Lane Kiffin confirms Penn State 'burner' account was created by Ole Miss student assistant

Friday night, a tweet from an apparent Penn State fan account made its way across social media. It included a fake quote from Nittany Lions defender Kobe King, and in true college football fashion, fans dug deeper and found an apparent connection to an Ole Miss staffer ahead of the Peach Bowl.

At first, it seemed like an old fashioned college football conspiracy theory. That is, until Lane Kiffin’s postgame press conference after Ole Miss defeated Penn State in the game.

Kiffin confirmed the account was created by Fisher Ray. He found out about it Friday night, and he laughed at the situation, especially when Penn State fans decided to find out more about it.

“I was made aware of that,” Kiffin said. “I’m glad we won so you wouldn’t be bringing that up in the press conference and they’d be saying that motivated them. I thought it was pretty funny actually because they discovered that it was Fisher Ray, one of our assistants, one of our student assistants. So Fisher is now kind of famous.

“But I thought it was really cool last night when he showed it to me, he’s like, these Penn State fans now, they’re into this. They researched his password and e-mail and were able to figure out which guy it was that started it. It was all in good fun. I hope the fans had fun with it.”

As for whether he approved of the account, Kiffin offered a quick response.

“I’m not going to start making social media rules on people,” he said.

Let’s go through the timeline of events.

Friday, an account with the handle @WEARE_PENNST23 posted an alleged quote from King which said Penn State would “embarrass” Ole Miss on the field, and the Rebels “will wish they never had to play us after we do what we came here to do.” The quote quickly made its way around X, and red flags went up after beat reporters pointed out King didn’t meet with reporters this week.

That’s when the fun began. For starters, Lane Kiffin reposted it — which was Red Flag No. 1. Then, more Ole Miss personalities got in on the fun.

Some fans decided to see what email address created the account. While X doesn’t show the entire address, it was easy to see jf***@o******.*** lined up with the email address on Ray’s profile on the Ole Miss website.

pic.twitter.com/itmCzUcLrw

— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) December 30, 2023

If Ray wanted it to be a source of motivation for Ole Miss, it worked. The Rebels put together an impressive showing to knock off one of the Big Ten’s top defenses, 38-25, in the Peach Bowl. It was quite the exclamation point on Ole Miss’ first 11-win season in program history.