Welcome to The Football Notebook, the weekly exercise in convincing myself that spending an irresponsible percentage of the weekend watching football qualifies as work. Technically, I suppose it does. This is an extremely convenient arrangement for me and an increasingly difficult one to explain to anybody who asks what I did with my Saturday and Sunday.
There was certainly enough football to justify the hours this week. Lane Kiffin returned to Oxford and discovered that Ole Miss fans haven’t spent the last nine months working toward forgiveness, Brighton made one of my more confident Premier League takes look stupid almost immediately and Big Noon Kickoff once again sent me searching for answers to questions nobody should have to ask about a pregame show. The Raiders are giving me dangerous ideas about Kirk Cousins, Manchester City and Sunderland briefly abandoned the concept of defending altogether and Arkansas reached the point where a 45-17 loss to Georgia somehow wasn’t the most depressing thing happening in Fayetteville.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I presumably ate and slept.
Let’s open the notebook.
Hell Hath No Fury Like Ole Miss Scorned
There was a moment late Saturday night, with LSU desperately trying to erase an eight-point deficit and the entire state of Mississippi seemingly screaming at Lane Kiffin through their television screens, when Sam Leavitt’s pass was deflected and floated into the end zone. Jaylon Braxton was waiting there for it, and the second the Ole Miss defensive back secured the interception, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium released approximately nine months of pent-up emotion all at once.
Excuse me for my previous mistake. That wasn’t just “a moment.” It was the moment.
Ole Miss had waited for this from basically the second Kiffin decided he was leaving for LSU. There were plenty of reasons for Rebels fans to be angry about the departure itself, but the manner in which everything unfolded only made the breakup worse. Kiffin had built Ole Miss into something it had spent years trying to become, gotten the Rebels to the doorstep of genuine national championship contention and then decided the grass might be greener a few hours down the road in Baton Rouge. Ole Miss was left behind like the scorned lover in a relationship that had seemed to be going rather well right up until one person abruptly announced they were moving out.
