If any team has a year-long score to settle this weekend on its home turf, it is Ole Miss.
Amid multiple rumors and storylines surrounding coach Lane Kiffin, the No. 7 Rebels (9-1, 5-1 SEC), who dropped one spot in Tuesday’s College Football Playoff rankings, will have two more tests before the regular season closes. The first test will come Saturday night when Ole Miss faces Florida in Oxford, Miss.
The Gators (3-6, 2-4) dealt the Rebels their third loss and dashed their hopes of making the playoff last November when they stunned then-No. 9 Ole Miss and quarterback Jaxson Dart 24-17 in Gainesville.
Then there are the rumors another school will poach Kiffin, which have proliferated on college football social media since Florida fired coach Billy Napier on Oct. 19. LSU then entered the Kiffin talk when coach Brian Kelly was shown the door one week after Napier.
“I don’t read all the stuff,” said Kiffin, in his sixth season at Ole Miss. “Somebody was just saying that today, one of our student assistants explained to me, the fans are going back and forth. And they said, ‘I think there’s a new rivalry, Ole Miss fans and Florida fans, and they should just put a steel cage somewhere and let them fight it out.'”
Kiffin loves his group of quarterbacks, featuring Austin Simmons and Trinidad Chambliss.
Simmons earned the starting nod but has played sparingly since getting hurt in September, while Chambliss — a transfer from Ferris State — has stepped in and blossomed.
Chambliss has passed for 2,356 yards and 13 touchdowns against two interceptions. He has rushed for 434 yards and six scores.
“Someone said this morning if you think about it, (since) the helmet player-to-coach communication has come around, our quarterbacks have thrown for more yards than anyone else in the country,” Kiffin said. “That’s obviously three really good quarterbacks — Jaxson last year and these two.”
The greatest intrigue on Florida’s side heading into game week was who would start at quarterback — benched starter DJ Lagway or freshman backup Tramell Jones Jr.
Billy Gonzales, 0-2 in his role as the team’s interim coach, removed all doubt Monday in Florida’s weekly press conference. It will be the Lagway, a preseason Heisman hopeful who has foundered against the schedule’s best competition.
“If a pitcher’s struggling in the major leagues, what do you do? You get the next guy in, right?” Gonzales said. “It doesn’t mean that he’s not a great pitcher. Just means that wasn’t his day. For some reason or another, it wasn’t breaking. For some reason or another, he didn’t have the day that he wanted to have.”
At Kentucky last Saturday night, Gonzales watched the Wildcats overwhelm Lagway, who produce an 11-for-19, 83-yard showing with one touchdown and three interceptions.
Kentucky embarrassed the visitors 38-7 in Florida’s biggest loss against an unranked team since 1970.
“I talked to (Lagway) about that,” Gonzales added. “I said, ‘So you’re a great player, but I’m not going to let somebody just continue to struggle. I wanted to bring you out and let you refocus, let you gather, let you learn, and hopefully it’s a learning experience.'”
Lagway, 20, has 1,762 passing yards with 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions this season.
