The loudest college football Week 3 takeaway is the one Oxford has been waiting on since the coaching carousel spun: Ole Miss beat LSU 32-24 with Pete Golding on the headset and Trinidad Chambliss running the show, and they did it against the man who used to run their program. Every Rebel fan drew that game up in their head this summer. Then it actually happened.
That is the part worth sitting with. Programs that lose a name-brand coach usually spend a year proving they can still function. Ole Miss skipped the proving stage and went straight to the statement, and it came against Lane Kiffin's LSU, which is about as pointed a scoreboard as college football hands out. Golding is a defensive coach who got handed an offense that had been somebody else's signature, and Chambliss made it look like continuity instead of survival.
The cost was real on the other sideline. LSU lost defensive back Dashawn Spears for the season to a knee injury suffered in that game, per what came out of Baton Rouge on Monday. Texas A&M is down receiver and kick returner Terry Bussey for the year with a lower-body injury, announced after the Aggies fell 31-21 at home to Kentucky. Two rosters thinner in September, which is the month where thin gets expensive later.
Kentucky going into Kyle Field and dominating is the kind of result that reorders a division quietly. Mike Elko said Monday his confidence in Marcel Reed has not wavered, and coaches say that either because they mean it or because the alternative is a quarterback controversy in week four. In Elko's case, the tape will settle it.
Elsewhere: six Big 12 teams are still undefeated, which means the league's January math is going to be a brawl of attrition. Miami keeps rolling. NC State ran a play that cost them a game outright, and I have not seen the full tape yet, so I will hold my adjectives until I do.
And the verdict on the month: the SEC won September. Fine. Checked the almanac, though, and the Big Ten walked off with the last two national titles, Michigan and then Ohio State. September trophies do not get engraved.
What I am watching next: Ole Miss at Florida in The Swamp, where Jon Sumrall is already preaching attention to detail. That is a coach who knows exactly what is coming.