We have reached that weird part of the Summer where nearly all football preview content has been exhausted and in that downtime before talking season and then fall camp. But there is some new countdown content that Ole Miss is not part of.
In continuing the hype and anticipation of the new NCAA College Football game, releasing next month, EA Sports is doing its own set of rankings this week to fuel the conversation. Tuesday’s first rankings certainly created a discussion when it released its Top 25 toughest places to play.
Vaught-Hemingway Stadium was not included in the list. Now this is of course a list compiled by video game developers for a college football game that is not real, but it is compiled by EA Sports’ Homefield Advantage metrics created its Development Team.
Now, the Southeastern Conference is well represented on the list, starting with Texas A&M’s Kyle Field ranked No. 1 followed by Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium at No. 2, LSU’s Tiger Stadium at No. 3 and Georgia’s Sanford Stadium at No. 5.
Other SEC stadiums in the Top 25 are: Oklahoma’s Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium (No. 8), Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium (No. 10), Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium (No. 13), Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium (No. 14), South Carolina’s Williams-Brice Stadium (No. 15), Texas’ Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (No. 19), Arkansas’ Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium (No. 23) and Mississippi State’s Davis Wade Stadium at No. 25.
Home game atmosphere has been one of the things on Lane Kiffin’s list to improve over the course of his first four seasons at Ole Miss. His desire has been acknowledged and over the last two seasons VHS has provided a loud atmosphere for SEC games.
“The stadium has been awesome, especially the SEC games and the night games,” Kiffin said during a Rebel Road Trip stop in Memphis earlier this month. “I’m into analytics, I’m into stats because that’s how we do a lot of our things. How we work fourth downs, how we play certain areas on the field based off analytics. It’s one to feel like the crowd is there but, it works.”
Not counting the 2020 season, which had limited capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ole Miss is 19-2 at home under Lane Kiffin. The Rebels are currently riding a seven-game home winning streak after a second undefeated home schedule in the last three seasons. That is tied for the ninth-longest active streak in the country.
The two losses came during the 2022 season to Alabama, where Ole Miss was driving with the ball in the closing minutes, and to Mississippi State where a failed two-point conversion attempt kept the game from potentially going to overtime.
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