Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin was baffled by fans leaving early during the Rebels dominant victory on Saturday.

The Rebels defeated Middle Tennessee 52-3 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, moving to 2-0 on the season and outscoring opponents 128-3 through two games following a 76-0 win over Furman in Week 1. However, the fifth-year Ole Miss coach had a message for the Rebels' fanbase following back-to-back blowout wins to open the 2024 college football season.

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"I think it's really important for the players when you come back out of the tunnel for the second half or you go into the end zone and you look up and see the difference. I don't really understand it. Maybe I'm naive to it, but if a concert is going really well…do you leave? Like if the products really bad and come back out in the second half and the stadium's half empty — I understand when it's a bad product — but I really don't understand it," Kiffin said on Sunday per The Rebel Walk.

Lane Kiffin calls out Ole Miss fans for leaving early

During the game, Ole Miss reported an attendance of 66,427 fans for Saturday's match against MTU. The stadium, built in 1915, reportedly hosted a capacity crowd of 64,038. The record crowd for a game came last season against LSU on Sept. 30, 2023, with 66,703 fans in attendance.

However, as Kiffin noted, many fans did not stay for quarterback Jaxson Dart's record-shattering performance, where he completed 24 straight passes to open the game to break the previous school record of 19 set by Matt Corral on Oct. 31, 2000 and set an SEC record. Dart has had strong performances in each of the Rebels' first two games and is sitting at 795 passing yards, six passing touchdowns, and two rushing touchdowns through two games.

"I think it's pretty entertaining to watch a team play really well. When you have that a week ago and after your quarterback threw — in the first half — for 350 yards and responsible for five touchdowns, first in the SEC since Joe Burrow to do that," Kiffin continued. "Then you have the most accurate (passing) streak in the history of the SEC and the stadium's half empty for a top-six team in America, that just doesn't — I don't understand it. It's frustrating, but I can't control it. I'm just disappointed for our players. And I thought it was good weather. I've heard 'too hot', heard 'rain', heard 'too cold', heard 'hunting season' so I've kind of heard all the reasons before. I don't really know what this one was."

The Rebels travel to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this weekend to take on the ACC's Wake Forest. They return home on Saturday, Sept. 21, when Ole Miss hosts Georgia Southern, another home game that could have a lopsided score. Ole Miss opens SEC play at home against Kentucky on Sept. 28, which could be the season's first "competitive" home game for the Rebels.

Lane Kiffin tweets about Ole Miss fans leaving early

On Monday, Kiffin tweeted on his personal X (formerly Twitter) account a clip from the 2000 movie Gladiator, in which actor Russell Crowe asks the crowd, "Are you not entertained?"

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Lane Kiffin expresses disappointment in Ole Miss football fans for leaving early