Trinidad Chambliss isn’t pretending this one feels normal.
As Ole Miss gets ready to host LSU on Saturday night in Oxford, the Rebels’ quarterback said what plenty of people are already thinking about the matchup with former head coach Lane Kiffin on the other sideline. Chambliss, who broke out last season under Kiffin, made it clear the week carries extra baggage even if the focus inside the program stays on the game itself.
“It’s going to be a crazy weekend in Oxford. But it’s just another game, though,” Chambliss said.
“Everything that’s going on outside of football really doesn’t matter to us. We’re just worried about football.”
Then came the line that really captures the mood around this one.
“It’s going to be weird, but it is what it is,” he said.
The timing only adds to it. Ole Miss and LSU are both 2-0, both ranked, and they’ll open SEC play against each other in a prime-time slot that puts the game in front of a national audience.
Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, with Oxford expected to be buzzing from start to finish.
For Chambliss, though, the storyline stretches beyond the rankings and the television window. This is the first time he’ll line up for a game like this with Kiffin now coaching LSU after leaving Oxford near the end of last season. That’s the backdrop for a meeting that already had plenty of juice before anyone started talking.
Now the quarterback has said the part that doesn’t need any dressing up: it’s going to feel strange.
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Much of the unease traced back to Sam Leavitt, whose first-half line included three interceptions, one of them returned 100 yards for a pick six. Even with LSU still carrying a 10-7 lead at the break, the kind of sloppy play that usually gets smoothed out in a lopsided matchup was hanging around long enough to make the Tigers sweat a little harder than expected. [Read more 🡒]
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Lane Kiffin Turned LSUs Entrance Into Another Celebrity Moment
Lane Kiffins appearance at LSUs Week 2 home game against Louisiana Tech once again became part football scene, part celebrity procession. He showed up with Lil Wayne, Lil Boosie and former LSU safety Tyrann Mathieu, another reminder that his arrivals are starting to draw as much attention as the games themselves.
It followed a similar pattern from the week before, when Kiffin was also accompanied by other well-known figures. For LSU fans, it was a familiar mix of pop-culture reach and program history, with Mathieu bringing the added weight of what he meant to the Tigers before carving out an NFL career of his own. [Read more 🡒]