the best job. But in this era of NIL and the transfer portal, where top programs can’t hoard blue-chip talent, how wide is the gap between what are considered elite-level jobs and what I could call very good jobs like an aligned Ole Miss in this modern era? I suppose time will tell on that too, but fairly or unfairly, the first chapter of that saga will be written on the field on Saturday night.
There is what I would describe as an unfair amount of pressure on Ole Miss in this game. I think that case could actually be made for both teams, but given the ringleader of this ego-fueled circus coaches for LSU, it’s harder to make a case for the Tigers. What I mean by unfair pressure for both teams is that, at the end of the day, this is one of nine conference games for each team. Either team could lose this game and still make the College Football Playoff. I think the road for both is ridiculously challenging with a loss. That much is obvious. But I think both teams have the talent to do so. This isn’t a “must-win” in that sense as far as the outlook for the 2026 season is concerned. But it is a must-win for Ole Miss in other senses, which is why I think there is more pressure on the Rebels to win this, and that most of that pressure is unfair.
Kiffin left because he didn’t think Ole Miss was good enough to be an elite program, and if he comes back to Oxford nine months later and wins, it will be a pretty devastating blow to the program’s perception, at least in the short term. If Ole Miss loses this game and then goes 7-1 in its final eight league games and makes the playoff, will people still view this hypothetical loss as catastrophic? No. But the odds of that happening aren’t great. Perception isn’t always reality, but the “not elite and not good enough” label will be a tough one for Ole Miss to shake if the Rebels lose this football game. It’s not fair to Pete Golding, and it isn’t fair to the Ole Miss administration, the fans or the football program, but life often isn’t fair and this is just the harsh reality of this situation. You could argue outside perception is irrelevant. That’s an easy message to accept as fans or players, I suppose, but in this lawless universe that is major college football in 2026, perception matters, a lot. And perception is often reality no matter how cruel or unfair it may seem.
Now, onto some storylines.
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Leavitt listed as doubtful on the Wednesday injury report
Lane Kiffin listed LSU starting quarterback Sam Leavitt as doubtful to play on Wednesday’s initial injury report. He’s since been upgraded to questionable. I imagine most people reading this are Ole Miss fans, and if you are, you are likely familiar with Kiffin’s antics when it comes to the injury report. The SEC began mandating injury reports for conference games in 2024. At the time, Kiffin publicly disagreed with the decision, and in typical Kiffin fashion, has routinely made a mockery of it ever since. At Ole Miss, he once listed 26 players on an injury report. He would often list random players that were unlikely to play as doubtful on Wednesday and then remove them from the report altogether by Friday. There’s technically penalties for behaving like this, but Lane Kiffin doesn’t believe rules apply to him, and again, in this lawless ecosystem, how enforceable is a fine for manipulating the injury report. Kiffin doesn’t and won’t care until his boss, Governor Jeff Landry, tells him he should care, which isn’t happening anytime soon.
There’s nothing wrong with Sam Leavitt and he is not going to miss this game. Don’t fall for it.
I suppose it’s worth noting that a Baton Rouge radio host reported that Leavitt missed Wednesday’s practice with an upper body injury.
If you’ve followed Moscona’s content over the last few months since this saga began, he would openly question what really happened on 9/11 and whether jet fuel can melt steel beams if Louisiana Governor Jeff Landy and Kiffin told him to do so. They give him pets and treats to be a mouthpiece. With that said, I figure there may be some merit to this, but I don’t believe Leavitt is in any danger of missing this football game.
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A lot has been made of the environment on Saturday
This type of nauseating storyline is why I will be very thankful when September 20 arrives and this football game is over. Anything involving Lane Kiffin is a melodramatic, oxygen-sucking circus that makes people behave and opine irrationally. During Monday’s press conference, Pete Golding urged Ole Miss fans to be peaceful, to make it a tough place to play but to be polite, civil and inviting. Around that same time, Kiffin, during his Monday press conference, played the victim and talked about “security apparently being an issue.” He also said his players have no pressure on them due to all of the focus and hate being centered on Kiffin. What a selfless act by a man who keeps such a low profile and shirks off any unnecessary attention. I have no idea why he has the reputation of being a narcissistic sociopath with the social intellect of a seventh-grader. Despite how much he hates attention, he’s willing to fall on the sword and shoulder it for players he is well-known to cultivate deep, personal relationships with. Good lord.
I don’t think the environment on Saturday will be anything beyond a totally raucous SEC Football game. Will there be a thick tension in the air in the stadium? Yes. Will it be weird? Yes. But the 2017 Egg Bowl also fit that definition — not that I am comparing the two. And maybe I am just being an eternal optimist, and I recognize it only takes one nut job to ruin it for everyone else, but I really think it’ll all end up being fine. I understand the angst people have about Saturday. I share some of the same reservations. I don’t think it’s unfounded, but I do think it is a little bit overblown. I think this will be a memorable sporting event for everyone involved because of the tension and environment, and hopefully an entertaining football game, but I just don’t see a riot breaking out or war between the fanbases ensuing.
It’s also rich that LSU is concerned about safety and the environment, considering that if you polled 100 SEC fans on what is the most dangerous and most unwelcoming place to attend a road game, 99 would say LSU and one would be lying, which is fine. It’s not supposed to be friendly. But there is a fine line between intimidating and devolving into a public safety threat. I think this game will be the former rather than the latter.
I am not one to preach to people or tell others how to live their lives, but I suppose it’s warranted here: if you are going to the game, don’t do anything stupid. Go be mad at Kiffin and scream and yell and curse and do whatever you want, but don’t do something you’ll regret. If a fan ends up on tv or in the news in from this game, it’s likely for a terrible reason that resulted in a night spent in jail. Don’t be the guy (or girl).
Umanmielen served with papers at LSU practice facility
Former Ole Miss defensive lineman and current LSU player Princewell Umanmielen was served with papers in the parking lot outside the LSU practice facility earlier this week. If you’ve missed this story, Ole Miss is suing Umanmielen and offensive lineman Devin Harper. Both transferred from Ole Miss to LSU after signing binding revenue sharing agreements with Ole Miss to return for the 2026 season. There was buyout language in these agreements that required both players to pay Ole Miss a sum of money if it broke the agreement.
This whole saga is one of the many subplots in this Ole Miss-Kiffin/LSU soap opera that’s been airing since last November. Neither LSU nor the two players paid the penalty for breaking these agreements, and so, Ole Miss made it known in July it was considering legal action against the two players.
I don’t think I have written about this because the newsletter was on hiatus for a bit before starting back up last month, but my stance is this: Ole Miss has no other choice than to enforce the language of these contracts. These two guys signed binding agreements that sculpted a deal between them and the university in which the university would directly pay them money for their services. This is an important distinction because it is drastically different from an agreement with a third-party collective NIL (think pay-for-play) deal. I am not an attorney and am not going to pretend to be one in this space, but the simple answer to why that is an important distinction is that collectives, in the grand scheme of things, are still in their infancy as financial operations for college sports programs. There really isn’t any sort of legal precedent for how binding, if at all, deals between collectives and players are. We’ve seen deals between collectives and players fall through because collectives didn’t actually have the money to pay the player — think Jaden Rashada at Florida. But to my knowledge, there hasn’t been any legal precedent in court about how binding those agreements actually are. Collectives didn’t exist five years ago and, in this new, lawless-frontier that is major college sports that is still in the process of being regulated they’ve essentially operated in grey area to compensate players — an area that, prior to revenue sharing being allowed, universities couldn’t operate in. In many ways, this is still the case as collectives are now tasked with compensating athletes in ways outside of revenue sharing that effectively circumvents the revenue sharing cap of $21.5 million.
An agreement between a player and a University is an entirely different animal because the university paying a player is not the same as some third-party entity.
Again, Ole Miss has no choice but to enforce this. You can’t set a precedent that a player can sign a deal with your university and then renege on that deal without consequence. Though LSU fans and media have clutched their pearls a bit about Ole Miss taking legal action against the players, as well as the timing of this week’s serving, I don’t think even the most staunch LSU supporter would disagree with the general premise that these guys signed contracts and should suffer the consequences for breaking the contract.
This, of course, could’ve all been avoided if the financial penalties for breaking this agreement were paid to Ole Miss. That burden technically falls on the players, but in other cases similar to this, the school usually pays the penalty for the players, similar to buyout clauses for coaches when a school hires a coach away from another school. Why isn’t LSU paying the buyout? Is it because its athletic department is broke, mostly due to irresponsible coaching hires that has the athletic department owing former coaches at least $54 million in buyout money? Is it because there is no adult at the wheel at LSU running the school or the athletics department, which has left Lane Kiffin unaccounted for and answering to a governor whose lone goal is to score political points while using Kiffin and LSU Football as a pawn in the process? The answer is likely a combination of both of those theories.
LSU is an unserious operation right now. Landry (the governor, not the daughter) and Kiffin are running LSU. The athletic director and president are neutered figureheads who serve zero purpose other than to tell Kiffin and Landry “yes sir” when such an answer is warranted. That thought should ultimately scare any reasonable LSU fan in the long-term, no matter how good of a football coach Kiffin is. Everywhere Kiffin goes ends in flames, and his only supervisor in this current job is a politician.
Portions of LSU media, seemingly lacking any inkling of self-awareness, have called Ole Miss petty for serving Umanmielen papers the week of the game, as if Keith Carter personally flew down there and handed them to Unanmielen while making an L-sign with his hand above his forehead, rather than a process server. Never mind that the players being sued have had 30 days to respond to the suit from August 14 when it was filed, and never mind that this is the latest example of players getting bad guidance from a coach who cares about no one other than himself — with Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavien Harris, who were used as pawns in an experiment to test the limit of the SEC’s power to enforce its own rules, being a previous example — it is supposedly Ole Miss’ fault that the athlete did not respond to the suit in the allotted time period, and the idea that a process server found said athlete at a place at which he spends the majority of his time is petty and small. It’s dripping with irony given who wears the head coach headset on Saturday for the Tigers.
The entire thing is ridiculous and it underscores how unserious and chaotic the current state of LSU is as an athletic department and a university. It’s a good thing they hired Kiffin, who is notably a calming presence in an environment of chaos.
Five things to watch: LSU
Now, to the game itself, which in some ways has become a bit of a side show in favor of all the off-the-field nonsense that Kiffin orchestrates wherever he exists. All of the aforementioned program and perception implications aside, this is a crucial conference opener for both teams and their chances of competing for an SEC Championship and a playoff berth. This game is a fascinating match up of weaknesses-on-weaknesses and strengths-on-strengths.
Here are five things I will be thinking about at kickoff tomorrow.
`1. Can the Ole Miss secondary fix itself
We’ve written about this extensively over the last two weeks. The Ole Miss secondary has been brutal in the first two games of the season. It’s not for a lack of talent. It’s been due to some pretty glaring coverage busts created by poor communication. That has to be fixed in this game, otherwise LSU is going to have a field day throwing the football against the Rebels.
Ole Miss suffered some injuries in the secondary during the offseason that caused some key pieces to miss preseason camp and much of the first two games. The good news is that Sharief Denson and Antonio Kite will be healthy and ready to go for this game. Denson is a Florida transfer who has yet to play for the Rebels. Kite is a returning starter at corner who exited the game against Louisville with an injury. Will the presence of these two solve all of Ole Miss’ issues in the secondary? I suppose we will find out.
Golding made an emphasis this offseason to go out and find talented defensive backs with positional versatility. I am still not just chalking this secondary up as the weakness on this defense. There is too much talent for this unit to be this bad. I think they perform better this week. If they don’t, Ole Miss stands no chance to win this game. Leavitt is not a consistent pocket passer and will throw the football to the other team if you allow him to. What Ole Miss cannot do is give him freebie touchdowns due to coverage busts.
2. the Ole Miss defensive front against the run
The Kiffin-Weis scheme is largely predicated on having a dynamic running game. Those two are masterful in the diversity in the ways their teams run the football. It’s the oil to the car’s engine. LSU’s offensive line struggled to get a consistent push against Louisiana Tech last week, but did rush 58 times for 309 yards against a Clemson team that struggled to beat Georgia Southern last week and is on the fast track to a 4-8 record.
This is what the game comes down to for me, along with the secondary: if Ole Miss can neutralize the LSU running game and put the Tigers in obvious passing situations that require Leavitt to beat Ole Miss with his arm, I don’t think Leavitt is capable of doing that and I think Ole Miss will win the game.
But if LSU has success rushing the football and it keeps the Rebels’ defense off balance and guessing, then this game will be a shootout or a blowout because the Tigers will certainly score a lot of points with an effective running game. You can take that guarantee to the bank.
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3. Ole Miss being disciplined in the pass rush
I think I have made it clear by now, but in case I haven’t: I am not a Leavitt believer. I think he is a good athlete whose mobility masks a lot of the deficiencies he has as a quarterback. At no point in his career, whether it be at Arizona State or two games with LSU, has he shown the ability to be a consistently good passer of the football in the pocket. In fact, he is below average. But where he hurts defenses is with his athletic ability, his ability to extend plays with his feet and make off-platform throws outside the pocket.
Ole Miss’ pass rush through two games has been a mixed bag. It has gotten consistent pressure on opposing quarterbacks, but its discipline when it comes to rushing lanes has been pretty inconsistent. It’s a big reason why Louisville quarterback Lincoln Keinholz — also a good athlete and inconsistent pocket passer — looked as good as he did in the second half in that game in Nashville. Ole Miss has to keep containment when it comes to pressuring Leavitt. If the Rebels can keep him in the pocket and force him to be a north-to-south thrower in the pocket, he alone is not good enough to beat Ole Miss. Now, doing that is easier said than done. But if the Rebels get pressure on him and don’t allow him to get loose on the perimeter, then they will be in good shape.
Leavitt is also not the strongest when it comes to dealing with road environments. Go back and watch Mississippi State’s win over Arizona State last year in Starkville. Leavitt looked genuinely rattled and, at times, looked like he wanted to be anywhere other than playing football inside Davis-Wade Stadium. If Ole Miss gets to him a couple times early, and if LSU has to play from behind, he is not a guy that is going to bring them back into a game by being a superhero.
4. Ole Miss’ ability to run the football
I was surprised that Kewan Lacy played three quarters last week coming off a bone bruise injury that forced him to miss most of the Louisville game. Ole Miss spent the offseason talking about lessening Lacy’s workload — the heaviest in the FBS a season ago. His 306 carries were the most in college football.
Last week didn’t do much to breed confidence in the Rebels’ ability to have a multi-pronged rushing attack with Makhi Frazier and J.T. Lindsey. Those two rushed the ball a combined three times. I am not going to delude myself into believing anything other than that Lacy will have the large majority of the carries this week in a game of this magnitude. But the running game not dropping off when he’s off the field will be important for the Rebels. Even with Lacy, the running game as a whole has been a mixed bag through two games. Ole Miss needs to rush the football effectively against LSU. Trinidad Chambliss is capable of being a superhero for the Rebels if and when he is needed, but there is a thin margin for error when it’s needed and an effective running game will make his life a lot easier. If Ole Miss runs the football well and stays ahead of the sticks, this offense will score more than enough points to win this game.
5. How Ole Miss handles the emotions of this game
The fastest way for this game to go awry for Ole Miss is to extend an LSU drive (or drives) due to a stupid penalty after a third down stop. Lane Kiffin sucks the oxygen out of everything he is involved with. Don’t give him and LSU more oxygen to suck up by letting emotions factor into the game in the form of penalties and blown assignments.
This is going to be a highly-emotional football game. The returning Ole Miss players in particular have a legitimate reason to have a gripe with Kiffin. He essentially told them they couldn’t win a national title and he’d rather not finish the season than pass on another job. There’s a productive way to harness that and there is also an unproductive way to do it. This is going to be a tough test for Ole Miss. The margins are too thin to aid LSU by letting the emotions of this game dictate performance. Ole Miss has the best quarterback and running back in this game. It has more than enough comparable talent at every other position to win this football game. If the Rebels play well, they will win. Allowing anything else to be a factor when it comes to pursuit of winning the game will be a determinant to their chances.
Thanks for reading. We will have more coverage on Sunday.