Ole Miss And Georgia Made A Classic Out Of Chaos

Thursday night's Mississippi-Georgia game was one of those seminally batshit evenings in a sport that generally likes to wallow in its own self-parodic seriousness, and not just because nobody could seem to figure out when it was supposed to end. The stage upon which the Rebels were supposed to receive the Sugar Bowl trophy after outpunching the Bulldogs came to resemble the 1982 Stanford Band in its ability to enter, leave, and then re-enter the field of play—twice—before the game could actually be declared officially over. This was hilarious enough, and the stock shots of happy Mississippi players interspersed with shots of Mississippi players getting annoyed that they couldn't be happy until the adults could figure out when and where they could express that joy was everything you have to come know about the industry in 2025. Oh, and the game itself was pretty good, too.

The stage-specific slapstick was the ideal ending to the best and weirdest football game of the college season. Except that, this being Ole Miss and all, it didn't end even after it ended because they don't know when it was all supposed to end. By beating Georgia 39-34 in a game that lurched between brilliance, zaniness, and miscellaneous stuff-you-never-saw-before, Mississippi won the chance to keep playing in January when they have normally struggled to reach the end of November. In doing so, the program re-set its collision course with peripatetic imp Lane Kiffin, the coach who won't go away.