I tuned into RebTalk because I had to. Then A delightful bit of Ole Miss comedy broke out.

I’m going to be honest right out of the gate.

I, Ben Garrett, sat down in my office on this Thursday night — the 21st of September, in the year of our Lord, 2023 — with the sole intention of doing nothing more than putting a dent in my monthly On3 quota.

Look, I absolutely love my job. But like Peter Gibbons (watch Office Space, Ben’s Favorite Movie, if you haven’t already) and his eight different bosses riding him about his TPS reports, I, too, gotta do what I gotta do to keep the Corporate Suits off my back, you know?

So, sometimes I write a story just because, well, I have to write a story. And Lane Kiffin is a content treasure trove. Because Kiffin, every week during the season, talks to somebody, somewhere about the Rebels’ upcoming opponent/college football hot topics in general.

And, every week, RebTalk is my easiest lay-up for content-filler.

RebTalk is a perfectly fine show. David Kellum, the voice of the Rebels, is as good a play-by-play man (and coach’s show host!) as there is in college sports.

But even DK would probably admit he, like the rest of us, including Kiffin, are all just kind of going through the motions with RebTalk.

So, I had no expectations when I tuned in Thursday night. I never do. And Kiffin, in the first 15 minutes, did what he usually does.

Not kidding, this week’s RebTalk made me laugh harder than anything I’ve watched since Parks and Rec

Kiffin never wants to be there when he first comes on.

Then DK — Mister-Rogers-wholesome as he is — inevitably wears him down and Kiffin will start cutting up a little bit. All the while, the live audience politely laughs and/or claps at just about everything that comes out of his mouth.

Out of break, RebTalk takes listener questions, and my buddy Brandon Hudspeth moderates. He draws from the live and online audiences. Friends, in my experience, these question-and-answer sessions are, each week, almost comical in their simplicity. Think the most basic of basic questions, and Kiffin’s answers are normally as unremarkable and unmemorable as possible.

But last night (as I borrow from Anton Ego, from the cinematic masterpiece Ratatouille), I experienced an extraordinary meal … err … Ole Miss moment from a singularly unexpected source.

Ole Miss sports, for me, don’t hit like they used to. They couldn’t even I wanted them to; I’m a (happily! Sup, Emily?) married father of two nearing 40.

But dammit if DK and Lane Kiffin didn’t somehow force me into brief re-romanticization of Ole Miss sports. From RebTalk — for me, without question, the most surprising of professional sources.

The following is a word-for-word transcription, and it has not been edited for clarity.

Kiffin was asked an innocuous question about the formula for beating Alabama. Ole Miss travels to face the Crimson Tide Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT on CBS.

KIFFIN: Ole Miss has gone into the state of Alabama 31 times. We are 2-29, OK? But we have a good (formula).

In 1988, (Ole Miss) beat the Alabama Crimson Tide there. The Alabama Crimson Tide did not complete a pass that day, and we scored, like, fifteen points in the last forty-four seconds of the game.

DK: To win it. That’s right.

KIFFIN: And we were huddling. Nobody knew back then you could go fast and stuff. I watched it (Wednesday) night.

DK: Did you really watch it?

KIFFIN: Yeah, it was crazy. Two head coaches, didn’t have headsets on. It’s 3rd-and-10, they run fullback belly and it works.

And? Came out of there with a win.

DK: Shawn Sykes (former Ole Miss running back). We’ll have his play from that game on our pregame show.

KIFFIN: Right.

So, I told Pete Golding, ‘Don’t let them complete one pass. We’ll be fine.’

DK: That was Bear Bryant Day, did you know that?

KIFFIN: I actually only knew that because I asked Tom Luke (former Ole Miss QB, Matt’s brother and current Associate AD for Player Development for Rebel football). He was a freshman on the team, and Tom said that was Bear Bryant Day.

DK: All right. So…?

KIFFIN: So, maybe this will be Nick Saban Day. They ruined Bear Bryant Day back then.

We could, like, ruin Nick Saban Day today.

B-HUD: Isn’t every day Nick Saban Day?

KIFFIN: And then it’s the end of the streak of playing them. Like, whatever, 30-some-years in a row. We don’t play them next year.

Maybe it’ll be the last time we play the Old Man. Who knows?

— FIN —

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. This exchange had everything.

Nostalgic nods to Ole Miss football history universally play. But then Kiffin follows it up flawlessly with a salient, if brief, point on the evolution of the game over the last 30-plus years. Just casually tossing in an inside-football reference to the lost art of fullbacking was a masterstroke.

But that was just the start. Hat tip to DK for his smooth plug of an Ole Miss football postgame show on terrestrial radio that I definitely knew still existed.

Still, he was the side act to Kiffin.

Kiffin volleys with a pitch-perfect repackaging of the beaten-to-death Pete Golding story. Because Pete Golding was Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama the previous three seasons, if you didn’t know. The sarcasm is intended.

DK hits right back with some juicy Boomer Red Meat and shouts-out The Bear. Kiffin brings this Ole Miss Laurel and Hardy act home with some light-hearted trash talk and, dare I say, potential confirmation of an Ole Miss future with him in it? Of an off-season that will not be rumor-filled as the previous three were?

OK, perhaps a stretch.

Kiffin knew full well his quip about ruining a proverbial Nick Saban Day would, most likely, monumentally gaslight an Alabama fan base that can have a tendency to take itself way too seriously. The chef’s kiss was his comparison of Saban to Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story.

Kiffin also knew full well said light-hearted trash talk would probably end up on Saban’s desk between now and kickoff.

“I don’t worry about poking (Saban) on Twitter, because he doesn’t have Twitter and he doesn’t look at social media. You can say whatever you want,” Kiffin said earlier, in this Ole Miss Comedy Hour played out in real time.

“But if you put it in an article, it’s going to get to his desk, yes. And I know the person, so when I say the really nice things like, ‘I owe a lot about my career to him, he took me when no one else wants to take me,’ they don’t put that on his desk. They leave the nice articles.

“The little jokes and shots? They highlight them. ‘Look how terrible he is talking about you!’”

Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin (Photo credit: Marina Puhalj)

Which is exactly what I’m doing here, I guess.

And to that I say, ‘So it is!’

I laughed. Cried. Applauded. I wish I’d have been there, if only to call for an encore.

Unfortunately, I am, instead, on my couch. With but one measly little story about … what, exactly? This was supposed to be catch-up night. I REALLY needed to knock out four or five. At least 350 words a pop, too, lest the first of the Lumbergs drops by my desk to ask if I got that memo.

And fear not, the quota-filler stories are coming. And they will entertain.

The only justification I can come up with for the existence of this column is that for a few surprisingly joyful minutes, David Kellum, the voice of the Ole Miss Rebels, and Lane Kiffin, the Rebels’ head coach football coach, made me a little romantic about Ole Miss football again.

Familiar, nice and unremarkable, but still something I am very much glad happened and I will remember. Like catching up with a childhood friend at your 20-year high-school reunion.

Maybe that’s enough. I like to think it is. Memory lane can be therapeutic. I’m little more than a quota-filling drone these days, remember. Ferris Bueller was right when he said we gotta stop and look around once in a while.

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