OXFORD, Miss. — Throughout the idyllic campus square here they call The Grove, where generations of fans have thrown legendary tailgate parties, there were surprisingly few traces of the man whose name was not to be mentioned on the day Ole Miss fans had long been waiting for.
The last six weeks around here had been fully hijacked by the narcissism and deception of acoach who was both determined to leave for LSUandalmost equally determined to coach the team he built, creating a standoff that ended two days after Thanksgiving when school officials told Lane Kiffin he could either pack his bags for Baton Rouge immediately or be part of the greatest day in the modern history of Ole Miss football. But he could not do both.
Fast-forward to Saturday, and it's hard to say what would have been more painful for Kiffin: watching and tweeting from the Bayou as his formerOle Miss team won a first-round College Football Playoff game by beating Tulane, 41-10, or realizing that very few people here Saturday had much interest in making it about him the way he tends to make everything about himself.
Sure, among the hundreds of tents where fans were loading up plates with catered food and filling their red Solo cups with God knows what, there were a small handful of passive (and vulgar) references to Kiffin's departure. In one tent, a man dressed asSanta Claus took pictures in front of a sign directing Kiffin to "Geaux to Hell." In another, a sign that said "We love Jesus, Ole Miss, Elvis & Lane" had crossed out his name and replaced it with "Pete," a nod to new coach Pete Golding.
But when you're talking about someone who craves attention as much as Kiffin, sometimes the best revenge is showing that the party doesn't stop — not for him, not for anyone.
"It wasn't about showing all the noise didn't matter, it was about going out and playing at a high level like we did all season," Ole Miss receiver De'Zhaun Stribling said. "The fans brought a lot of juice. We felt it on the field. We tried to stay locked in and focused, but you can't help but look around. The fireworks, the drones, it was beautiful."
This is what catharsis looked like: As the final moments ticked away, a still-full Vaught-Hemingway Stadium sang along to "Dancing Queen," red sparklers lit up the sky and fans chanted "Pete! Pete! Pete!" as the soaking-wet head coach tossed his visor toward the stands and punched his right fist into the air.
And this is what pathetic looked like: In the third quarter, as Ole Miss was suffocating the last of Tulane's long-shot chances, thecoach who abandoned his chance to be in this CFP sent a tweetwith a graphic touting himself as the coach of teams that put up a nation-leading 512 total yards and 331 passing yards per game, both tops in college football "since coach to player headset communication."
Which one seemed like more fun?
"Sometimes you can step back and realize the moment you're in and how cool and exciting it really is and be truly happy for the players," assistant coach Joe Judge said. "Because the game is about the players. Seeing these guys achieve success and give themselves another opportunity in a couple weeks against a very good Georgia team, that was good because they stayed focused and went through a lot."
As the game ended and Golding gave a handshake and embrace to his counterpart, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall, it was a scene that represented the chaotic and complicated place college football has found itself this season.
Three of the 12 CFP teams had head coaches accept other jobs prior to the playoff, stressing coaching staffs and administrations and sleep schedules. Sumrall, who is now headed to Florida, also coached Saturday just two days after his father passed away at age 77.
"It's been hard, I'm not going to deny it," Sumrall said. "My dad had had some battles health-wise since March and it's been hard, but I'm a lot of who I am because of how he raised me and I can smile knowing that I'm going to live a life that's going to honor my dad. If he was watching, he probably has some questions about how we played just like I do. I just don't have to hear them tonight from him."
Obviously, as acrimonious as the Ole Miss-Kiffin divorce was, Sumrall and Tulane are parting on the best possible terms. He even donated $100,000 to Tulane's recruiting efforts for next year on his way out the door. But what all this represents is a real conundrum for college football that will continue to simmer as the CFP evolves and possibly expands, involving more teams whose coaches are in transition.
And then there's this: Though Tulane was able to move the ball up and down the field, particularly in the first half, the 31-point margin seemed like a definitive statement about the gap between the best team in the Group of Five and one of the elite teams in the country.
A year ago, in the first-ever 12-team playoff, Boise State was a bit more competitive in its playoff game but ultimately no match for Penn State, losing 31-14.
The long history of sports suggests that eventually, one of these underdog teams is bound to pull off a playoff upset and be remembered forever in college football lore. But how many lopsided beatings will it take to get there, and how much angst will the commissioners of the power conferences be able to withstand as their members see overmatched teams take up space in the playoff bracket at the expense of programs like Notre Dame, Texas and Vanderbilt, who felt like they were good enough to be there and compete.
At the same time, it was a weekend of validation for the CFP selection committee. The key decisions they made two Sundays ago —Alabama and Miami in, Notre Dame outandchoosing not to punish Ole Miss for Kiffin's departure— all looked good in retrospect. Both theCrimson Tide and Miami won road games, and Ole Miss didn't look like a team whose coaching staff was a bit patched together as some offensive assistants following Kiffin to LSU were allowed to stick around for the CFP.
"It would be one thing, no disrespect, if this was the Pop-Tarts Bowl or something like that. That s*** would have been really hard," Golding said. "But this is the damn playoffs. So what are we talking about? These kids have gone 11-1 up to this point, a home playoff game for the first time. These dudes want to compete. They don't care who runs them out of the tunnel. That's the truth. They care about their preparation, the plan and increasing their value. The head-coaching piece is developing the culture, but that's the offseason. By this point, the thing is running the way it should. You just have to keep it on the tracks."
But Golding did use some of the time after Kiffin's departure to put his own subtle imprint on the program. In the days after being named permanent head coach, he called each player into his office and asked them one thing they liked about the way the program had been run and one thing they'd change.
So the basketball hoop Kiffin put in the team meeting room and sideline? Golding thought it was corny. Gone. The uniform policy requiring players all wear the same cleats? The team's leadership council wanted a little more individuality. When Golding announced players could experiment with different colors, the room erupted in applause.
The football part, though, didn't look much different.
"At this point, everybody wants to increase their value whether you're a coach or player," Golding said. "So from the beginning, it was in everybody's best interest in this building to coach really well and play really well because no negative could come from that. It's a pretty easy sell. It's just common sense to go play really well in a big game, in a playoff game, and go have the opportunity to play another big game and the better you play, the more money you're going to make."
And after a football game that felt a bit like an exorcism, the hope at Ole Miss is that things will now get back to normal. There will surely be a time when Kiffin is back in the center of the conversation — namely, Week 3 next season when LSU comes to Oxford — but for now it feels like everyone can move on.
To be honest, it felt a little bit like they had already. This is Golding's team, Golding's town and now Golding's playoff run.
"The ability to make decisions, things you've been talking through for years, to finally be the last voice, it kind of hit me some," he said. "And then you're just more the excited for the players, how they responded. Some of those hugs will get you a little bit. There's been so much work you couldn't take a deep breath.
"Then the game got to a point where you could look around some. And it was pretty damn cool."
