Ole Miss 32, LSU 24: Kiffin came back to Oxford and the building beat him
Lane Kiffin walked into Vaught-Hemingway as the other team's coach. The program he left ran up a 24-7 halftime lead, let him tie it, and then picked him off in the end zone in the final minute. That is about as personal as a scoreboard gets.
The revenge game that was actually a revenge game
Most "revenge" games are a TV storyline stapled onto a normal football game. This one was not. Kiffin built Ole Miss into a program that could win this game, left for LSU, and came back to find out the building did not need him. Ole Miss took a 24-7 lead into the half. LSU clawed all the way back to tie it in the fourth quarter, which is the part that should worry Ole Miss fans a little, and then the Rebels closed. The last meaningful play was an Ole Miss interception in the end zone with under a minute left. ESPN's line afterward was five words: Lane Kiffin exits Oxford. Again.
What a 17-point lead that becomes a tie tells you
I have blown leads in front of crowds that wanted me to win, and I have watched better players than me do it. The pattern is always the same: the team with the lead stops doing the thing that built it and starts protecting the number. Ole Miss let a 24-7 game become 24-24. The credit is that they had one more answer at the end, and in a rivalry game one more answer is all you need. The concern is that a top-four team should not need it against a team it led by 17.
For LSU, this is the second part of the Kiffin experiment and it is the part people forget. You do not just hire the coach. You hire the coach and then play his old team on the road in September, with his old players on the other sideline, in a stadium that spent the whole week talking about him. LSU had that game tied and could not finish it. Fall from No. 7 to No. 10 and move on. The season is not decided in Week 3, but the Ole Miss half of the SEC West argument just got a lot louder.
The other upset nobody had circled
Kentucky beat No. 9 Texas A&M 31-21 the same afternoon. Will Stein, in his first season as Kentucky's coach after running Oregon's offense, took a team that was not ranked and put the Aggies on the floor by 10. Texas A&M dropped to No. 23. Kentucky is still unranked, which tells you the voters think it was a fluke. Ten points at home over a top-10 team is not a fluke. It is a data point, and the next one comes soon enough.
The new top 10
Texas, Georgia, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Indiana, Miami, Ohio State, Alabama, BYU, LSU. Alabama stayed at No. 8 after needing the fourth quarter to put away Florida State. Texas Tech got past No. 25 Houston 28-26. Oregon, for what it is worth, scored 84 on Portland State and did not move.
Where I land
Ole Miss is a real top-five team with a real closing problem, and LSU is a top-10 team that just learned the coaching change does not come with a grace period. The next time these two see each other, the storyline will be the same and the stakes will be higher. Kentucky is the team to watch for the next two weeks, because if the Texas A&M game was real, the rest of the SEC finds out fast.
Scores per ESPN's scoreboard. Poll movement and game details per Sports Illustrated. Opinion is the taproom's.