OurTupelo

OXFORD — LSU knew better than any other team in America what it was facing in Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss. In this case, familiarity breeds not contempt but respect. Familiarity did not help the Tigers one single bit. The outcome of one of the most anticipated games in Mississippi history was on the line, and Chambliss stepped up and won it.

That’s all he did. He won the game. Chambliss was, as he so often is, magical in the Rebels’ hard-earned 32-24 victory amid one of the most intense atmospheres imaginable. This game was dripping emotion from both teams and more than 70,000 fans.

READ MORE: Shakespeare could have written this LSU-Ole Miss football plot

READ MORE: The Grove, the crowds, the rivalry: Football fans party together, and taunt each other, on LSU-Ole Miss game day

Chambliss’s numbers, impressive as they were, tell only part of the story, but let’s get that part out of the way. He did it with his right arm, completing 33 of 48 passes for 363 yards and two touchdowns. He did it with his legs, often racing away from a fierce LSU pass rush to throw perfect darts, and then scoring the winning touchdown on a 14-yard scamper with five minutes, seven seconds remaining.

When Ole Miss needed him most, Chambliss delivered. As Pete Golding said of Chambliss afterward, “He’s just such a fierce competitor. That’s why our guys believe in him.”

Lane Kiffin, Chambliss’s coach until Kiffin quit Ole Miss on the verge of the NCAA playoffs last year, called Chambliss “the most dynamic player in college football. … You scheme him up and you make good (defensive) calls, and he just makes plays. That’s why he is who he is.”

“Houdini plays,” Kiffin called them.

If you watched the game you know Chambliss didn’t do it by himself. The Ole Miss defense, especially in the first half, pursued with uncommon speed and aggressiveness. Rebel receivers made big plays, too, especially heretofore little-used slot receiver Traylon Ray.

“Traylon, who?” you might ask, as I did, when Ray kept making big catch after big catch.

Traylon Ray, who transferred to Ole Miss from West Virginia last year, couldn’t get on the field as a wide receiver and was switched to cornerback because the Ole Miss really needed help at that position. That didn’t work out, either, but he returned to Ole Miss for his junior season when promised a chance to again play wide receiver. He didn’t catch a single pass last year. He caught four for 54 yards in the Rebels’ first two games this year.

And then came Saturday night when the Tallahassee native was targeted eight times and caught seven passes for 115 yards and one touchdown. Chambliss says Rebel fans should get used to it. “He’s great guy and a great player,” Chambliss said of Ray. “He made some really big plays tonight.”

The respect is mutual. “Trinidad has a lot of trust in me and I have a lot of trust in him,” Ray said. “Trinidad’s a gamer.”

Ole Miss needed players to step up because running back Kewan Lacy, the Rebels’ other superstar, missed the second half with a banged up shoulder after running nine times for 43 tough yards and a touchdown in the first half. JT Lindsey, a transfer from LSU, played well in relief of Lacy, running four times for 20 yards and a couple key first downs.

But let’s get back to Chambliss, who really might be the most entertaining player in the country and is currently in the first sentence of any way-too-early conversation about the 2026 Heisman Trophy. 

Let’s look at the four Ole Miss touchdown drives. On the first, which gave the Rebels a 10-0 first quarter lead, Chambliss completed all four of his passes for 70 yards, setting up Lacy’s five-yard touchdown lead. On the second Rebel TD drive, which put the Rebels up 17-0, he completed four of six passes for 37 yards, including a 21-yard TD strike to Ray.

On the third, after LSU had scored, Chambliss responded by hitting six of eight throws for 75 yards, including a 20-yard touchdown throw to Deuce Alexander for a 24-7 Ole Miss lead late in the first half. By that time, most of the 70,033 fans were dancing in the aisles. Vaught-Hemingway Stadium has rarely, if ever, been so loud.

LSU stopped all that dancing in the second half when the Tigers reeled off 17 straight points to draw even at 24. Momentum had done an about-face. After running only 14 times for 55 yards in the first half, the Tigers went physical and started pushing the Rebels around for 117 rushing yards in the second half, much of it right at the heart of the Ole Miss defense.

So that made the score 24-all and set the stage for the climax of Saturday night’s Trinidad Show. Chambliss drove the Rebels 75 yards in 12 plays, personally accounting for all the yardage. He completed six of eight passes for 62 yards, and then scored the winning touchdown with one of those “Houdini” plays. He faked a handoff to Lindsey and kept the ball around left end for a 14 yards and a touchdown. All but one Tiger bit on the fake, and Chambliss simply out-ran him. This storied old concrete stadium might or might not have shaken at that precise moment.

And then Ole Miss pulled one over on LSU, lining up for a two-point conversion. Just when some of us thought the Rebels coaches had gone mad, Chambliss fooled LSU with a hard count and the Tigers jumped offsides. So Ole Miss lined up, looking as if they would go for two again from the one-yard line. And guess what, LSU jumped again. So now, needing only 18 inches, Chambliss really did take the snap and hand the ball to Lindsey for an easy two points.

“We practiced that all week,” Golding said. “With an eight-point lead (and just five minutes left), we knew we couldn’t lose.”

It did get hairy. LSU, as talented as you would expect with a reported $50 million roster payroll, drove to the Ole Miss six. On fourth and goal from there, Kam Franklin batted Sam Leavitt’s pass high into the air and Jaylon Braxton snatched it to seal the deal and set off a lengthy on-field victory celebration.

“Congrats to those guys; they deserved to win,” Kiffin would say post-game.

“I’m just so happy for our guys,” Golding said before trying to set the tone for what comes next for Ole Miss.

“This wasn’t the Super Bowl,” Golding said. “Am I super proud of them? Yes. But this wasn’t our goal. We’ve got a really tough game next week against a really talented Florida team, We’ll celebrate tonight and then get back to work.”

Not to worry, said Traylon Ray, the Rebels’ newest football hero, “Tonight, we celebrate,” Ray said. “Tomorrow when I wake up, it’s back to work.”

The future of the Ole Miss team is filled with wonderful possibilities. That said, for all who bleed Red and Blue, the immediate past will be treasured no matter what comes next.

Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson’s recent reminder that there will be no possibility of runoff elections in Mississippi’s upcoming U.S. Senate and House races conjures up memories from the historic 2020 legislative session.

The 2020 session of the Mississippi Legislature will be remembered for removing some long lingering links to the state’s racist past, and for that, lawmakers should be commended.

The Legislature, most notably, removed the old state flag that displayed the Confederate battle symbol prominently in its design.

Replacing the flag was not the only action taken by the 2020 Legislature to deal with vestiges of the state’s racial sins.

They also removed a Jim Crow provision of  the 1890 state constitution designed to make it more difficult for Black Mississippians to be elected to statewide office.

At the strong insistence of U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan of the Southern District of Mississippi, the 2020 Legislature put on the ballot a proposal to amend the state constitution to remove a provision saying that if no candidate for statewide offices (not federal posts) garnered a majority of the vote and the most votes in a majority of the 122 House districts, the House would select the winner from the top two vote-getters. The provision, it was clear from the narrative of the day, was put in the 1890 constitution to prevent Black people, who at the time constituted a majority of the state’s population, from winning the office of governor or any of the other Mississippi statewide posts.

Surprisingly, Vermont is now the only state that still has a provision throwing statewide elections to its Legislature if no candidate obtains a majority of the vote.

While Mississippi legislators removed some of those bygone connections to racism and the state’s Jim Crow laws during that historic session, they embraced another – runoff elections. They replaced the House electoral process for statewide officeholders with a runoff.

It should be noted that the Legislature opted to place on the ballot for voters to decide a proposal to adopt the runoff in place of the electoral process. Legislators could have just as easily not included the runoff provision in the proposal or at least have allowed voters to decide whether to have a runoff or do like the vast majority of states and recognize the person with the most votes – a majority or not – as the winner of the election.

 By adopting the runoff, Mississippi joined Georgia as the only other state that mandated a runoff if no statewide candidate garnered a majority in a general election. The Georgia provision applies to both federal and state offices while in Mississippi, as Watson pointed out, the runoff occurs only for state offices.

So, in the Nov. 3 U.S. Senate election in Mississippi, the candidate – Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Democrat Scott Colom or independent Ty Pinkins – who captures the most votes, majority or not, will win the post.

Interestingly, Georgia imposed its runoff in the 1960s when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s electoral provision that was remarkably similar to Mississippi’s that was removed in 2020.

According to published reports, Denmark Grover, the then-Georgia legislator who played a key role in creating the runoff, did not try to hide his intent.

“If you want to establish if I was racially prejudiced, I was,” he said years later. “If you want to establish that some of my political activity was racially motivated, it was.”

Louisiana also has a runoff election, but the circumstances are different since the state does not have traditional party primaries. Instead, candidates from all parties are on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters, if no one obtains a majority,  advance to a runoff.

A handful of states, mostly those from the South where Jim Crow ruled for decades, have runoffs for party primary elections if no candidate obtains a majority.

But only Georgia and Mississippi go that step further to require runoffs in the general election.

As Georgia trends blue or toward the Democratic Party, it will be interesting to see if there are efforts to remove the runoff there.

And if that happens, Mississippi will be the only state with a general election runoff and it is not a remnant of the state’s racial past. It was adopted in the 2020s. 

OXFORD — Lane Kiffin’s new team at LSU couldn’t deny Trinidad Chambliss — the quarterback Kiffin helped transform into a star after recruiting him from a Division II program to Mississippi last year.

Chambliss passed for 363 yards and two touchdowns and ran for a tiebreaking score in the fourth quarter, and No. 8 Ole Miss delighted a crowd that was already revved up about Kiffin’s return, beating the seventh-ranked Tigers 32-24 on Saturday night.

READ MORE: The Grove, the crowds, the rivalry: Football fans party together, and taunt each other, on LSU-Ole Miss game day

READ MORE: Shakespeare could have written this LSU-Ole Miss football plot

LSU stormed back from a 24-7 halftime deficit to tie the game before Chambliss engineered a 75-yard touchdown drive without the services of top running back Kewan Lacy, who left the game with an injured left shoulder.

Chambliss faked a handoff and ran 14 yards against the grain, outracing LSU safety Ty Benefield to the left pylon, and Ole Miss (3-0, 1-0 Southeastern Conference) added a 2-point conversion to take an eight-point lead with 6:14 to go.

Ole Miss drew LSU offside twice while lining up for the conversion before converting it from a half-yard out on a direct snap to JT Lindsey.

LSU answered by driving 69 yards to the Ole Miss 6 before Sam Leavitt missed open tight end Zach Grace along the goal line with a third-down pass, and then had his fourth-down pass deflect off the helmet of defensive end Kam Franklin. Jaylon Braxton intercepted the ball in the end zone to seal it as Kiffin virtually collapsed to his knees.

Leavitt passed for 153 yards and a touchdown and ran for 63 yards and a score for LSU (2-1, 0-1).

The Tigers’ comeback bid began in earnest with pressure by Benefield, whose blitz forced Chambliss into a rushed throw that was intercepted by Ja’Keem Jackson and returned 10 yards to the Rebels 33.

Leavitt took it from there, gaining 10 yards on a scramble up the middle that ended with the QB being flipped upside down by multiple tacklers before crashing down hard on the 4-yard line. Leavitt responded to the big hit with a tackle-slipping scoring run on the next play to make it 24-14.

After Lucas Caneiro missed a 53-yard field goal attempt wide right, LSU pulled within 24-21 on Leavitt’s 26-yard pass to Ole Miss transfer Winston Watkins Jr., who made a leaping, twisting catch near the right corner of the end zone and touched one foot down.

LSU was driving to potentially take the lead when star tight end Trey’Dez Green injured his right knee on a first-down catch in Ole Miss territory. The Tigers wound up tying it with a field goal before Ole Miss drove for the decisive score.

Ole Miss has defeated LSU in consecutive seasons, with Chambliss starring in both games — the first with Kiffin as his coach.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who was instrumental in an LSU athletic department shake-up last fall that precipitated Kiffin’s hiring, smiled widely as he posed for a picture with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill on the field during pregame warmups.

But they couldn’t have been happy about how the game began.

Chambliss sparked Ole Miss to a 17-0 lead, highlighted by Lacy’s 5-yard power run through the middle of the line and Chambliss’ 21-yard pass to Traylon Ray.

Ray, who finished with seven catches for 115 yards, was instrumental on the first touchdown drive, outleaping two defenders for a 36-yard catch along the right sideline.

LSU trimmed the Rebels’ lead to 17-7 on Dilin Jones’ 2-yard run with 1:57 left in the half — enough time for Chambliss to direct another scoring drive.

After eluding the LSU pass rush, Chambliss rifled a 20 yard pass to Deuce Alexander in the middle of the end zone to make it 24-7 just 7 seconds before halftime, and Ole Miss fans stood and roared in approval as the Rebels trotted to the locker room.

The takeaway

LSU: The Tigers will be disappointed by their slow start but encouraged by a strong second half that took a tough road game down to the wire in Kiffin’s third game in charge. But Green’s injury could loom large. The Tigers also lost linebacker-safety Dashawn Spears to a lower left leg injury in the first half.

Ole Miss: Chambliss’ calm under pressure and dynamic play made the difference, especially after Lacy had to leave the game in the third quarter. The Rebels will have to hope Lacy’s injury doesn’t keep him out for too long.

Up next

LSU: Hosts current No. 9 Texas A&M next Saturday.

Mississippi: Visits Florida next Saturday.

OXFORD — A sea of red and blue tents filled the Grove at the University of Mississippi as tens of thousands of people converged on campus Saturday for the long-anticipated Top 10 game between LSU and Ole Miss.

The longstanding rivalry became a grudge match after Lane Kiffin ditched his job as the Ole Miss head coach before the end of the 2025 season for a bigger paycheck in Baton Rouge. Ole Miss fans toted hand-lettered signs that mocked Kiffin, calling him a traitor and worse.

ESPN broadcast its “College GameDay” from the Grove, and Ole Miss student James Whitehead won $1 million by kicking a field goal on air.

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman — a Mississippi native and resident, and frequent front-row fan at Ole Miss basketball games — served as the celebrity guest picker for the weekend’s college football games, wearing an Ole Miss baseball hat and choosing the Rebels to win.

“If I go for what’s his name,” Freeman said, as the ESPN hosts said Lane Kiffin, “I will not be able to go home tonight.”

READ MORE: Shakespeare could have written this LSU-Ole Miss football plot

The vibe varied widely on campus. Some families and friends who have opposing allegiances shared food and drinks at tailgate parties.

“I’m not going to show up and not wear purple and gold,” Brock McGoogan said, sporting the Tigers’ colors as he stood with his girlfriend, Summer Huerkamp, who is an Ole Miss fan

In other areas, Ole Miss and LSU fans shouted at each other — some of them, after getting their fill of chicken fingers, potato salad and beer or bourbon.

As kickoff drew closer and the Mississippi heat beat down even harder, the crowd was elbow-to-elbow and many partiers grew rowdier.

Ole Miss fans erupted in cheers as their team walked through the Grove on the way to Vaught Hemingway stadium. The Rebels were led by two star players who declined to transfer to LSU with Kiffin and are now being being promoted by Ole Miss as Heisman candidates — quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy.

PASS CHRISTIAN — Mississippi’s oyster reefs are showing signs of growth ahead of the 2026-27 season, but for fishermen like James Miller, rebuilding the industry also means finding enough buyers to make getting on the water worthwhile. 

“We’ve just got to get our market moving again,” Miller said. “It’s going to happen. It will take time.” 

At a Sept. 8 stakeholder meeting in Pass Christian, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources estimated there are just under 400,000 sacks of oysters across surveyed reefs in the Mississippi Sound, up from about 275,000 last year. 

The growth follows a roughly 50,000-sack harvest during the 2025-26 season, which MDMR said was the largest harvest in more than a decade. 

Joe Spraggins, executive director of MDMR, said Mississippi is moving in the right direction. 

“We’ve got big oysters. That’s what started last year, right? That’s all that’s in Mississippi,” Spraggins said. “We can get that reputation back by bringing in 100,000 sacks of market-sized oysters.” 

Reef health

Mississippi’s oyster industry is still rebuilding from the effects of the 2019 Bonnet Carré Spillway openings, which sent large amounts of freshwater into the Mississippi Sound and caused salinity levels to fall. 

MDMR estimated oyster mortality across major reefs in the western Mississippi Sound at nearly 97% following the openings. 

Since then, the department has used reef monitoring, cult placement and other restoration efforts to rebuild oyster populations. 

Jason Rider, director of MDMR’s Shellfish Bureau, pointed fishermen toward Henderson Point and St. Joe, where population estimates increased and harvest pressure was relatively low last season. 

“We’re seeing the growth across nearly every size class with the spats. That’s picking up significantly,” Rider said. “That’s really encouraging for us. That’s a really good, strong sign of growth.” 

Other reefs did not see the same gains. 

According to MDMR, the density of market-size oysters at Pass Christian Dredging declined from 19 oysters per square meter, or per 10.76 square feet, in 2025 to 8.2 in 2026. At Pass Christian Dredging, density dropped from 2.7 to 1.2 oysters per square meter. 

MDMR officials said Pass Christian Tonging, Pass Christian Dredging and Pass Marianne were among the areas affected by heavy rainfall and lower salinity this summer. 

Rider said the department will continue monitoring the reefs and investing in restoration efforts. 

This summer, MDMR placed limestone and shell, known as cultch, across 236 acres of oyster habitat. Much of that work was concentrated on reefs affected by the heavy rainfall.

Managing the harvest

MDMR plans to maintain a 30% harvest quota for individual reef areas this season. Because the quota is based on oyster population estimates, the number of sacks available for harvest can increase or decrease as populations change. 

During the 2025-26 season, harvest exceeded the 30% quota in several areas. MDMR reported harvests of roughly 41% at Pass Christian Tonging, 37% at Pass Christian Dredging and 34% at Pass Marianne. Henderson Point and St. Joe were much lower, at about 8% and 1%, respectively. 

Miller said he believes individual reefs should be closed once they reach the 30% quota to prevent too much harvesting in one area. 

“They keep the reef sometimes open too long in areas,” Miller said. “Once they meet their quota, they need to shut it down.” 

The Roy Howard Community Journalism Center has reached out to Rider for more information about why harvest exceeded the 30% quota in some areas last season and how MDMR plans to manage the quota this season. Rider has not yet responded. 

MDMR also plans to maintain last season’s daily commercial limits of 15 sacks per tonging vessel and 20 sacks per dredging vessel. Those daily limits are separate from the 30% seasonal harvest quota. 

Miller supports keeping the daily limits in place. He said allowing fishermen to bring in more oysters would do little good if there are not enough buyers. 

“If you can’t sell them, why bring them in?” Miller said. 

Rebuilding the market

The 2026-27 oyster season is scheduled to open Oct. 1, nearly two weeks earlier than last year’s Oct. 13 opening. 

Miller, a lifelong fisherman from D’Iberville, supports the earlier opening because he said lower rainfall in the fall can give fishermen more opportunities to harvest before river conditions lead to reef closures. 

He said the commercial market remains another challenge after years of limited Mississippi harvests. 

“When you’re off for five years, your market is slowly progressing, coming back,” Miller said. 

He said oysters from other Gulf states, including Louisiana and Texas, have filled some of the demand that Mississippi fishermen previously served. 

“We’ve got a kind of show that we do have a good oyster for them to buy, and we can boost our market back up,” Miller said. “It’s going to take time.” 

Operating costs are another concern. 

Miller said fuel costs have cut into his income from fishing and shrimping. He estimated he has recently spent $3,500 to $4,000 a week on fuel while working on the water. 

Still, Miller said he believes keeping harvest limits in place while Mississippi rebuilds both its oyster populations and commercial market is the best approach. 

“We had a good thing last year,” Miller said. “It’ll be a good thing this year.” 

Ole Miss fans nursing bloody marys in the Grove before Saturday’s LSU game may notice something unusual overhead: a plane towing a “Cindy High-Prices” banner.

The nickname is one Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom has used for his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

The plane is expected to fly over the Ole Miss campus starting at 10 a.m., then over Vaught-Hemingway Stadium from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. as more than 68,000 fans arrive for the 6:30 p.m. kickoff, according to a news release from public relations firm Downfield Strategies.

It’s unclear who’s behind it, though it’s a third-party, likely a political action committee. A Colom campaign spokesperson said the campaign is not responsible.

Nathan Calvert, communications director for the Hyde-Smith campaign, said the group behind the airplane is wasting their money just like Colom will “waste our tax dollars if he wins.”

An incumbent Republican who’s a former sheriff, a Democratic retired senior non-commissioned officer and an independent businessman and perennial candidate are vying to represent southern Mississippi in Congress for the next two years. 

State Rep. Jeffrey Hulum III of Gulfport is the Democratic challenger trying to oust incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Ezell, despite the Gulf Coast congressional district having remained solidly conservative for nearly two decades. Independent Carl Boyanton of Diamondhead is making his fourth run for the seat.

Hulum told Mississippi Today during an episode of “The Other Side” podcast that he decided to run because the area needs a unifying figure to combat divisiveness, support K-12 public education and support veterans.  

“We’re too divided as a country,” Hulum said. “We’re too divided as a community. But we need a unifier. Someone who’s going to bring people together, be more neighborly and look out for the well-being of one another.” 

If elected, Hulum said he would consult constituents on major policy issues, instead of blindly supporting a political party or political figure.

“We have to put the will of South Mississippi before anyone’s political agenda or aspirations,” Hulum said.

Hulum is attempting to become the first Democrat to win the southern district since 2008. He currently represents Gulfport in the Mississippi House of Representatives, and he served in the U.S. Army for 22 years, retiring as a sergeant major. If elected, Hulum would be the first Black person to represent the 4th Congressional District. 

Hulum hopes that President Donald Trump’s unpopular decision to escalate the military conflict in Iran and enact additional tariffs on Canadian goods imported to the United States will cause South Mississippians to rethink their voting for the GOP. 

A native of Pascagoula, Ezell defeated former Republican U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo in 2022. Before entering Congress, Ezell was the Jackson County sheriff. He serves on the Natural Resources Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. 

Ezell told Mississippi Today in an interview that he wants to run for reelection to steer more federal resources to southern Mississippi infrastructure projects and build on recent funding increases in the U.S. Coast Guard, which he believes has been chronically underfunded in recent years.

If reelected, he wants to introduce legislation that rolls back unnecessary federal regulations at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make it easier for state and local governments to receive relief after natural disasters damage Mississippi communities. 

The Republican incumbent over the next two years also wants to rework some of FEMA’s flood maps because homes located within the flood zone have higher home insurance costs. 

“Insurance is just over-the-top expensive,” Ezell said.  

Ezell said that some of the president’s decisions on tariffs and the military conflict in Iran may be unpopular nationally. But he defended the military action as necessary to prevent Iran from having access to a nuclear weapon, and he said Trump’s tariffs are needed to correct trade imbalances between America and other countries.  

“Americans have been ripped off by European nations and Canada because of the way they do business,” Ezell said. “It’s time to get some payback.”

Boyanton has vowed to fight inflation and lower the cost of living by reining in government spending and the national debt. He vows to combat fraud, waste and abuse, which he said is widespread in government. He has also been a proponent of term limits for Congress.

The midterm elections are Nov. 3.