One of the greatest things about college football season finally being here is that we get our weekly on-field fix of Lane Kiffin.

Offseasons are all fine and good, of course – time to see our families and whatnot. And it isn’t like Kiffin doesn’t do Kiffin things during those times, as he busily recruits and self-promotes and becomes even more amusing/insufferable with each passing year.

But the football season? That’s when we get Peak Kiffin. And fall Saturday afternoons in Oxford, well, that’s when Peak Kiffin gets turned up to 11.

The 2024 Ole Miss Rebels appear to be quite good, evidenced by the historic 76-0 shellacking they put on Furman on Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. So complete was the beatdown of the Paladins was that the line – the Rebels were giving away a healthy 45.5 points – was eclipsed before halftime.

Surely the 66,105 in attendance were delighted, as was all of Black Bear Nation who couldn’t wedge their way inside. The No. 6-ranked home team was hitting on all offensive cylinders, especially Heisman hopeful Jaxson Dart – who threw it around the ballpark for 418 yards and 5 TDs along with a rushing score in the first half alone.

Ole Miss scored on first half series of 75, 90, 46, 20, 63, 81, 61 and 58 yards – which were highlighted by TD tosses of 61 and 22 yards to Tre Harris, who finished with 8 receptions for 179 yards and 2 TDs. The Rebels finished with 772 yards of total offense (502 of which came in the first 30 minutes of one-sided football).

Kiffin’s defense was almost as salty – allowing Furman to cross midfield only 4 times, finishing 9 drives with negative yardage and giving up just 172 yards overall.

“I’m really pleased with the points, the yards and zero turnovers,” Kiffin said afterward. “We didn’t have to play a starter in the second half. Normally I’m critical about what we could do better, but not so much tonight.”

Before we get all carried away with the platitudes, let us remember that Furman is an FCS program. That means even on the best of days, the Paladins were paddling upstream at the thought of hanging with the Rebels for 60 minutes.

“I told our team we could play Ole Miss a hundred times and I’m not sure that much will be different,” Furman coach Clay Hendrix told the media on the other end of Vaught-Hemingway while Kiffin was basking in the glow. “Our kids held on and fought hard and we will regroup. We won’t see another team this talented the rest of the way.”

We aren’t here to bash Furman, which received a $500,000 paycheck. Nor are we here to bash Ole Miss, which happily doled out the half-million for a cupcake opener as a prelude to a sterner SEC test.

The real question is this: Just how good is Ole Miss? Colleague and SDS editor Chris Wright overreacted and said if the Rebels play 14 or 15 games, they could break LSU’s single-season scoring record, which is 726 points.

Doubtful the Rebels will put up a 70-burger the rest of the season – even with Middle Tennessee and Georgia Southern also “looming” on the home slate before league play kicks off. Kiffin might be tempted, if for no other reason than to further boost Dart’s Heisman ascendency. But hanging half-a-hundred-plus on cupcakes has its downside, because it can at times look like pure stat-padding.

Ditto for the Ole Miss defense. Yes, the revamped starting front line limited Furman to just 2.1 yards per rush, and the reserves fared even better. Yes, Ole Miss finished with 4 sacks and 16 tackles for loss, but, again, this was Furman. Wait until Oklahoma and Georgia start posing questions before we finally make room in our hearts and minds the notion that Ole Miss is a true SEC title contender.

So what did Kiffin and Ole Miss really prove in Saturday’s one-sided season opener? Besides the fact that the Rebels would undoubtedly cruise to an FCS crown, the true answer is “not much.” Those quizzes are yet to come, though they certainly won’t be proffered until at least October.

Until then, both Kiffin and Ole Miss figure to be mainstays in the nation’s top 10. The only tests for Rebel Nation between now and the heart of the SEC slate will be what hors d’oeuvres to serve at their Grove tailgates before kickoff.