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COLUMN: Kiffin hire brings swagger to Ole Miss football program

It’s amazing how much can change in a week’s time.

On Thanksgiving night, the morale surrounding the Ole Miss football program was at an all-time low. The Rebels had just lost the Egg Bowl following an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty by Elijah Moore and a missed extra point by Luke Logan.

Since Matt Luke’s hiring at the end of the 2017 season, Ole Miss fans had been skeptical of his abilities to lead an SEC West program into the future, and Luke was ultimately not able to get the job done in his three years.

You can blame Ole Miss’ lack of on-field production on the aftermath of scholarship sanctions from the NCAA, Matt Luke or a combination of both, but regardless of who was at fault, fan belief in the program had reached a low it hadn’t felt since Houston Nutt’s final days in Oxford.