NEW ORLEANS — Notes, quotes and an opinion or two from a Crescent City still buzzing Friday morning from Thursday night’s instant college football classic in the Sugar Bowl:

• Las Vegas oddsmakers have made Miami a three-point favorite over Ole Miss for next Thursday’s Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona. Oddsmakers set the over-under point total at 51.5. Undefeated and top-seeded Indiana is a four-point pick over Oregon in the Peach Bowl.

• Coaches and commentators are always talking and sports writers are forever writing about how crazy college football has become with pay-for-play and the transfer portal. Perhaps the most crazy example might be this: LSU now owes Lane Kiffin half a million dollars because the Ole Miss Rebels have advanced to the semifinals of the College Football Playoffs. Should Ole Miss beat Miami, that total rises to $750,000. If Ole Miss wins it all, Kiffin will make a million. Crazy, no?

• Ole Miss improved to 7-4 all-time in Sugar Bowl appearances, with wins this year and in 2016, 1970, 1963, 1961, 1960 and 1958. Only Alabama, with 10 victories, has won more Sugar Bowls.

• The win over Georgia puts the Rebels’ record at 4-1 against this season’s 12-team College Football Playoffs field. That’s most victories of any team in the tournament.

• All the unusual off-field circumstances (Kiffin leaving, etc.) during this Ole Miss post-season run continue to be regurgitated in the national media. An emotional Ole Miss Chancellor Glenn Boyce, speaking to Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger on the field amid the post-game Ole Miss celebration, tried to put the focus where it belongs.  “It’s incredibly hard to put it in words,”  Boyce said. “The way you hold something like this together is, sure, leadership and leadership matters, but here’s the other way: these players.”

• Biggest football win in Ole Miss history? Old-timers might opt for the 21-0 victory over LSU in the 1960 Sugar Bowl – and it was huge – but given the stakes, surely this Sugar Bowl victory 66 years later becomes the biggest ever.

• Trinidad Chambliss, asked post-game about his pending appeal to the NCAA, said he expects an answer soon. “The NCAA has been closed now, but I’m pretty sure it opens tomorrow, so maybe we’ll get an answer soon,” he said. “I’ve got people working on it. I’m not the one that’s working on it. My job right now is to focus on football and to focus on this team and to focus on being 1-0 in the next game, so that’s my main focus right now.”

• Pete Golding’s signature victory as a head coach came less than an hour’s drive from his hometown of Hammond, Louisiana. “Yeah, it’s definitely special, being 35 miles away,” Golding said. “My brother lives in New Orleans, a bunch of family. A bunch of Hammond High boys here tonight.”

• The Sugar Bowl ended about one hour before college football’s transfer portal opened. Golding, with that in mind, said he has courted junior placekicker Lucas Carneiro in recent days. Carneiro, a transfer from Western Kentucky, is one of the nation’s best placekickers, as he showed in the Sugar Bowl with three long and clutch field goals. “I think a lot of people think Lucas is the best kicker in the country, so a lot of people want Lucas,” Golding said. “So I’ve been meeting with Lucas a lot lately. We’ve had a lot of good meetings here, and especially this week. I got to spend a lot of time with him one-on-one and just getting to know him a little more and figuring out what he wants in the future. … We felt like he was the best kicker in the country coming out of Western Kentucky last year. He’s done an unbelievable job this year.”

• Georgia coach Kirby Smart was gracious in defeat, praising Golding, the Rebels players and even the Ole Miss crowd. Smart said Ole Miss deserved the victory, but added: “I enjoyed that game and that atmosphere. I am proud of our team. I’m sick that we lost, and there’s things I would love to go back and do differently. But I’m just so proud of the way our guys competed when down 10, and just didn’t finish it.”