OXFORD — As Vaught-Hemingway Stadium embraced a state of delirium, Kelvin Bolden was searching the stands.
Ole Miss’ coordinator of recruiting strategy was pointing in the direction of the lower rows of a section in the southwest corner of the stadium, trying to get Dante Dowdell’s attention.
“Stay home!” Bolden yelled. “Stay home.”
Dowdell, a four-star running back from Picayune, Miss., is committed to Oregon, but he spent Saturday in Oxford, watching No. 14 Ole Miss hold off a potential game-winning drive by No. 7 Kentucky in the waning moments of the Rebels’ 22-19 victory.
For Ole Miss, now 5-0 overall and 1-0 in the Southeastern Conference, Saturday’s win was so much more than just another hard-fought league victory. It came a day after a reboot of The Grove Collective, the NIL program Lane Kiffin is hoping allows him to recruit even better on the recruiting trail.
“It’s really good timing,” Kiffin said Saturday. “That’ll be important. We want sustained success and I’ve been honest about that. It’s really awesome to see the energy around it.”
Of course, Kiffin’s mind wasn’t on NIL Saturday. It was on his team, one which had just used two huge defensive stops to hold off a Kentucky team that, like his, had won 15 of its last 18 games.
Kiffin’s mind, he admitted, was on the energy he had observed all day. He referred to the energy on the Walk of Champions, a stroll through The Grove that began before 9 a.m. He referred to sold-out Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, which was rocking despite an 11 a.m. start that led to fans complaining about the loss of tailgating time for the better part of two weeks.
“Keep doing it,” Kiffin said. “We appreciate it.”
Ole Miss had a lot of prospects in town, not just Dowdell, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound member of the Rivals250. They saw the energy and the atmosphere, they heard about the NIL program and they saw a program that has now won 16 of its last 19 games. That’s what Ole Miss has become — a program that wins and expects to win.
“We’ve not all of a sudden had everything figured out because we made a play at the end of the game to win the game,” Kiffin said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re excited to get back to it and excited to stay undefeated.”
The Rebels will likely move up to No. 10 or No. 11 Sunday and they’ll be prohibitive favorites at Vanderbilt next Saturday and at home versus Auburn on Oct. 15.
Wide receiver Malik Heath was talking about the Rebels’ offense when he said, “We just have to finish more. We’re right there at the door. We just have to finish there.”
He might as well have been talking about the program he joined in the summer after two seasons at Mississippi State. What’s left to do for Ole Miss at this point is taking the next step — winning the division, making it to the SEC Championship Game and competing for a national title.
“We aren’t satisfied,” Heath said. “They can put us in the top 10 but we aren’t satisfied. We’re trying to get to the SEC championship. We’re trying to win the national championship. We’re never satisfied.”
Kiffin has changed expectations at Ole Miss. On a list of accomplishments, that might be No. 1. He challenge fans all week, and on Saturday, they delivered.
“It was an awesome crowd,” Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart said. “I loved it.”
“It was unbelievable,” said defensive end Jared Ivey, who made the strip of Will Levis that ultimately clinched the Rebels’ win. “Where I was before (Ivey transferred from Georgia Tech), I never played in anything or anywhere similar to this. The last time I played in a game like was probably in high school at Colquitt (Ga.) County, so getting my energy from the environment and the love from the city from Friday and Thursday and the whole week, it’s unbelievable.”
Ivey was still on the sideline, being mobbed by his teammates, as Dart took the final two snaps of the game. Dart was kneeling down, running out the clock, but Bolden was already looking to the future. He wanted to make sure Dowdell noticed it.
“Stay home! Stay home!”
The point Bolden was trying to make, of course, was Dowdell doesn’t have to travel all the way to Eugene, Oregon, to be a part of big-time college football or have his family fly across the country to see him play for a contender.
Whether that message will resonate with Dowdell, only time will tell.
One thing is certain, however. On an absolutely picturesque day in Oxford, the Rebels gave him — and a lot of recruits his caliber — something to think about.
