How Ole Miss Got What Notre Dame Wanted from Lane Kiffin and LSU

There are rivalries in college football that are played just about every year, but some years those rivalries run even more hot than normal.

Make both of those teams top ten caliber squads, then have a head coach that bolted one for the other the previous off-season returning to the place he used to call home.

Yeah, what Ole Miss and LSU gave us in Lane Kiffin's return to Oxford on Saturday night was something not seen very often.

And with it featuring LSU as the road team, it gave a Notre Dame fans a taste of what they missed out on after Brian Kelly bolted the Fighting Irish for the Bayou.

Notre Dame Fans Dreamed of a Kelly Return to Notre Dame Stadium

From the second it was reported that Brian Kelly was leaving Notre Dame for LSU on that December night in 2021, I don't know a single Notre Dame fan that didn't want to see the Fighting Irish get a crack at him and the Tigers in South Bend.

That would have had to have happened in the College Football Playoff, and Kelly not getting his team there is what cost him his job, but can you imagine for a second what that scene would have been like?

NEW ANGLE JUST DROPPED pic.twitter.com/RkNNF7qqgZ
— Rebel Viewpoint (@Rebel_Viewpoint) September 21, 2026

No former Notre Dame head coach has ever returned to Notre Dame Stadium as the head coach of an opposing team. Can you imagine if Kelly would have been that after how he left?

Notre Dame Stadium isn't known for being vile or a hellacious place to play like some places in the Big Ten in SEC. The culture is simply different and I don't think that's a bad thing.

However, had Kelly returned to Notre Dame Stadium as the head coach of LSU, the fans and atmosphere would have been more vile than at the end of the Notre Dame vs. Miami rivalry in the late 1980s and 1990, that wound up having the series stop.

Nick Shepkowski's Quick Thoughts

Not that Ole Miss and their quarterback who is only playing because a judge allowed him to are the torch bearer for everything right in college sports, but compared to how Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss and tried to burn it down on his way out speaks to the kind of person he is.

The same goes for Brian Kelly, who tried to bring Marcus Freeman and Tommy Rees with him to LSU. He tried it while Notre Dame was still in the running for a College Football Playoff spot, but didn't pull it off.

And Notre Dame fans never got the chance to "welcome" him back to Notre Dame Stadium like Ole Miss fans did to Kiffin this weekend.

That's alright.

With Kelly reportedly in initial talks with Rutgers to possibly coach there, I'd like nothing more in scheduling, than to see Pete Bevacqua announce a Notre Dame home game against the Scarlet Knights two years from now so Notre Dame fans could possibly get that chance.

Brian Kelly breaking out another accent when he is introduced as the new Head Coach at Rutgers in a few years. pic.twitter.com/YysTJfQYfE
— Theo Gremminger (@TheOGfantasy) September 4, 2023

It wouldn't be anywhere near the same, but it'd still be something to behold.

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