NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mississippi's scintillating breakthrough quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and his Rebels teammates have been saying for weeks that they have the chemistry, talent and confidence to carry on in the College Football Playoff without former coach Lane Kiffin.
Unlikely as that may have sounded after Kiffin left for rival LSU on Nov. 30, there's been little evidence to the contrary. The Rebels — having dramatically vanquished Southeastern Conference champion Georgia in a Sugar Bowl for the ages — are preparing for a Jan. 8 Fiesta Bowl date with Miami in the CFP semifinals.
“It’s a super tough group,” recently promoted Ole Miss coach Pete Golding said after the No. 6 seed Rebels (13-1) walked off of the Superdome field with a 39-34 victory over third-seeded Georgia (12-2). “They’ve got a lot of grit, and they love playing football, and they’re not tired of it.”
Georgia, the only team to beat Ole Miss this season back in October, was favored by about a touchdown and led by nine at halftime. The Rebels rallied to take a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter, but still required late-game poise by their defense, a big throw by Chambliss and a clutch kick by Lucas Carneiro to pull it out.
Georgia scored 10 straight points in the last 7:03, but the Bulldogs were threatening to score a go-ahead touchdown when Mississippi's defense held them to a tying field goal with 55 seconds left.
Then, on a third-and-5 from his own 30, Chambliss delivered an accurate deep ball to De'Zhaun Stribling for a 40-yard gain to set up Carneiro's decisive, 47-yard field goal with 6 seconds left (a safety on the ensuing kickoff completed scoring in the final seconds).
Kiffin, who wanted to continue coaching Ole Miss in the postseason after accepting his LSU job but was not permitted to do so by Mississippi Athletic Director Keith Carter, spent part of Thursday night being introduced to the crowd at an LSU women's basketball game by Tigers' coach Kim Mulkey.
Later, Kiffin posted a message of encouragement to his former team on social media, stating, “Only two more to go.”
Since Kiffin flew out of Oxford on a private jet supplied by LSU, “Everybody stayed together and bought in and nobody got frustrated,” Mississippi linebacker Suntarine Perkins said. "I’m really excited about what this group has accomplished this season.”
In terms of their backgrounds, Chambliss and Miami QB Carson Beck could hardly be more of a study in contrast.
Beck is a high-paid, high-profile transfer from Georgia known for his taste in luxury European automobiles. In helping the Hurricanes stage a pair of CFP victories over higher-seeded Texas A&M and defending national champion Ohio State, he's fulfilling the promise with which he returned to his native Florida, where he was a consensus four-star recruit.
Now one more victory in the Fiesta Bowl will give Beck and the 10th-seeded Hurricanes (12-2) a chance to play for a national title in their home stadium on Jan. 19.
Chambliss has emerged from relative obscurity to become one of the most compelling stories in all of college football — the Sugar Bowl being merely his latest chapter.
Last fall, Chambliss played at Division II Ferris State in his native Michigan. Before that, he says he nearly quit football in favor of playing point guard for a Division III basketball program. But after leading Ferris State to a Division II national championship, he took an offer to be a projected backup at Ole Miss this season.
An injury to season-opening starter Austin Simmons thrust Chambliss into the spotlight, and his ability to run circles around frustrated pass-rushers while finding receivers breaking open downfield made him such a hit in Oxford, Mississippi, that fans there began flying flags of his namesake Caribbean island nation, Trinidad & Tobago.
“Sometimes I've got to pinch myself,” Chambliss said. "I never really thought I'd get to this point, to be honest, because I did have some doubt at Ferris State if football is really for me.
“It's been a crazy ride so far,” he added.
Next stop, Glendale, Arizona.
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Mississippi platers and coach celebrate a win against Georgia after the Sugar Bowl NCAA college football playoff quarterfinal game, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A solo hiker who authorities believe was killed by a mountain lion on a remote Colorado trail on New Year's Day was not the first person to encounter a big cat in the area in recent weeks.
Gary Messina said he was running along the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp caught the gleam of two eyes in the nearby brush. Messina used his phone to snap a quick photo before a mountain lion rushed him.
Messina said he threw the phone at the animal, kicked dirt and yelled as the lion kept trying to circle behind him. After a couple of harrowing minutes he broke a bat-sized stick off a downed log, hit the lion in the head with it and it ran off, he said.
The woman whose body was found Thursday on the same Crosier Mountain trail had “wounds consistent with a mountain lion attack,” said Kara Van Hoose with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. An autopsy is scheduled for next week, said Rafael Moreno with the Larimer County Coroner's Office.
Wildlife officials late Thursday tracked down and killed two mountain lions in the area — one at the scene and another nearby. A necropsy will help determine if either or both of those animals attacked the woman and whether they had neurological diseases such as rabies or avian flu.
A search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was ongoing Friday, Van Hoose said. Nearby trails remained closed while the hunt continued. Van Hoose said circumstances would dictate whether that lion also is killed.
Based on the aggressiveness of the animal that attacked him on Nov. 11, Messina suspects it could be the same one that killed the woman on New Year’s Day.
“I had to fight it off because it was basically trying to maul me,” Messina told The Associated Press. “I was scared for my life and I wasn’t able to escape. I tried backing up and it would try to lunge at me.”
The 32-year-old man from nearby Glen Haven, Colorado, reported his encounter to wildlife officials days later who posted signs to warn people about the animal along trails in the Crosier Mountain area northeast of Estes Park, Van Hoose said. The signs were later removed, she said.
Mountain lion sightings in that area east of Rocky Mountain National Park are common, Van Hoose said, because it offers good habitat for the big cats: It’s remote with thick forests, rocky outcroppings and lots of elevation changes.
Yet attacks on humans by the animals are rare, and the last suspected fatal encounter in Colorado was in 1999, when a 3-year-old boy disappeared in the wilderness and his tattered clothes were found more than three years later. In 1997, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and dragged away while hiking with family members in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Two hikers on Thursday saw the victim's body on the trail at around noon from about 100 yards away, Van Hoose said. A mountain lion was nearby and they threw rocks to scare it away. One of the hikers, a physician, attended to the victim but did not find a pulse, Van Hoose said.
The victim will be publicly identified following the autopsy by the coroner, who is also expected to provide a cause of death.
Mountain lions — also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts — can weigh 130 pounds (60 kilograms) and grow to more than six feet (1.8 meters) long. They primarily eat deer.
Colorado has an estimated 3,800-4,400 of the animals, which are classified as a big game species in the state and can be hunted.
Thursday's killing would be the fourth fatal mountain lion attack in North America over the past decade, and the 30th since 1868, according to information from the California-based Mountain Lion Foundation. Not all of those deaths have been confirmed as mountain lion attacks.
Most attacks occur during the day and when humans are active in lion territories, indicating the animals are not seeking out the victims, according to the advocacy group. About 15% of attacks are fatal.
“As more people live, work, and recreate in areas that overlap wildlife habitat, interactions can increase, not because mountain lions are becoming more aggressive, but because overlap is growing,” said Byron Weckworth, chief conservation officer for the foundation.
To reduce the risk travel in groups, keep children close and avoid dawn and dusk when lions are most active, Weckworth said. During an encounter, maintain eye contact with the lion, make yourself appear larger and back away slowly; don't run, he said.
Last year in Northern California, two brothers were stalked and attacked by a lion that they tried to fight off. One of the brothers was killed.
FILE - The General Store is seen Oct. 24, 2006, in Glen Haven, Colo. (AP Photo/The Denver Post, Karl Gehring, File)
