Depending on who you ask, Sept. 19 in Oxford, Mississippi, will be anything from a post-apocalyptic war zone to a simple lovely fall Saturday with a big game in town when LSU visits for the much-anticipated matchup with Ole Miss. "I'm thinking about having to send [Lane Kiffin] in on an F-16 and maybe the team on a C-130," Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry joked to ESPN.
"Security is going to be really tight. You know, we might need the National Guard out there to protect our team. I think it's going to be an interesting weekend." Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter has admitted to Supertalk Mississippi that he's "tuned out" Landry, but despite efforts from Carter, as well as local officials on campus and off, there will be a visor-clad elephant in the room standing on the opposite sideline who seems to have the entire college football world routinely revolving around him.
"We've had huge games before -- LSU, Georgia, Alabama -- so we have a pretty good template for managing a game like this, though there are a few storylines with this one that add to it," Carter told CBS Sports. So just how is the town preparing for one of the most anticipated home games ever? If anyone's ever been to Bourbon Street in New Orleans -- and there were plenty of powder blue-clad Rebel fans there for the Sugar Bowl in January -- they'll be familiar with the equine strain of law enforcement.
Mounted police officers are a feature of the revelry, and Oxford will be borrowing some of the NOPD's. Oxford Police Department public information officer Breck Jones told CBS Sports that there are typically six mounted patrol officers in downtown Oxford on a normal gameday. New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama's police departments will be supplying 13 additional officers for gameday for a total of 19 off-campus.
They might be needed, as the LSU alumni association has rented out the historic Lyric Theatre a block away from the square in downtown Oxford for a watch party. Days before, it hosted a roast of Lane Kiffin. Jones is expecting at least 100,000 people in the town over the weekend.
"I feel like it will probably be one of the biggest crowds that any of us have ever seen, and so you take that into consideration," Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen told WTVA. With students counted, Oxford's normal population is around 60,000. The city's police department has around 100 sworn officers, and home game weekends are predictably an all-hands-on-deck endeavor.
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