UPDATE: Lane Kiffin confirmed that the X account did indeed belong to Ole Miss staffer Fisher Ray following the Rebels’ 38-25 win over Penn State in the Peach Bowl.
“I was made aware of that,” Kiffin said, via The Rebel Walk. “I was glad we won…so they couldn’t use it as bulletin board material. I thought it was pretty funny, because they discovered it was Fisher Ray, one of our student assistants, who did that. It was all in good fun. I hope the fans had good fun with that.”
Lane Kiffin on that Penn State troll account on twitter: "I was made aware of that. I was glad we won…so they couldn't use it as bulletin board material. I thought it was pretty funny, because they discovered it was Fisher Ray, one of our student assistants, who did that. It…
— The Rebel Walk (@TheRebelWalk) December 30, 2023
ORIGINAL: Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin has often drawn attention for his various uses of social media. Those have included serious things such as pushback on reporters, but also funnier things like his participation in TikTok trends, his account for his dog, and his engagement with critics. The latter has him under a bit of fire at the moment, though, with that coming around a “@WEARE_PENNST23” Twitter/X account Kiffin retweeted four times Friday ahead of Ole Miss’ Peach Bowl matchup with the Nittany Lions Saturday:
That anonymous account was created this December. As of 1 p.m. ET Saturday, it had just 66 followers, including Kiffin. And it had only posted seven tweets (six original and one retweet of a reply), with all of those coming Friday and four of them retweeted by Kiffin.
Now, it’s certainly possible Kiffin found this from just a search for “Ole Miss.” But some on Twitter, including Uproxx’s Bill DeFilippo, have suggested another possibility. And that comes from the account recovery address looking quite like the one assigned to Ole Miss offensive assistant Fisher Ray:
did lane have an ole miss staffer make a fake PSU fan account and tweet Disrespect™️ so he could RT it as motivation lol https://t.co/NDXbKgwqMs pic.twitter.com/NzbilwCGRg
— Bill DiFilippo (@billdifilippo) December 30, 2023
That’s certainly not conclusive proof Ray was/is behind this account. There are other possible name combinations that work there, including the likes of jf123@outlook.com. And even if Ray is behind this is, that doesn’t necessarily mean he did this at Kiffin’s instigation. And even if this is an Ole Miss-associated burner, that seems less significant than some past burners linked to coaches or executives that revealed internal information, with this only being some trash talk.
If the specific comments attributed to Penn State players on targeting individual Ole Miss players were fabricated, though, that’s not great. And making up criticism to react to is a step beyond reacting to criticism anonymously in any case. This isn’t necessarily provable, and wouldn’t necessarily be a huge deal if it was, but if this is Ole Miss-linked, it’s not a great look for Kiffin and/or Ray. (And at the very least, if you’re going to make a burner account, don’t use your work email address.)
[Bill DiFilippo on Twitter]
