Oxford Prepares for Lane Kiffin's Return, Bolstered by Out-of-State Police

Depending on who you ask, Sept. 19 in Oxford, Mississippi, will be anything from a post-apocalyptic war zone to a simple lovely fall Saturday with a big game in town when LSU visits for the much-anticipated matchup with Ole Miss .

"I'm thinking about having to send [Lane Kiffin] in on an F-16 and maybe the team on a C-130," Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry joked to ESPN . "Security is going to be really tight. You know, we might need the National Guard out there to protect our team. I think it's going to be an interesting weekend."

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter has admitted to Supertalk Mississippi that he's "tuned out" Landry, but despite efforts from Carter, as well as local officials on campus and off, there will be a visor-clad elephant in the room standing on the opposite sideline who seems to have the entire college football world routinely revolving around him.

"We've had huge games before -- LSU, Georgia , Alabama -- so we have a pretty good template for managing a game like this, though there are a few storylines with this one that add to it," Carter told CBS Sports.

So just how is the town preparing for one of the most anticipated home games ever?

With horse cops, for starters.

If anyone's ever been to Bourbon Street in New Orleans -- and there were plenty of powder blue-clad Rebel fans there for the Sugar Bowl in January -- they'll be familiar with the equine strain of law enforcement.

Mounted police officers are a feature of the revelry, and Oxford will be borrowing some of the NOPD's. Oxford Police Department public information officer Breck Jones told CBS Sports that there are typically six mounted patrol officers in downtown Oxford on a normal gameday.

New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama's police departments will be supplying 13 additional officers for gameday for a total of 19 off-campus. They might be needed, as the LSU alumni association has rented out the historic Lyric Theatre a block away from the square in downtown Oxford for a watch party.

Days before, it hosted a roast of Lane Kiffin.

Jones is expecting at least 100,000 people in the town over the weekend.

"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," Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen told WTVA .

With students counted, Oxford's normal population is around 60,000. The city's police department has around 100 sworn officers, and home game weekends are predictably an all-hands-on-deck endeavor. The Mississippi Highway Patrol announced it will deploy its largest presence ever for a college game weekend, with 65-70 troopers around Oxford. They will combine with Oxford's university police department, which employs 31 officers. There will also be a private security presence throughout the stadium, according to Carter, a common practice at SEC schools.

There will also be approximately 10-15 Louisiana State Police officers, but despite Gov. Landry's predictions, the National Guard will not be called in to help with crowd control.

The Magnolia Bowl has plenty of history on its own

There are Ole Miss fans of a certain age who might tell you the rivalry with LSU is bigger than Mississippi State . They remember the days of Archie Manning dazzling and Billy Cannon weaving through the Tigers punt unit for a Heisman moment.

In 2003, with hotshot quarterback Eli Manning, Ole Miss was expected to win the SEC West matchup as a heavy favorite. But on fourth down with the game on the line, Manning's legs got tangled with his left guard, and he tripped. The Rebels lost the game and still haven't been to Atlanta.

The 2025 matchup was plenty loaded as well, as a Division II transfer named Trinidad Chambliss asserted himself as not just a flash in the pan, but a bona fide star under Kiffin's leadership.

This year's game will feature no LSU fans in the Ole Miss student section if the school gets its way. A Wednesday email obtained by CBS Sports went out to Ole Miss students stating, in part:

"No person wearing an opposing team's gear or colors will be allowed entrance into the student section. Additionally, anyone found to be wearing opposing team apparel or colors in the student section will be removed."

In an April LSU-Ole Miss baseball game, video of an LSU fan punching an Ole Miss fan in the Swayze Field right-field student section went viral. It's another part of Ole Miss officials' push to keep the temperature down.

"To me, what this place has always been about, why so many people love coming here and respect this place is because of the people who are here and how they make (opposing fans) feel when they come here," Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding told reporters this week. "Be there early and be loud. But I think at the end of the day, there's still a respect piece. And this place has always been known to have really, really good people. Let's not lose that over a game or a person or anything like that."

This is the balancing act Ole Miss is trying to strike. They are certainly fomenting a rabid atmosphere (College GameDay will also originate from a stage in the school's iconic tailgating area, The Grove), but what nobody wants is the scenario that unfolded the last time Kiffin returned to a former job as a head coach on the opposing sideline.

Not Kiffin's first rude welcome

Late in the 2021 Ole Miss-Tennessee game, golf balls, mustard bottles and who knows what else rained down from the stands in Neyland Stadium after a questionable call went against the home team.

"That was unfortunate," Carter, who was on the field that night, said. "I could blame Tennessee's security, but the bottom line is something like that can happen anywhere. You probably had 80 to 90 percent of the stadium doing the right thing; it always comes down to that small percentage of bad actors who are hard to manage. We had to move our team, cheerleaders and staff out to the middle of the field, where the bottles couldn't reach -- probably a 20- to 30-minute delay while we figured out whether to finish the game or cancel it. We were able to finish, but as an administrator, that's your worst nightmare -- it gives your university an image that isn't who you are. That's a concern for this weekend too."

Carter and his staff have informally planned for this for months, but drilled down within the last month and a half, using last weekend's home opener as a test run for their operational plan. Now it's game time, and there's perhaps never been a bigger or weirder LSU-Ole Miss game in the 114 all-time meetings.

Add CBS Sports on Google Join the Conversation comments

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/oxford-impact-lane-kiffin-college-football/)._