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By Chris Marler
It might be time to seriously consider cancelling LSU’s September trip to Oxford.
I love college football, and I love the rivalries it brings along with it. There is nothing like the pageantry on display for four months every late Summer and Autumn. Cathedrals housing 100,000 rabid fans in some of the most incredibly scenic environments in this great country, it’s truly beautiful. And the rivalries? Sure, sometimes they go overboard, but my goodness there are few things more fun and iconic as offseason rivalries that never end in the SEC.
Until now.
What has transpired over the last few months and came to yet another boiling point on Monday after Lane Kiffin’s ill-advised Vanity Fair interview isn’t fun anymore. At all. It’s gotten to a point now where the legitimate safety concerns for Kiffin, players and anyone traveling to Oxford, Mississippi need to be taken into account. So much so that cancelling the game shouldn’t necessarily be taken off the table.
A lot of things led to us getting here. It’s not solely the fault of Ole Miss fans for reacting the way they have. After all, “fan” is short for fanatic, and “Ole Miss fan” is apparently Latin for “if you ever leave us for a better program, we will haunt your dreams every day for the next eight months on social media in the most horrific and exhausting way possible.” Fun fact.
I have no clue what Kiffin was thinking when he decided to do that interview, and I don’t think what he said about Ole Miss’ haunted past was necessarily a fair shot to have taken. It’s not like he seemed to care about it when he was in Oxford for those six years collecting a paycheck from the university. That also doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Nor, does it mean that the story about a recruit’s grandparents not wanting them to play in Oxford was untrue.
It’s always fascinating watching SEC schools and states try to dunk on each other over things that are wildly prevalent in each state. Seeing someone from Mississippi make fun of someone from Alabama about poor education is a lot like watching Rosie O’Donnell give Chris Christie weight loss advice. Every school in the SEC has a checkered past when it comes to race. It’s as abhorrent as it is real, and there’s not much you can do to change that in 2026.
However, there’s inescapable irony in a university that is nicknamed “The Rebels” trying to call out another program or campus for being more, or equally as, racially insensitive.
Should Kiffin have brought that up when he could’ve just as easily said he left Ole Miss because he found a better program with more resources and more opportunities and an actual track record of winning national titles post-landing on the moon. Yes. But, he didn’t, and at this point, is anyone surprised about that?
Still, the intensity and egregiousness of what is now transpiring between these two fanbases goes so far beyond the pale of just football.
Fans on both sides have taken to social media attacking, and in some cases, threatening the other side ahead of their September 19 game in Oxford. That part doesn’t feel like it’s just words anymore. It feels way more real and way more serious.
Kiffin has never had an off button, and he’s always found a way to bring out the worst in fans of other schools.
Remember that Tennessee game in 2021? They had to stop the game to clear the field of water bottles, beer bottles, golf balls and one very famous mustard bottle. That was in 2021, 12 years after he left Knoxville. LSU will travel to Oxford less than ten months after he left Ole Miss.
They’re not going to cancel that game, but there are legitimate reasons to at least consider it.
I don’t care who’s more at fault in how we got here. I don’t know if the solution is to cancel the game, take a break from social media or if the abundance of idiots on both sides of this thing need to just touch grass.
I just hope it’s over soon because it’s not fun anymore.
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