Golding: Beating LSU 'sweet' but not Ole Miss' 'Super Bowl' - ESPN

OXFORD, Miss. — It has been the game everyone had circled since Lane Kiffin skipped town, but now that it's over and Ole Miss has tasted sweet revenge, Pete Golding isn't ready to turn the celebration into anything more than a one-night party.

After the Rebels' raucous 32-24 win over LSU on Saturday, Golding tried his best to keep downplaying a narrative that has chased him since he was named Kiffin's replacement last November.

«I told our team, 'I don't think anybody came here to beat LSU,'» Golding said. «That's not what our goal was coming in. Yes, is it sweet? Absolutely. Go enjoy tonight. But we've got to come back to work.… It wasn't our Super Bowl, and we didn't make it out to be our Super Bowl.»

After winning a pair of playoff games last season and starting 3-0 in 2026, Golding and Ole Miss rightly have higher aspirations. But the scene in Oxford, as its wayward son returned on the enemy's sideline, was impossible to ignore and showed the magnitude of Saturday night's showdown.

Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss made a point of looking to the LSU sideline after each of his three touchdowns Saturday — not as a slight to Kiffin, he said, but as an almost automatic response.

«There's a lot of emotions,» said Chambliss, who threw for 363 yards and a pair of scores, including leading Ole Miss on a go-ahead drive with 6:14 to play. «I kind of black out in a big game. I kind of looked out; I might've been looking over to the sideline, but it's just because I'm a competitor.»

In the aftermath, Chambliss ended his on-field interview with ESPN by saying «Hotty f---ing Toddy,» which he later apologized for and said was another instance of his emotions getting the better of him. Then, he celebrated with the student section,