Lane Kiffin returns to Oxford this Saturday, and an entire town is cashing in.
Kiffin spent six seasons in Oxford and did something nobody had managed in the history of the place. He turned Ole Miss, a program that had spent most of its modern existence as an SEC afterthought, into a genuine national power. Three straight double-digit win seasons. The best regular season the school had ever had. A College Football Playoff berth.
Then last November, with the Rebels sitting at 10-1 and still alive in the Playoff race, he left. Not in the offseason. Mid-run. And he didn't just leave, he went to LSU, a conference rival in the next state over.
Ole Miss fans gathered to boo his plane out of town. Some sent him off with one-finger salutes.
Saturday, he walks back into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium wearing purple and gold.
Here's what that's doing to the price of literally everything in Oxford, Mississippi.
The La Quinta Inn and Suites off the frontage road, about a mile from campus, typically runs around $99 a night in Oxford. For this weekend it was listed at $1,735 a night. That's not a typo. A La Quinta, for more than seventeen times its normal rate.
The Graduate by Hilton, a nicer property that usually books around $300 a night, was listed at $3,984.
Local homeowners are doing the same math. Cottages in Lafayette County are going for roughly $1,200 a night for the Kiffin game. Those exact same cottages, the very next weekend, drop to under $400. Airbnb listings for four people range from about $1,500 all the way past $4,000 a unit.
Tickets have gone just as crazy. The cheapest seat in the entire building is running somewhere around $467 to $500, roughly ten times the get-in price for Ole Miss's home game just one week earlier against Charlotte. Club seats are over $5,000. The most expensive Field Club ticket on the market was listed at $15,088. For one regular season football game in September.
To be fair, Kiffin isn't the only reason.
The game itself sold out. A Thursday night concert in town sold out. ESPN's College GameDay is broadcasting live from The Grove on Saturday morning. And on the field, this is the first LSU-Ole Miss matchup between two top-10 teams since 1962, with LSU ranked seventh and Ole Miss eighth, both with real Playoff hopes on the line.
Visit Oxford's executive director put it simply.
"September 19 will be very crowded. I don't know that I've ever known the date of a specific game beforehand like I do this one."
Kiffin, for his part, is trying to talk everyone off the story.
"I know a lot is going to be made about me, but this is about the players being prepared really well and playing really well."
Too late. One coach changed jobs ten months ago, and now a La Quinta in north Mississippi costs $1,735 a night.