Thompson: LSU-Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin and an old fight made new - ESPN

DURING THE WEEKS leading up to Lane Kiffin's return to Oxford, I thought a lot about a button my dad wore to Ole Miss games that said GEAUX TO HELL LSU.

My dad alternated between this button about LSU's place in the fiery afterlife and another one that said ARCHIE'S ARMY, a tribute to the great scrambling quarterback Archie Manning. Both sides of a fan's emotional currency, love and hate. Dad seemed to choose the LSU button more often than not. Something about the bitterness of hatred trumped the sugar high of love, which is probably why the GEAUX TO HELL button remains a core memory of my late father. I buried him with it, along with a ticket to the Masters, and I can see it now, the serifs on the font, the white background with red letters. I tend to see color and sound where full memories should be, the flash of a madras shirt, the sunlight skipping off a sousaphone's bell or the chrome bumper of a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. I don't remember specific days, or scores, and the only moment that remains completely intact is when my dad threw a pass to me during a tailgate and I laid out to make a diving grab. At that moment Jake Gibbs, former Ole Miss football star and New York Yankees catcher, walked past and said, «Nice catch!»

Dad loved retelling that story on game days, so all these years later, sitting here adrift in memory, I wonder if it really happened at all. I sometimes feel the urge to protect every fragile piece of the past, to catalog artifacts, to preserve the old stories and relics. I feel it now, with a football game approaching, and bringing with it a rivalry's welcome and unwelcome ghosts.

I remember clearly the day before my dad's funeral. The house on Clark Street filled with food and people. I