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Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss isn’t buying what Lane Kiffin is selling.
Earlier this offseason, Kiffin claimed that Ole Miss’s ties to the Old South make it harder to recruit Black players to Oxford. Chambliss, speaking at the Manning Passing Academy on Friday, pushed back directly on that.
“Me, personally, I don’t agree. I don’t think that what he said was truthful. … The Oxford community is nothing but love, and they care about their people no matter what they look like: brown, black, purple, yellow — you know what I mean?”
Chambliss transferred from Ferris State before landing at Ole Miss, and he said the visit to Oxford with his family is what sealed the deal. He wanted to know what his family really thought about the program, the people, and whether the staff could be trusted to keep their word.
“They said, ‘I feel like this is the right place,’” Chambliss recalled, per the Associated Press.
Kiffin’s comments came back in May during a Vanity Fair interview, where he said family members of Black recruits had expressed concern about sending their kids to Oxford. He framed LSU’s location in Baton Rouge as a more comfortable option for those families.
“‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.’ That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’s diversity feels so great: ‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.’”
That’s a pointed contrast to draw, and it didn’t go over quietly in Oxford.
When Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU, the rivalry between these two programs got a lot more personal. His Sept. 19 return to Oxford is already shaping up to be one of the most-watched games of the college football season.
Archie Manning Says Arch Was “Crowned” Too Soon at Texas
One of the first voices to defend Ole Miss after Kiffin’s comments was Archie Manning, who’s as connected to that school as anyone alive. He didn’t have to revisit that topic at the Manning Passing Academy on Saturday, but he did have something to say about how the media handled his grandson Arch’s first season as Texas’s starting quarterback.
Texas entered the 2025 season ranked No. 1 in the country, and Arch Manning was already being talked about as a Heisman front-runner before he’d taken a single snap as a starter. That kind of pressure is a lot to carry.
It showed early on.
Arch struggled through the first half of the season, and Archie Manning said the expectations placed on him weren’t fair to begin with. But what stuck with the elder Manning wasn’t the rough start; it’s how Arch responded to it.
“I was kinda disappointed in a lot of people. They kind of crowned Arch before he ever played. I didn’t think that was fair. It was a little tough start. … I’ve never been as proud as anyone in my life is the way Arch battled through what he had to go through last year and the way he played over the last eight or nine games.”
Archie’s comments came via KXAN.
Arch Manning did find his footing as the season went on, leading Texas to wins over No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 18 Michigan down the stretch. Heading into 2026, the sky-high expectations are back, but this time they’re built on something real.
