Welcome to the latest episode of Locked on Ole Miss, hosted by Steven Willis! Get ready for an action-packed discussion as we gear up for the Ole Miss Football season opener against Furman.
🏈 Ole Miss fans are buzzing with excitement as the Rebels prepare to take on the Furman Paladins. What can we expect from this first game, and how will it set the tone for the season?
🔄 Lane Kiffin's strategic use of the transfer portal is shaking up college football. Could this approach redefine how teams are built? We break down the impact of these new additions on the Ole Miss roster.
🎟️ Ticket sales are through the roof! Ole Miss has sold out all SEC home games, reflecting the high expectations and enthusiasm from the fanbase. What does this mean for the team's momentum?
📊 We also provide an overview of the Furman Paladins, discussing their recent player losses to FBS schools and analyzing their potential strengths and weaknesses. How will Ole Miss exploit these gaps?
🏅 Finally, we set the bar for what would constitute a successful game for the Rebels. Avoiding injuries and getting starters out early are key—can Ole Miss achieve this and start the season strong?
Don't miss out on this episode filled with insights and analysis. Subscribe, like, and share to stay updated with all things Ole Miss!
Keywords: Ole Miss Football, Furman Paladins, Lane Kiffin, transfer portal, SEC home games, Ole Miss roster, college football, Steven Willis, Locked on Ole Miss, season opener, ticket sales, game expectations.
0:00 Intro
0:15 Ole Miss vs. Penn State Game
2:18 Ole Miss Football Analysis
4:12 Lane Kiffin's Strategy Against FCS Opponent
6:11 Revenue Sharing Impact on College Rosters
8:05 Secondary Ticket Market with Furman
13:32 Furman Paladins
18:04 Loyalty in Sports Fandom
Ole Miss, Ole Miss Rebels, Ole Miss football, Lane Kiffin, Steven Willis, David Eckert, Clarion Ledger, Penn State, Furman Paladins, SEC home games, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, FanDuel, transfer portal, Austin Simmons, Trey Harris, Jaxson Dart, Game Time app, five-hour energy, Locked On Podcast Network, college football, Ole Miss tickets, SEC games, Ole Miss fan base, Ole Miss season, Ole Miss predictions, Caden Prieskorn
Show originally aired 8/28/24
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[MUSIC PLAYING] It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Five-hour energy shots give you the feeling of alertness and energy you need to get in the zone and get things done. With zero sugar, a convenient portable size, and coming in several flavors like watermelon, tropical burst, or my personal favorite grape, it's exactly what you need to get through the day. Head to 5hourenergy.com, that's number 5hourenergy.com, and use our code locked on CFB to receive 20% off your order. This offer is only valid until September 30th on one order and cannot be used with other promotions. The code is not good on subscription orders. Go to 5hourenergy.com today. [MUSIC PLAYING] You are locked on Ole Miss. Your daily podcast on the Ole Miss Rebels, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks for making the Lockdown Ole Miss podcast. You first listen every day. We're free and available wherever you get your podcast, including YouTube. We're part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every single day. Hello, I'm Stephen Willis from the Lockdown Ole Miss podcast. He is David Eckert from the Claryon Ledger. And David, it is finally here. I talk to you before Ole Miss played Penn State. And pretty much ever since that Penn State game, Ole Miss fans have been trying to wield this game to get here. It is finally going to be played this Saturday. I almost guarantee there's going to be football played this Saturday. So what do you think that means for the Ole Miss fan base, the Ole Miss football team, just a 30,000 foot view of this game? Yeah, it feels a little bit like a ribbon cutting ceremony, because there's so much excitement for what this team can be this year. I don't know. Listen, it's very welcome to me, because I'm at the point where I'm just tired of talking about what might be. Respectfully, if I have to hear another player talk about how close this team is, I'm going to commit some bodily harm here. You know, I'm ready to watch some football. But yeah, no, it's going to be fun. I don't know how competitive it's going to be. And really, to be honest, I don't know how much of an indication of what this team is going to be that we can really get from this game. You know, because if they win by 70, it's hard to extrapolate that and say that they're awesome. Really, the only way that you have a takeaway from this is if they don't play well, you know? Well, I don't think you can take results other than the W. That's the only thing you can take from it. But I do think you can, when you're looking at whether or not Ole Miss can do things further down the road, if there are red flags, there's ways that you can check that out. For instance, if a running back grows seven carries for 59 yards, how did that 59 yards happen? Was it a situation that he ran six times for five yards and then busted a 54-yard run? That's a problem, because an FCS defense is going to burst. But if it's about 10 yards per pop, that's a good sign. That's something you're doing what you're supposed to do. So I think if you go into this game looking at how this is done, judge this on the look test. You know, if Ole Miss wins the game, which they should, they're favored by 42 and 1/2 points on FanDuel. It's going to be fine. Move on to the next game. But I do think it's imperative for Ole Miss to at least not have red flags after this first game, especially after their kinder, gentler fall camp. Yeah, I would agree with that. And look, fans are reactionary. So if fans don't see what they're expecting to see about this team, and we've been telling them how awesome that it is, there might be some grumbling. So I do think any time you make a first impression, it's important to have it be a good one. So, you know, and that goes for the players too, right? Like, it doesn't do them any good confidence-wise to beat Furman by 14 in a dogfight. That's, you know, you're chewing your nails to the fourth quarter, right? So it's not a big game, but it's still an important game for many reasons. I think I'd be only if Lane Kiffin would never admit to this because he would just never admit to wanting a ball and all this stuff like that against an FCS opponent. But Ole Miss probably wants to run the ball. They talked about running the football. They just want to impose their will, get up by 30 points, get these starters out of the game, and then let the backups determine whether or not it's going to be a blowout. Yeah, yeah, that's the recipe. I think a pretty standard recipe for most of these games, right? Get these guys off their feet, minimize, wear, and tear. And look, you can probably extrapolate that out and say, you know, they'd love to do that for the next three weeks, maybe not wait for us, but probably the two home games against G5 schools, for sure. So, yeah, you know, the entire off season has been structured around minimizing hits, minimizing wear and tear. So, to whatever extent you can do that against the lesser teams on your schedule, I think Kiffin will want to, for sure. You know, changing the subject just a little bit, this is the debut for a lot of these Ballyhooed transfer portal players. There was no spring game. There has not been much access at all. So, this is going to be the first impression of a lot of people, even Austin Simmons, who has been at Ole Miss for 18 months. This could be the fan base's first opportunity to see him. And I do think that first impression kind of goes a little bit in this situation. But my question to you is, if Ole Miss goes chalk this year, just chalk, let's say 10 and two, the games they're favored in in the season, they do that. And with Ole Miss having over half their roster through the transfer portal, did Wayne Kiffin change the way that rosters are built in college football? - It's tough for me to say yes to that, because I think you've got something looming with the revenue sharing that's going to drastically impact how you build rosters, right? Because we don't know, at this point, whether in addition to the 20 to 22 million that all the schools are going to be playing, paying these guys through revenue sharing, are you going to be able to use your collective, you know, to further compensate these guys? Are collectives going to continue to be these difference makers when it comes to building a roster? We don't know. So I think maybe for next year, but when you're talking about the long term, to me, there's just a big cloud with that change. And the successful programs from 2025 onward, which is when this is projected to happen, are going to be the ones who adapt to the change the best. So Kiffin's proved really adept at doing that as Ole Miss fans have found out. But yeah, I don't know if it's going to be a model. And if it is, I think it'll be a short lived one just because it's the changes that are coming. - Yeah, it should be quite interesting. And real quick, before we get out of here, Ole Miss just released a press release today that they have sold out every SEC home game this year. So that means that, hey, game time tickets. That's the only way you're going to be able to get the stadium possibly. But the non-conference games, have you heard anything about the non-conference games? Like where is firm and trending? Because they didn't have many tickets left that I heard like the biggest gap was the Furman Gap. And there was only like 3000 tickets left like a month ago. - Yeah, I'm not sure. I did do a story about the secondary ticket market with Furman and there's some pretty affordable tickets there as you would expect for Furman. I honestly, I don't know what their ticket sales are like for the non-conference games. But obviously that's a big achievement for them with the SEC games because look, this is a place where, you know, whether it's a comfortable discussion or not, you know, Lane Kiffin has had to fight to get buds in seats. And it's in his financial best interest to do that, by the way, because he has seasoned ticket bonuses. But, you know, he wants that atmosphere. So if you can, if that's being provided, he doesn't have to fight for that at a podium weekly. You know, I think that's something that he'll appreciate. And obviously, good environments help you win football games against good teams. - Thanks again for making me locked on Ole Miss podcast, your first and listen every day. Hey, when we come back, we are going to turn the page to the Furman Paladin. Yes, you heard that correctly. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. But first, I do want to let you know that game time is your place to get Ole Miss tickets. With killer last minute deals, all in prices, views from your seat in the lowest price guarantee, game time takes the guesswork out of buying Ole Miss tickets. You know, there's not a bad seat in Baltimore Stadium. We all know that. But game time makes it to where you can see what the view is from every single seat in the stadium, they have the lowest price guarantee, event cancellation protection, job loss protection. You know, they just take the guesswork out of buying Ole Miss tickets. And with this being the most anticipated season in Ole Miss football history, I might be able to help you out with tickets as well. So download the game time app, create an account and use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase, term supply again, creating an account on the team code, L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N-C-O-L-E-G-E for $20 off. Download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guarantee. Listen, grab a five hour energy shot and you can stay alert to watch all your favorite games this Saturday. Or on Sunday, if you stayed up late to see that intense overtime game, you can take a five hour energy shot in the morning so you can kind of start your day. Five hour energy is the brand hard working people like you have trusted for over 20 years to give them the alert, energized feeling they need to get through a busy, hectic day. You always know where to find five hour energy shots, right? Right at the cash register at nearly every convenience drug and grocery store nationwide. Stock up on money-saving multi-packs to make up you never run out of these delicious, energizing five hour energy shots. If you go to fivehourenergy.com, that is the number five hourenergy.com and get some five hour energy product today. You can use my promo code locked on CFB all one word to receive 20% off. This is only valid until September 30th and it's only on one order and cannot be used with other promotions. The code is not good on a subscription orders. Go to fivehourenergy.com today. (dramatic music) Are you watching Fox Sports or ESPN on your TV all day and you have to turn down the volume with all of that shouting? Make the switch to lockdown sports today. It's a free 24/7 sports streaming channel program for you each and every single day to bring you the biggest stories without all of that screaming. Lockdown Sports today brings you can't miss analysis, opinion news, all streaming 24/7 on YouTube or the free Amazon Fire TV channels out. Part of the Lockdown podcast network, your team every day. You know, David, one cool thing that Lockdown is doing this year is we just started a new fast channel, 24/7 streaming channel that's on college sports. And after the games on Saturday and onto Sunday, they're going to be doing the reaction shows that the individual hosts do after their ball games. So can you imagine if they broadcasted the reaction show from, well, the Florida State Seminoles after that game in week zero? This thing has a chance to be gold, man. - Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. I might have to go watch those, honestly. I did not, I did not get my fill, you know? Any, I was on the message boards. I was reading the takes, you know. But yeah, more is always welcome when it comes to people, just losing their minds, so. - Yes, it's gotten to the point where over my, this is, I'm getting ready to start year three on that Lockdown and I've changed the reaction show. It started out with Postcast, you know, just because that's a name that people, it's a Postcast. But now I just go with instant over reaction. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - People have to react, love it. - Yeah, so we got our pre-game show and our post-game show live streaming and we're going to be doing a round table show on Sunday live streaming. That'll be the more reserved reaction of what's going on, so. Yeah, I'm going to milk this pretty well. Anyway, what are your thoughts on the Furman Paladins? Give me a breakdown. - My thoughts are that the Paladin is a middle-aged night. - Middle ages night. - Yes, from, yeah, not middle-aged. His, their hair might be graying, Steven, I don't know. But who is very chivalrous and is associated with the French monarch Charlemagne. So, yeah, as far as the football team, Steven, I'm doing my study on Thursday. However, you know, just listen into the Ole Miss guys talk about him. Something that was interesting that Trey Harris said is they feel like there's a little bit of an experience defensively for them to exploit. So obviously that's something worth noting on, you know, talking to them about their offense. They're going to have a different quarterback than they did last year when they made that playoff run. They got rated pretty good by the FBS schools, which I don't know, I just don't like to see that. It doesn't give me the right feeling. But so they lost the defensive-backed Colorado, defensive lineman Georgia Tech, their quarterback to Jacksonville State, defensive-backed Tulane, and their long snapper, Steven, to Vanderbilt. - Vandy's taking everybody. - Yeah, you know. So, yeah, they're going to have to replace some talent. So we'll see, man, I don't know. I mean, it's an FCS school respectable program, still one that Ole Miss should just run over if they play well, so. - Yeah, I have Joe De Leon coming on the show tomorrow, talking about this, and I actually already recorded it. So I knew about the quarterback already. I knew that their defensive line by FCS standards is pretty good. So I think one of the things that I thought happened with Lane Kiffin and Jackson Dart talking about running the football, Ole Miss is trying to make it to where this game means a little bit more, they can get a little bit more out of it and running the ball when they know you're going to run the ball. That makes it a little bit more difficult. So I think that happens because if we're going to be real about it, they lost their entire secondary. And it's like Trey Harris said, it's very piecemeal. And if Ole Miss wanted to, they could score 100 points in this game, though, in the football. - Probably, yeah, you know. But yeah, I'm looking at the all-conference team from 2023. It looks like they had a second team kicker. So we might see some good kicking. Yeah, keep your eye out for Ian Williams. But yeah, you mentioned Luke Clark, defensive end as a guy to watch out for. But yeah, I mean, from what Ole Miss is saying about them, they're using the kind of like standard stuff that you say about a team that you're way better than like really well-coached, very disciplined, you know, the type of compliments that don't actually mean anything 'cause they don't mean it. But yeah, it's fire. It's FCS fire. That's just what it is. - I just honestly feel bad for Michael Borkey. - That's true. - Yeah, I genuinely feel bad for Borkey. - Yeah, I saw he was on Twitter. Someone had posted like a tweet inviting people to share how they're hating the paladins this week. And Borkey was in the mention saying, "I'm so upset reading all of this." - And you know what, I respect Borkey and his dad and all that for being a firm and fan, especially in a state with Clemson and South Carolina, which is not a very big state. All the respect in the world of being a firm and fan. - 100%. - Yeah. - Look, that's awesome, genuinely. Like, you know, I don't know. I grew up, I never rooted for just like the best team that I had access to. That's never how I consumed sports. So I always think it's, you should support the team that's close to you and you know, that you have a connection to instead of just saying, hey, you know, Clemson just wanted natty. I'm gonna go buy some Clemson gear. I think that sucks personally. So... - Well, listen, back in the '80s, I was a Saints fan. I was a Saints fan. - Yeah, yeah. - The bags. So in 2009, I think it was when the Saints wanted to Super Bowl and everybody became Saints fans. I was beyond annoyed. Because I remember when Kenny Stable was a quarterback at the Saints. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, you earned it, right? You know, like I used to sit down with my dad and watch like the 73 win New York Mets play 150 times a season, you know? So that was my introduction to sports and I'm still waiting for the payoff on that one. But... (laughs) So I feel, I feel with people who grew up rooting for teams that aren't any good, I guess is what I'm trying to say. - Can you imagine what White Sox fans are going through right now? - Oh my God. - Oh my God. - Yeah. - I mean. - 31 and 100. - Yeah. And they couldn't even trade their trade chip. The crochet, the really good arm. They couldn't even trade him because he said he wanted an extension to pitch the post season. So it's like you can't even do, you can't even do being a bad baseball team, right? You know? - I do appreciate it. My Tigers are 500 right now. 500 ball at the end of August. - Oh yeah. - For a Tigers fan, that's a good place to be right. - Yeah. Yeah, they're playing really well right now too. Yeah. - Yeah, all the young guys. Yeah, they got something going on. Anyway, before I let you go, what do you think is a successful weekend for Ole Miss this weekend? - Nobody getting hurt. (laughs) Very simple. Don't get hurt. When the game, don't get hurt. - Yeah, nobody gets hurt. And I would say the starters get out of the game at some point in time, in the beginning of the fourth quarter. I'm not even gonna say in the third quarter, but just by the beginning of the fourth quarter, you kind of get the starters out just to get that wear and tear off the body. - Yup, totally with you. - All right. Thanks again for making the Lockdown Ole Miss podcast. Your first listen every day. We're free and available wherever you get your podcast, including YouTube. We're part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every single day. David Eckert from the Clarian Ledger. What have you got going on this week, leading up to game day? - Yeah. So we're gonna drop some predictions. And as always, I've got a big, I've been working for a long time on a cadence pre-scoring feature that I'm doing. So that should drop at some point this week. And you know, standard, you know, football stuff, right? Preview, all that good stuff. So yeah, it's football season. So the grind is underway. - David Eckert 98 on Twitter or X or whatever you wanna call it. Check him out there following him. It's excellent stuff for all the latest Ole Miss news. He's worth the follow. And basically, just sports takes as a whole. - Appreciate you, Steven. I'm subjecting the people to my bad takes is interesting, but I appreciate it as always. - All right, David. I appreciate it, bud. And we'll talk to you later. - Sounds good. We'll see you. (upbeat music) Five-hour energy shots give you the feeling of alertness and energy you need to get in the zone and get things done. With zero sugar, a convenient portable size and coming in several flavors like watermelon, tropical burst, or my personal favorite grape, it's exactly what you need to get through the day. Head to fivehourenergy.com, this is number fivehourenergy.com and use our code locked on CFB to receive 20% off your order. This offer is only valid until September 30th on one order. Not be used with other promotions. The code is not good on subscription orders. Go to fivehourenergy.com today. - A prime member. You can listen to this locked on podcast ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. (upbeat music)
