If you spot a man in a long-sleeve Ole Miss tee and a white visor roaming campus flanked by camera crews, you could very well have come upon Lane Kiffin himself — or you might instead have found Jake Sarachek, a filmmaker who is taking a deep dive into Ole Miss this football season.
Sarachek was born and raised on the Upper East Side of New York City. From a young age, he has been interested in exploring the culture of football schools. This season, alongside his crew, he is following Ole Miss Football but with a unique twist.
“I’m making a project about what it’s like to live in an SEC town during a college football season and doing it differently than every other sports project,” Sarachek said. “We’re not just focusing on the players and coaches, the locker rooms, practice, sideline, film study, all that stuff — we’re focusing on the whole community.”
Sarachek cites famous travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain as a major inspiration, specifically Bourdain’s tendency to highlight the under-the-radar restaurants in the towns he visited.
“When (Bourdain) wanted to learn about the food of another culture, he wouldn’t go to the most expensive restaurant and order the fanciest dish. He would go meet with the mom-and-pops, the street vendors, the people at the local markets,” Sarachek said. “As a kid who grew up in the northeast and … never got to experience big-time college football, how cool would it be to live in an SEC town and make a project that focuses on the whole community?”
When Sarachek was 16 years old, he was involved in a serious car accident that left him in a coma for a week, and when he awoke, he was inspired to chase his filmmaking dreams. After a short, one-year detour to law school, Sarachek fully committed to his passion.
“God blessed me with this second lease on life,” Sarachek said. “I need to have a career that I love and that I’m passionate about, and my two biggest loves are sports and storytelling.”
While Sarachek wondered what it would be like to explore the culture of an SEC school during football season, he thought schools like the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia were too mainstream for the goals of his documentary.
“I wanted to go to a place where they love football just as much, have a football-rich tradition and have a team that’s under-the-radar but going to surprise some people with how good they might be this year,” Sarachek said.
After much deliberation, Sarachek settled on Ole Miss. He reached out to prominent members in the Oxford community about his idea, and Vice Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics Keith Carter answered. Sarachek, supported by the entire Ole Miss Athletics Department, was granted full access to the Ole Miss-LSU football game last season.
A pilot episode Sarachek made, titled “Who The Hell Are We” is accessible on Vimeo and has reached just under 17,000 views on X. When he was asked if he was interested in following Ole Miss football for an entire season, the answer was a no-brainer.
“I love this school. I love this community,” Sarachek said. “I have so many great friends here, and it would be really special to come back here for an anticipated season where this team means everything to this community, and this community gives everything it has to this team and be able to capture that story.”
Sarachek hopes his documentary will demonstrate that athletes, too, are a part of the community.
“(Football student-athletes) are people you see around campus, around town, around the Square, and that’s the last time in their lives they’re going to be like that for a very long time because most of them are going to be playing (in the National Football League),” Sarachek said. “(I wanted) to capture them as people and show how, at the end of the day, they may be incredible athletes, but they’re just regular people like you and me.”
Sarachek has taken part in numerous local traditions to fully immerse himself in the Ole Miss experience: He set up tents in the Grove with SevenSouth Tailgating, did the tent run at four in the morning, bartended at Funky’s on the Square and even donned the famous blazer and khaki pants uniform of fraternity pledges so that he could sit in the student section.
Even Sarachek’s daily garb — his Lane Kiffin-inspired outfit — has community ties. Sarachek is sponsored by The College Corner, a clothing store in Oxford.
“(The College Corner) outfitted me in all the Lane Kiffin outfits, and my team and I thought it would be funny if I did the Lane Kiffin outfit every day,” Sarachek said.
Once the season ends, Sarachek hopes to work out a deal to air his documentary on a streaming service. He has already started to advertise on social media.
“I want to do everything in my own power to make the project as successful as possible,” Sarachek said. “So we started a social media channel where we post behind-the-scenes content every day.”
His Instagram account, @yankinthesip, has already amassed approximately 3,500 followers. Featured on this channel are the Ole Miss Rebelettes, the Ole Miss Women’s Basketball team and fieldside clips of football games.
Though Sarachek hopes to expand to other college campuses in the future, Ole Miss will always have a special place in his heart.
“I’ve made so many lifelong friends here,” Sarachek said. “I have so many people who I love and care about deeply here. I love the place so much. I love the school so much. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better group of people than (those) of Oxford and Ole Miss.”
