OXFORD — These are good days for Ole Miss fans.
Lane Kiffin’s Rebels have won 16 of their last 19, are 5-0 this season and cracked the top 10 after last week’s 22-19 win over then-No. 7 Kentucky.
Understandably, there’s a lot of talk about the Rebels.
From Kiffin’s point of view, there’s also a lot of talk about the fans.
Hardly a press conference goes by that Kiffin doesn’t comment on Ole Miss fans specifically or in more general terms the impact a rowdy, sold-out stadium can have on the outcome of a game.
Last year before the Rebels played LSU, Kiffin implored Ole Miss fans to be more like Alabama and Tennessee when it comes to showing up and being loud.
Monday, he began his press conference with praise for Ole Miss fans for the home-field advantage they created against Kentucky.
Kiffin credited the home crowd for several pre-snap violations committed by the Kentucky offense, one of them an illegal motion call that wiped out a likely game-winning touchdown in the final seconds.
“You could say they won the game. That’s the way we want it to be, so that’s an awesome job,” Kiffin said.
In previous home games the stadium wasn’t full, and fans left early.
“When you come out and run out of the tunnel, and it looks like a high school game playing in a college stadium, you can’t let that affect you. There’s psychology to that,” Kiffin said.
Kiffin is not wrong.
Neither are fans who carefully plan which games they can attend with a family of four.
Tickets, food and gas add up, and those are the baseline costs of attendance. Would you like to add the latest in Rebels gear? You get the picture.
Ole Miss fans are not the only ones making game choices.
Research by the website AthleticDirectorU.com shows a decline in average attendance at FBS games every year since 2013.
Fans, rightfully, look at a college football Saturday as an experience. Sometimes the experience is more than what takes place inside the stadium, whether that means tailgating or walking in town.
Sometimes there’s been enough experience to leave a night game while the reserves are playing to start the drive home.
Even Nick Saban at various times has complained about Alabama fans leaving early.
There’s an interesting component to the discussion as it relates to Ole Miss.
Clearly, fan attendance and engagement is important to Kiffin. He wants the house rocking.
From the day that Kiffin was hired the question from many not connected with Ole Miss has been, “How long will he stay?” with the inference being he couldn’t possibly choose to remain for any substantive amount of time.
It’s easy to reach that conclusion since Kiffin hasn’t exactly put down roots anywhere.
His name has been a part of open job rumors every season since he’s been at Ole Miss, and he’ll be mentioned again this season.
If he leaves, it’s not likely to be about money or facilities. He’s got both at Ole Miss.
So what are other factors?
The ability to win a national championship would be one, and that’s something each coach has to define for himself.
It’s possible that somewhere on any given coach’s list is the game-day environment inside the stadium, not the environment in the tailgating areas. It seems an odd “deal-breaker,” but different things are important to different coaches.
Since the end of the pandemic, Kiffin has been telling Ole Miss fans how important this is to him.
A winning college football team is an expensive passion and in the new day will include not only the price of tickets but contributions to groups like The Grove Collective to pay players through NIL deals.
The good days can continue, but like everything else, they cost more.
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