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OXFORD, Miss. — It wasn’t just a playoff win. It was relief. It was validation. It was release.
For Ole Miss, Saturday night wasn’t simply about advancing in the College Football Playoff after beating Tulane, 41-10. It was about surviving and overcoming everything that came before it — the uncertainty, the speculation, the headlines, the distractions that threatened to pull a season apart long before it ever reached December.
When the final whistle sounded inside a record-breaking, sold-out Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, what spilled out wasn’t just celebration, though it was that for sure. But it was also emotion that had been bottled up for weeks.
Players hugged longer. Fans stayed later. And a head coach who had spent years preparing for moments like this finally got to exhale.
This was the game Ole Miss needed to win.
Not because of rankings. Not because of matchups. But because it was the moment Ole Miss needed continuity — a sense that nothing had been lost, only tested. And the Rebels passed the test with flying colors.
A Team That Chose Each Other
From the outside, it would have been easy for this team to fracture.
Coaching changes midstream rarely end cleanly. Rumors don’t pause for practice, and speculation doesn’t care about locker rooms. And yet, through all of it, Ole Miss players made a quiet, powerful choice: they chose each other.
They kept showing up.
They kept practicing.
They kept preparing like a team that still believed its best football was ahead of it — not behind it.
That belief showed itself Saturday night in the way the Rebels played: fast, connected, and intentional. Not perfect, but purposeful. Not flashy, but grounded. This was a team playing for something bigger than noise.
And for Pete Golding, the win meant more than a line on a résumé.
It meant trust.
It meant the players believed in him enough to block out everything else and follow his voice. It meant the message — spot the ball, go play, don’t flinch — had landed.
Golding never made the night about himself. He didn’t need to. The emotion was written all over the scene: the hugs on the sideline, the pride in his voice, the gratitude he showed for a group that never wavered when it would have been easy to.
This wasn’t about schemes or play calls. It was about stewardship — keeping the train on the tracks when the world around it — and perhaps the former coach — tried to derail it.
Saturday night proved Coach Golding to be an excellent choice to be steward of this Rebels’ program.
A Fan Base That Stayed
Ole Miss fans didn’t have to show up the way they did. They have been through a lot, pulled and torn as the media ran rampant with speculation for the last couple of months that their now-former coach would soon be gone, much less as the now-former coach continued his social media barrage, desperately trying to make the attention turn to himself.
They could have braced for disappointment and watched from afar.
Instead, they packed the Vaught — to the tune of a record-setting 68,251, breaking the previous top crowd of 68,138 vs. Florida back on Nov. 15.
They brought the noise. They brought the belief. They brought the reminder that this program is bigger than any one name on a headset.
When chants of “Pete! Pete! Pete!” echoed through the stadium late in the game, it wasn’t about replacing anyone. It was about embracing the moment — and the people who carried the program through it.
More Than a Win
This playoff victory didn’t erase the chaos. It didn’t rewrite the past two months. But it did something just as important.
It reminded everyone what Ole Miss football looks like when it’s rooted in resilience.
It reminded the players why they stayed locked in.
It reminded the fans why they invest so much emotion.
And it reminded the program that, even when things get loud, the work still matters.
Ole Miss didn’t just win a playoff game Saturday night.
They won it together.
And after everything that tried to pull them apart, that might be the most meaningful victory of all.
Next Up
Ole Miss will travel to New Orleans for a second-round CFP date with No. 3 Georgia (12-1, 7-1 SEC) in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Kickoff at the Caesars Superdome is set for Thursday, January 1st, at 7 p.m. CT on ESPN.
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Evelyn Van Pelt
Evelyn has covered sports for over two decades, beginning her journalism career as a sports writer for a newspaper in Austin, Texas. She attended Texas A&M and majored in English. Evelyn's love for Ole Miss began when her daughter Katie attended the university on a volleyball scholarship. Evelyn created the Rebel Walk in 2013 and has served as publisher and managing editor since its inception. Email Evie at: Evie@TheRebelWalk.com
