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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Matt Scalici

Lane Kiffin confirms Ole Miss planted fake Penn State trash talk before the Peach Bowl

Update: Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin confirmed all the suspicions after the Rebels defeated Penn State, 38-25, on Saturday.

The social media account posting bulletin board material for Ole Miss was run by a student assistant with the program and the coach found it all pretty hilarious.

Clearly it worked, too, as Ole Miss controlled the game pretty much from start to finish.

Original: Lane Kiffin has always been an innovator. Whether it’s scheming up brilliantly creative plays on the field or inventing an entire alter ego off the field, Kiffin doesn’t follow the well-worn path of typical football coaching conventions.

Since arriving at Ole Miss, Kiffin has also shown a particular interest in the psychological aspects of coaching. He loves echoing Nick Saban’s famous thoughts on “rat poison”, the idea that hearing positive things said about you can be a detriment to your motivation.

If the idea of “rat poison” psychology is valid, what would the opposite look like? Some college football fans on the internet think they may have discovered Ole Miss trying to find out.

OK, there’s a lot going on here. It all starts with what appears to be a Penn State fan account tweeting trash talk about Ole Miss. The account was then retweeted by Lane Kiffin himself.

A closer look at the account shows that it was created in December of 2023 and did not tweet until after the Peach Bowl matchup between Ole Miss and Penn State was set.

Finally, we see that one intrepid fan did some digging and discovered some clues that may or (and I cannot stress this enough) MAY NOT point to an Ole Miss football assistant being the owner of the account.

Is this all a series of wild coincidences or is Ole Miss running a secret reverse-propaganda campaign to motivate his players?

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