Ole Miss defeated Georgia 39-34 in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal after a last-minute field goal.
Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss threw for 362 yards, leading a second-half comeback for the Rebels.
Pete Golding, Kiffin’s successor, has now won two playoff games.
NEW ORLEANS — Lane Kiffin held hands with Kim Mulkey at a women’s basketball game while the football team he built for a rival school prepared to play its biggest game in program history.
It’s all still a little surreal.
Ninety minutes before kickoff of a College Football Playoff quarterfinal against Georgia, Mississippi fans inside the Superdome roared in support of Pete Golding, Kiffin’s successor, as he headed toward the locker room.
They’ve crowned their new king. He wins playoff games.
Eighty miles northwest of here on I-10, Mulkey grabbed Kiffin’s hand and thrust it into the air as if he’d won a magnificent prize — say, a $91 million contract from LSU.
Kiffin’s still never won a playoff game. Too bad. Golding’s won two.
As LSU fans feted Kiffin before a basketball game the Tigers would lose, the Ole Miss team he skipped town on prepared to receive the opening kickoff in a playoff game.
In the stands, some Rebels fans wore T-shirts with Kiffin’s name on it, and a four-letter word starting with “F” in front of it.
Surreal, I tell you.
Nothing, though, could be more surreal than this: Ole Miss, the team Kiffin turned heel on, roared as fiercely as ever throughout a second-half rally against one of the best teams college football has to offer. The Rebels toppled Georgia with a last-minute field goal. On to the semifinals against Miami.
And surely none of the jubilant Ole Miss fans among a crowd of 68,371 could wish for a turncoat holding a play sheet on the sideline and wearing his signature white hoodie.
So long to the renegade.
Golding is Mississippi’s hero now. He, and quarterback Trinidad Chambliss.
Who needs Kiffin, anyway? Not Ole Miss in this playoff.
Rebels 39, Georgia 34.
Improbable. Incredible. The stuff of fairytales.
Eat your heart out, Lane.
Golding sent Kirby Smart home a loser.
While Kiffin waited for the transfer portal to open, his former team heroically stormed to a stunning playoff upset.
‘We’re built for this,’ said wide receiver De’Zhaun Stribling, whose 40-yard reception set up the winning field goal.
The Rebels remain in hot pursuit of a national championship that seemed unfathomable after Kiffin vamoosed for the Oxford airport in November and boarded a flight bound for Baton Rouge.
The same fans who chanted Kiffin’s name two months ago sang a different tune after Ole Miss stole the lead from Georgia in the fourth quarter.
Let’s go Rebels! Let’s go Rebels! Let’s go Rebels!
A pro-Rebels crowd turned up the decibels inside the Superdome as Ole Miss slayed the SEC’s champion.
Trinidad Chambliss steals show at Sugar Bowl
This team’s got Kiffin’s fingerprints all over it, but Rebels fans who would rather not think about their former coach can celebrate the quarterback at the joystick of this thrill ride.
Chambliss threw for 362 yards, including a few magical completions while on the run that made you think the Ole Miss offense would be dangerous no matter who stands on the sideline, so long as Chambliss could be its quarterback forever.
Georgia couldn’t tackle what it couldn’t catch. Time and again, Chambliss sprinted away from pass rushers and twirled out of trouble, extending plays until a receiver found open space and Chambliss tossed a completion to him.
Chambliss’ exploits allowed Ole Miss to recover from a two-score halftime deficit, and the Rebels’ rally briefly sent Georgia into a fourth-quarter panic.
Trailing by three points with plenty of time remaining, Georgia went for fourth-and-2 from its own 33-yard line. Ole Miss linebacker Suntarine Perkins could scarcely believe Georgia snapped the ball. When Georgia did, Perkins sacked Gunner Stockton. Chambliss returned to the field. Minutes later, the Rebels were up by two scores.
Ole Miss’ replacement coach and its Division II transfer quarterback made Georgia freak out. Stranger than fiction, this Ole Miss season.
As the Rebels’ lead swelled, Kiffin reshared a social media post about the transfer portal opening.
Simply surreal.
Ole Miss fans chant at Sugar Bowl in salute of Pete Golding
Of course, Georgia wouldn’t go quietly. It used a two-score flurry to tie the game.
Time remained. Not much, but enough for Chambliss. His deep strike to Stribling put Ole Miss in range for a game-winning 47-yard field goal off Lucas Carneiro’s right boot.
And you just had to wonder, as Carneiro’s winning kick sailed through the uprights, whether Kiffin was watching on TV from inside enemy territory.
‘Yeah, for sure’ he’s watching, wide receiver Harrison Wallace III said with a smile.
Let him watch then.
The party was on inside the Superdome, where Chambliss and Golding celebrated a surreal triumph.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.