Ole Miss Adds Police and Mounted Patrols for Lane Kiffin’s Return With LSU
When a police department starts importing horses from other states, the game has stopped being just a game.
Lane Kiffin comes back to Oxford on Saturday as the head coach of LSU, walking into the stadium he used to call home. Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen is not treating this like a normal SEC weekend. His force is bringing in additional help, including horse-mounted patrols from as far away as New Orleans and Mobile.
McCutchen did shoot down one rumor, telling WTVA’s Jake Holcomb that the National Guard is not involved. He also explained the thinking plainly: “I feel like it will probably be one of the biggest crowds that any of us have ever seen, and so you take that into consideration.”
The precedent is not encouraging
There is a reason Oxford is preparing like this instead of shrugging. The last time Kiffin went back to a school he left, at Tennessee, the end of the game turned into something close to a riot. A golf ball got thrown. Water bottles got thrown. That is the template everyone in Mississippi has in their head this week.
Ole Miss fans are still hot about how Kiffin left last offseason, and they let him hear it. The booing is guaranteed Saturday. The question is what else comes with it.
Mounted patrols are a specific tool. Police use horses for crowd control because a horse can move a crowd in a way that officers on foot cannot. Pulling them from New Orleans and Mobile means Oxford does not believe its own resources are enough. That is a loud statement from a department that has run big SEC Saturdays before.
This is the sport now
It is easy to roll your eyes at coaches leaving for better jobs, because coaches have always left for better jobs. What has changed is that fan bases now treat a departure as a personal betrayal with a revenge date attached, and the schedule keeps delivering those dates.
Kiffin, for his part, has never seemed bothered by being the villain. He plays the role well, and there is no version of Saturday where he pretends not to enjoy the noise. That is part of why Oxford is nervous. A coach who leans into it tends to keep a crowd at a boil for four quarters.
The football is legitimately good, which raises the stakes further. Both teams walked into this week inside the top 10 of the AP poll released Sept. 13, a top 10 that includes Texas at No. 1, Georgia at No. 2, Notre Dame at No. 3, Indiana at No. 4, Miami at No. 5, Ohio State at No. 6, plus Texas A&M and Alabama. LSU enters as the early favorite, which is the worst possible setup for a home crowd that wants to see Kiffin humbled.
Picture the version where LSU is up two scores in the fourth and Kiffin is on the sideline looking relaxed. That is the scenario McCutchen is planning around, and he is right to.
Here is the reasonable expectation: a hostile, deafening, mostly legal afternoon. Most fan bases are better than their worst 200 people. But you do not bring in horses from two states away on a hunch. Somebody in Oxford did the math on what Saturday could become, and the answer made them pick up the phone.
Kiffin will get his welcome. Everyone just wants it to stay in the stands.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.