Lane Kiffin describes Tennessee's Neyland Stadium as the most majestic SEC stadium to play in

The SEC is known for having some of the largest and most majestic stadiums in all of American sports. Still, some stadiums stand above the rest. Among those is Neyland Stadium, home of the Tennessee Volunteers, which even Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin cited as being the most majestic among those in the SEC.

Kiffin recently appeared on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von. There, Von asked him about his favorite SEC stadium, outside of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, but Kiffin pushed back on that question, implying it was just the easiest road environment.

“I don’t know about favorite,” Lane Kiffin said. “Because favorite would be… like favorite might be somewhere really easy. Like, no.”

Von reworked the question to being the most majestic stadium. That was when Kiffin explained just how special of a place Neyland Stadium is to him.

“This is why you have such a different audience of so many different areas of because like you use big words too. You’re educated. Majestic place?” Kiffin told Von. “Neyland Stadium in Tennessee is like amazing. It’s just — when we would bring recruits there, it is majestic. There you go. At night and then there’s the river and the boats.”

Lane Kiffin spent the 2009 season as the head coach at Tennessee, going 7-6 while he was there. However, it was an awkward split, as he left after just one year to take the USC job amid backlash from Volunteers fans. Since then, he’s had the chance to return, both as an assistant at Alabama and head coach at Ole Miss, but it’s also clear that Tennessee fans haven’t forgotten him.

“Then the intensity in there is so — I was the head coach here at Ole Miss and we went to play at Tennessee,” Kiffin said “And it was like on from warmups. Like everyone was there. Over 100,000 people and there was like this hatred towards me. I felt like the gladiator at a movie. They were getting ready for a thumbs down, like let’s kill him.”

Perhaps Kiffin’s best-remembered game at Neyland Stadium came in his first trip back as a head coach, leading Ole Miss into Knoxville in 2021. It was a particularly close game where the atmosphere had been charged from the start when a couple of close calls went against the Volunteers. After one particular call, the game was delayed as fans threw trash onto the field. That infamously included a mustard bottle and a golf ball.

“They had a real conversation with me during the week about bulletproof vests. Like, ‘There’s no way, guys. Come on, man. It’s football.’ And they’re like, they had three cops with me and everything. Like, they ain’t gonna really do that. Maybe like a golf ball, they’re gonna throw at me or a bottle or something. So, then I’m walking in and like this is awesome. Now I could feel… they were chanting like, ‘F*** Lane Kiffin.’ That actually felt intense and cool, 100,000 people chanting that. Then the student section was like ‘Last night we were with your wife,’ and I was like man, that’s pretty funny to come up with stuff. It was intense and it just kept building,” Kiffin said.

“So, maybe everybody didn’t hate me at the beginning but then it’s like a crowd storm and the hatred just kept building. It was a really close game at the end and we won. Then they got pissed and threw things at me. Golf ball. Anything they could get. Mustard… they didn’t have schoolbooks. No. Mustard bottles. Like, how do you even have a mustard bottle? You just brought that to the game? Like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go to the game and sneak the mustard bottle in.'”

Lane Kiffin got the laugh in that game. Ole Miss went on to win 31-26. That was in a season that ended with a 10-3 record for Kiffin, though that win against his old team clearly left Kiffin feeling the love from Tennessee fans.

“They throw this golf ball that became famous at me,” Kiffin said. “And afterwards I’m like, ‘What am I sneaking into the game? What do you have a golf ball for?’ I’m carrying a golf ball because I don’t think they think I’m gonna throw it. Like I’m gonna be pissed off in the fourth quarter and throw it. But then I looked closer it was a range ball. So, you know what it was? It was the cheap guy who steals the range ball… So, it was just in his pocket. That was my guess.”

Tennessee and Ole Miss aren’t scheduled to play in 2025. So, it will be a little while before the Volunteers have the chance to get their revenge on Kiffin and Ole Miss. Until then, that game remains a vivid memory.