Both Lane Kiffin and Mark Stoops have a lot at stake Saturday
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Lane Kiffin’s matchups vs. Kentucky have featured 4 straight dramatic endings.
- Ole Miss seeks vengeance for a 2024 loss that hurt its playoff aspirations.
- Kentucky aims to end SEC struggles and flip momentum with another upset win.
READ MORE
Preview: Ole Miss at Kentucky football
Click below to read more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s preview coverage ahead of Saturday’s Kentucky-Ole Miss game at Kroger Field.
Expand All
Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin will be on the visiting sideline at Kroger Field Saturday afternoon. If history holds, that means Lexington will play host to an epic college football drama.
Four previous times — three times at Ole Miss, once at Tennessee — Kiffin has coached against Kentucky.
In all four of those games, the outcome was not decided until the final minute of regulation (twice) or until overtime (twice).
This year, the stakes for “Kiffin vs. Kentucky V” are unusually keen.
Kiffin and the No. 21 Rebels (1-0, 0-0 SEC) will be out to avenge a 20-17 loss to UK last season in Oxford that, essentially, kept Ole Miss from making the College Football Playoff.
Meanwhile, mired in multiple negative streaks, Kentucky head man Mark Stoops and the Wildcats (1-0, 0-0) have desperate need for a narrative-flipping upset.
“They’re electric on both sides of the ball,” Stoops said of Ole Miss at his weekly news conference Monday at Kroger Field. “We’ll have our hands full.”
As an entertainment vehicle, Kiffin vs. Kentucky V has a high standard to uphold:
•2009: In his one season as Tennessee head coach, Kiffin’s Volunteers rallied from a 21-14 halftime deficit to beat Kentucky 30-24 in overtime at the venue then known as Commonwealth Stadium.
Down 24-21, UK had the ball 2nd-and-7 at the UT 10-yard line on the final drive of regulation but had to settle for a tying field goal rather than the winning touchdown.
Montario Hardesty’s 20-yard touchdown run in OT for Tennessee made coach Rich Brooks’ Cats pay for that failure.
•2020: Kiffin got his first win as Ole Miss coach with a 42-41 overtime victory at Kroger Field. UK’s fate was sealed by a missed PAT in the OT and a missed 49-yard field goal in the third quarter.
Mississippi quarterback Matt Corral threw the ball 29 times — and completed 24 for 320 yards and four touchdowns. Kentucky lost in spite of rushing for 559 yards.
•2022: No. 7 Kentucky lost 22-19 at No. 14 Ole Miss after the Wildcats missed two extra points and a 38-yard field-goal attempt and had what likely would have been a game-winning touchdown pass with 58 seconds left called back due to an illegal motion penalty.
With the game’s outcome hanging in the balance on the Wildcats’ final two offensive drives, UK quarterback Will Levis lost fumbles at the Ole Miss 21- and 25-yard lines, respectively.
•2024: With the Wildcats trailing No. 6 Ole Miss 17-13 with 4:02 left in the game and facing a fourth-and-7 from their own 20-yard line, Stoops rolled the dice on a make-or-break fourth-down attempt.
Kentucky quarterback Brock Vandagriff threw to Barion Brown on a go route down the left sideline. Brown made a tough catch, cut back and ran the ball all the way to the Mississippi 17-yard line.
Two plays later, UK had the football in the Rebels’ end zone and a 20-17 lead.
Mississippi’s subsequent attempt to send the game to overtime failed when place-kicker Caden Davis hooked a 48-yard field goal attempt wide left with 48 seconds to play.
On Monday, I asked Stoops if, when SEC football coaches came face to face in May at the league’s 2025 spring meetings in Destin, Florida, Kiffin told the Kentucky coach “I still can’t believe you went for that fourth down.”
“Maybe,” a laughing Stoops said.
Even with the history of closely-contested games in which they have gone against each other, Stoops says he and Kiffin are friendly. Stoops, whose football background is in coaching defense, says he was an admirer of Kiffin’s father, the late Monte Kiffin, who was long a prominent NFL defensive coordinator.
“Have a lot of respect for Lane,” Stoops said. “You know, we communicate, and he’s a very likable person, very good coach. I wouldn’t say our relationship was close, but we go back many years, back to my days at Arizona (as defensive coordinator, 2004 through 2009), and him at USC (as an assistant from 2001 through 2006).
“So, you know, he’s always been a great offensive mind, and I have a lot of respect for him and his family, his father.”
Both Ole Miss and UK have ample reasons to have this season’s meeting circled.
Mississippi has to be smarting over last season’s loss to a Kentucky team (4-8, 1-7 SEC) that did not beat any other power conference opponent — and over what that loss ultimately meant to the Rebels’ CFP aspirations.
Asked if he expected to face a foe Saturday with extra motivation, Stoops said “Ole Miss tries to score every time they touch the ball, no matter who they’re playing. That’s not going to change.”
Meanwhile, UK will enter Saturday’s contest having lost 11 of its past 13 SEC home games and 14 of its past 17 games vs. power conference opponents overall.
A second-straight upset of Kiffin and Mississippi would be a step toward reversing the negativity that the aforementioned streaks have helped create around the UK program.
Whatever happens, history says Kiffin vs. Kentucky V will be a compelling show.
This story was originally published September 1, 2025 at 4:33 PM.
