Oxford Police’s reaction to Lane Kiffin’s return is not going unnoticed originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Lane Kiffin’s highly-anticipated return to Oxford will be one of the biggest highlights to start the 2026 college football season. Don’t expect a warm welcome from the Ole Miss faithful after the LSU Tigers coach abandoned the program after six seasons.
Kiffin signed a seven-year, $91 million contract to leave the Rebels. To make matters worse, he took a few digs at Ole Miss’ culture in a Vanity Fair feature piece this week.
This is going to be must-watch TV as Kiffin and LSU travel to Mississippi on Sept. 19. The primetime event will be on ABC with Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit on the call. Needless to say, the world will be watching the SEC matchup and all the fireworks expected to pop off.
With the news of Ole Miss and LSU receiving a confirmed game time and TV lineup this week, the Oxford Police Department expressed their excitement for the event by responding with a GIF of Darryl Philbin from NBC’s smash hit show “The Office.” The post was viewed over 2 million times with several reactions.
https://t.co/crlm23HbSqpic.twitter.com/6thy9Qg48J
— Oxford Police Department (@OxfordPolice) May 13, 2026
“Kiffin also seems willing to indirectly invoke Ole Miss’s struggle to distance itself from symbols like the Confederate flag, Colonel Rebel, and the nickname “Ole Miss” itself,” Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith wrote.
MORE:Demond Williams bombshell could have resulted in Lane Kiffin being fired by LSU
“When he was coaching there, Kiffin says, top recruits would tell him, “‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.’ That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’s diversity feels so great: ‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.’” (The next day Kiffin added, “I just hope [my comment] comes across respectful to Ole Miss…. There are some things that I’m saying that are factual. They’re not shots.” The population of Baton Rouge is about 51% Black and 36% white; Oxford is about 66% white, 26% Black.).”
No doubt Kiffin will hear from the Rebels fans later this year. Tickets for the game in Oxford are already thousands of dollars above face value.
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