No. 7 LSU at No. 8 Ole Miss is one of the biggest games of the season and it’s one everyone has been preparing for since last December.
Players and coaches at both teams have been preparing, school officials have been preparing and fans too have been gearing up for what’ll be an electric, unique environment in Oxford and inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
Unsurprisingly, due to the emotions surrounding Lane Kiffin returning to Oxford, security is at the top of lots of folks’ minds. But they too have been preparing.
“I feel like it will probably be one of the biggest crowds that any of us have ever seen, and so you take that into consideration,” Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen said, according to WTVA.
McCutchen added that he had been working with law enforcement in Mobile Ala., and New Orleans to ensure there are extra horse-mounted patrols around the city.
McCutchen seems to understand the seriousness of the situation. Two passionate fan bases who already have enough reasons to hate one another being confined in a small area? That’s a recipe for something bad.
However, some people still tried to find the funny in the situation.
“I’m thinking about having to send him in on an F-16 and maybe the team on a C-130,” Louisiana governor Jeff Landry told ESPN. “Security is going to be really tight. You know, we might need the National Guard out there to protect our team. I think it’s going to be an interesting weekend.”
McCutchen, in the same WTVA report, said the National Guard would not be called upon.
Landry told ESPN that his office has had discussions with Ole Miss officials to ensure that Kiffin and LSU’s players will be safe.
“I know that we’ve been talking with Mississippi and making sure that we have adequate security for the team and coach,” Landry said. “But I’m hoping that we can go there and play in complete Southern hospitality and have a great, great game.”
Right, because opposing fan bases have been treated to the epitome of southern hospitality in Baton Rouge. Death Valley is known more for its five-word phrase about a tiger’s anatomy and a weird love for “Neck.” Southern hospitality is more commonly associated with Oxford.
All of that will likely lead to folks like Landy in Louisiana lambasting how rude and disrespectful fans in Oxford were and how they should be ashamed of their behavior. Meanwhile, next week there’ll probably be a 10-year-old kid in Baton Rouge walking up to an opposing team’s fan telling to them suck on something on than a tiger’s blood-flavored snow cone.
That’s only if something bad does happen, which isn’t guaranteed. But governors fanning the flames of a sporting event already engulfed in a raging inferno aren’t necessary.
And, no, this writer isn’t the only one that didn’t find Landry’s political speech funny.
Appearing on ESPN’s Get Up, Paul Finebaum said Landry’s comment were completely unnecessary.
“Not funny at all, Greeny,” Finebaum said. “You have no idea how much security is going into behind the scenes security that you’ll never see on game day or during the game broadcast. They are very concerned in Oxford, and you got the loudmouth governor of Louisiana who thinks he owns that university because he brought Lane Kiffin in, and he did.
“He called him not long after Brian Kelly was fired and lured him to Baton Rouge. Is now making light of a very serious situation, and that I mean-I don’t even know how to use words here to describe how unfortunate that is because of the seriousness of this situation. It’s not funny. Lane Kiffin, at least to his credit, was low key. He tried not to add any fuel. The governor just dropped a barrel of oil on top of a burning fire and walked away to go do whatever governors do in Louisiana.”
And that would be to run the LSU athletic department, which is on fire too. So, maybe Landry is a fire expert or something.
Either way, here’s hoping Saturday is loud, chaotic, energetic and, most importantly, safe.
