The Ole Miss football team is nearing its first College Football Playoff appearance in program history. And while the first-round game in Oxford will be the biggest any of the players have ever played in, it’s also shaping up to be the biggest game the city has ever capitalized on.
An average home-game weekend in Oxford generates around $46.5 million in economic impact for the roughly 26,000-person college town, according to 2024 numbers provided by the university. However, Mayor Robyn Tannehill is projecting that number to balloon two weekends from now when Ole Miss hosts Tulane on Dec. 20.
“For Tulane, we played them in mid-September, and there were about 250,000 people in town for that game. The economic impact was $64 million,” Tannehill said. “Our largest economic impact this season was the LSU game at the end of September. We had about 340,000 people in town and an economic impact of $74 million. That’s the impact that [a College Football Playoff game] will have on our community — in a month that’s never seen a football game in Oxford.”
Not only will the game be the first to be played in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in the month of December, but it will also occur five days before Christmas, making a ticket to the contest a prized gift that has undoubtedly been handed out to those on Santa’s nice list ahead of the holiday.
As for the game itself, both the Rebels and Green Wave will enter the matchup with a lot of familiarity with their respective opponents. Ole Miss was on the winning side of a 45-10 blowout of Tulane on Sept. 20, but as is the case in the sports world, one result is not always destined to repeat itself when revenge is on the table.
Ole Miss (11-1, 7-1 SEC) will be guided by frontman Pete Golding, who was promoted to the head coaching role after Lane Kiffin’s unprecedented departure. Tulane (11-1, 7-1 AAC) will be led by head coach Jon Sumrall, who is finishing a two-year stint with the program before heading to Gainesville to lead the Florida Gators beginning next season.
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Both teams boast dual-threat quarterbacks, with Conerly Trophy-winning field general Trinidad Chambliss set to run Ole Miss’ offense, while BYU transfer Jake Retzlaff will commandeer operations under center for Tulane, the American Conference champion. The Rebels, on the other hand, will have another force in their favor in Doak Walker Award finalist Kewan Lacy, who has been one of the top running backs in the nation all year.
As the game nears, officials are doing the best they can to prepare for the expected influx of foot traffic for the momentous event, though Tannehill notes that there will be borderline unavoidable challenges naturally posed by the city’s efforts to accommodate a crowd totaling more than 12 times its population.
“It doesn’t get any less crowded, and we can’t grow the streets. But people seem to figure it out. People have figured out how to make it work. We’ll, of course, have officers in intersections directing traffic, trying to move it along as efficiently as possible,” Tannehill said. “When you get 300,000 people in a town built for 28,000, without a magic wand, I can’t fix some of those problems.”
Ole Miss and Tulane will kick things off at 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 20, with TNT and participating SuperTalk Mississippi stations on the broadcast. Another city gearing up for an economic boost following the playoff game in Oxford is New Orleans. That’s where the winner of the showdown in Oxford will travel for a New Year’s Day Sugar Bowl contest against Georgia. If the Rebels handle business in their postseason opener, the Big Easy can expect its streets to be flooded with red and powder blue.