Scooter Hobbs column: The Sugar Bowl that wouldn’t end

Published 4:12 pm Sunday, January 4, 2026

There are, of course two ways that LSU fans could look at the Thursday’s Sugar Bowl and the madcap “top-this” antics masquerading as a College Football Playoff quarterfinal.

It was Ole Miss 39, Georgia 34, in case you went to bed early — and even if you didn’t, you might have missed at least two points, maybe more.

What does it all mean? The actual game, that is?

For one thing, for LSU, Ole Miss didn’t seem to miss Lane Kiffin now that he’s gone to the Tigers. The Rebels are now 2-0 without him and every bit as crazy-fun to watch as they were with him.

On the other hand, on the encouraging side for LSU, Ole Miss under new coach Pete Golding was the team that Kiffin put together, the one that beat Georgia and is now the SEC’s last great hope as the CFP leaps into the semifinals.

By Friday Kiffin was hot on the transfer portal’s scent, trying to put together similar mischief for the Tigers, no matter who tough of an act it is to follow.

But none of that is important now.

If you were a college football fan and watched the bizarre game, you will never view the sport quite the same way again.

The first 59 minutes, 59 seconds weren’t bad either.

Yet the most puzzling question in the wake of this wild fiasco was about the absolute longest final one second in college football’s recorded history— and how many times, exactly, did they have to move that Mardi Gras float-sized awards stand on and off the field before they finally were able to pass out any postgame hardware?

I counted three, but I could have missed a shift change or three.

It took some doing. No officiating crew has ever turned a game into more of a total fiasco while actually (and correctly) following the Rule Book to a T and dotting all the i’s. At times, they seemed to be apologizing for it.

But there was nothing they could do.

It was already a nutty game, mostly the antics of Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, a Patrick Mahomes/Johnny Manziel hybrid.

Then Ole Miss kicked a game-winning field goal with six seconds left for a 37-34 lead.

Great game.

Then Ole Miss kicked off and the game went off the rails.

Georgia returned the kick but only a few yards before going into Stanford-band mode. A lateral grazed the goal line pylon on the way out of bounds which, as everyone knows, meant a safety for Ole Miss.

It was only after they carted the awards stand onto the field and had just about got it set up that somebody realized there was not only two more points on the board — Ole Miss now 39, Georgia still 34— there was still one second remaining.

No big deal. Georgia just had to do the traditional post-safety free kick from the 20. Which the Dawgs did and then there was some token rolling around and, once again, they shook hands and maneuvered that big stage back to midfield and …

Hold everything.

For some reason nobody from Ole Miss bothered to recover it. Somebody from Georgia — doesn’t really matter who — did, and just jumped on it without any football move to make the clock move and — you guessed it — there was still one second remaining.

And one too many award stands was back on the field for somebody to drag off to the sidelines again.

That accomplished, Georgia had to run one more play before summoning the exhausted award stand removal crew.

By my watch, that one last play to get rid of the final second actually took 42 seconds and it was about halfway through the 10 laterals while meandering toward midfield when a scary thought occurred to me.

We are like one facemask penalty away from Georgia getting one more untimed down to heave a game-winning Hail Mary.

That would have been milking that gag too far.

But not by much.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. Contact him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com