Ole Miss defeated Georgia 39-34 in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal upset in the Sugar Bowl.
The victory came under new head coach Pete Golding, who took over after Lane Kiffin left for LSU.
Division II transfer quarterback Trinidad Chambliss led the team with 362 passing yards and two touchdowns.
NEW ORLEANS – When it was finished, this shocking College Football Playoff upset, Mississippi’s fans started chanting inside the Superdome. And it sounded like this:
Pete! Pete! Pete! Pete!
“I don’t want it to end,” Ole Miss coach Pete Golding said of this season.
It doesn’t have to. Not yet. Not after a 39-34 playoff quarterfinal takedown of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
Ole Miss tapped Golding as Kiffin’s heir, and the fans are chanting his name, just as they did Kiffin’s before him.
“He’s been great,” wide receiver Harrison Wallace III said of Golding. “Everybody’s behind him. We’re right behind him.”
If you keep an ear to the ground, you’ll hear a lot of grumbling from the folks who do the grumbling about all that’s broken inside college football. You could fixate on that, or you could appreciate the thrills and the twists inside this playoff.
Longtime doormat turned behemoth Indiana just whipped Alabama. Remarkable times, these.
A Texas Tech roster bought by a billionaire oil tycoon couldn’t produce a single point in a playoff loss to red-hot Oregon. Keep pumping that sweet crude in Texas. Just make sure to buy an offense next time, too.
Elsewhere, the “U” is back, and Ohio State has been dethroned.
Then, there’s Ole Miss. Get a load of this story. The team with the Division II transfer quarterback and the replacement coach is on to the CFP semifinals, while its former coach goes on dates with his ex-wife, watches women’s basketball and tweets about the transfer portal.
Only in college football.
“Speechless, honestly,” Chambliss said, “about everything.”
Yeah, that pretty well sums it up.
Chambliss threw for 362 yards and two touchdowns. He got help from a defense that played much better than it did in a regular-season loss to Georgia.
And how about Lucas Carneiro? The Ole Miss kicker, a transfer from Western Kentucky, split the uprights from 55 and 56 yards before hitting a game-winner from 47. Carneiro said he trusted his range up to 60 yards. By the looks of his first two bombs, he could’ve been good from 65.
Chambliss remained the biggest star. He cemented his place in Ole Miss lore.
A year ago, Chambliss won the national championship with Division II Ferris State. Ole Miss nabbed him from the portal to be its backup quarterback, but, by the summer, it was becoming apparent the Rebels had “a baller” on their hands, as wide receiver De’Zhaun Stribling describes it.
“There’s some things you just can’t teach,” Stribling said.
Like, how to stay calm after facing a nine-point deficit. Chambliss fired 13 consecutive completions to spark the rally.
These weren’t just comfortable pocket passes, either. Chambliss consistently ran away from Georgia’s menacing pass rushers, before zipping a rope to an open target.
Just an incredible combination of instincts meeting ability.
“He’s very composed back there. He’s not panicking,” Stribling said. “When things aren’t going good, we look to him, and he’s fine. That kind of makes us feel a sense of relief that it’s going to be OK and we can do this.”
After Ole Miss used a furious rally to topple Georgia, reasonable minds wonder whether these Rebels might just be a team of destiny.
Chambliss doesn’t know about all that.
“We just want to play ball and have fun,” Chambliss said.
This team’s good at that.
“One thing about this group: They love football,” Golding said.
Say this for Golding. He kept this locker room intact after Kiffin left. These guys fight for him.
Will Golding assemble rosters as good as this one Kiffin put together? Too soon to stay on that, and so there’s no telling how Golding will fare in the long-term, but it’s difficult to imagine any coach leading the Rebels better than Golding has throughout two playoff wins.
“What he’s been able to accomplish in the last three or four weeks, with all the moving parts … has been incredible,” athletic director Keith Carter told reporters after one of the biggest wins in program history. “He kept these guys focused, and it’s been awesome.”
Carter earned vindication for his decision to not let Kiffin coach in the playoff. He made Kiffin choose: Take the job at LSU or stay at Ole Miss and continue his epic ride with the Rebels.
Kiffin chose LSU.
Several of the talking heads, including Nick Saban, acted as if Carter was doing the team a disservice by prohibiting LSU’s coach from coaching Ole Miss in the playoff.
That all seems so silly now that Ole Miss fans are chanting his successor’s name.
As Kiffin prepares to try to build an LSU roster as good as the one he left behind, the Rebels are two wins away from a national championship.
“We’re built for this,’ Stribling said.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
