Lane Kiffin, Pete Golding set tone for LSU-Ole Miss, try not to ‘focus on the wrong sh*t’

The LSU Tigers and Ole Miss Rebels have been playing football against one another since 1894.

This weekend’s showdown might just be the most anticipated in their storied SEC history, though not because of any of the players on the field.

Lane Kiffin jumped from Ole Miss to LSU in the midst of his former team’s quest to potentially win a national championship last season, cementing himself as a lifelong villain in Oxford, MS, and making every college football fan in America circle this weekend’s game, which just so happens to take place there.

Both Kiffin and Ole Miss coach Pete Golding kicked off the highly anticipated week by attempting, likely in vain, to keep the focus on the field.

“I know obviously a lot’s gonna be made about me, but this is about the players being prepared really well and playing really well,” said Kiffin. “You know, Pete’s not gonna tackle anybody. I’m not gonna throw any touchdowns. I used to say the same thing when we played Coach Saban. And then he joked that he wouldn’t do very well in coverage at his age.

“But this is about our guys.”

A for effort from Kiffin, who is the reason there is so much attention on this game, but it’s unlikely to work, especially with College GameDay coming to town on Saturday.

Kiffin admitted he knows all the attention will be on him this week, but he wants his players to use it to their advantage.

“I told the players today, man, you don’t have anything to worry about as far like attention on you all week,” Kiffin said. “There’s going to be so much attention, hatred, everything on me; you just get to go play.

“I said, ‘really, the pressure is on them (Ole Miss)’. They’re the team that, we won seven games last year and they won thirteen. They return two Heisman candidates. How often has that ever happened in the same backfield? Second longest winning streak in the country. You guys just get to go play, and the pressure is not on you.”

As for Golding, who has a penchant for speaking plainly, he offered up a colorful metaphor for how he’s trying to keep his team focused when they take on their former coach.

“We’re going to prepare the right way this week and get locked in and get focused,” said Golding. “A lot going on. You got Ella Langley, you got GameDay, you got so much other stuff.

“But to me, it’s like high school homecoming for these dudes. Like, if you focus on the wrong shit, right, that homecoming dance ain’t very fun after you get your butt beat on a Friday night. So we got to make sure we’re doing everything right throughout the week to get the outcome that we want.”

The hyperbole and metaphors are only getting started when it comes to this game and the coaches at the center of it.