Ben’s Blog

Ole Miss fans were hoping for a blowout, and we got one, but not the one we wanted. We looked pretty rough the first three quarters. It was only 17-7 going into the fourth quarter. Snead threw two interceptions and our defense looked a little porous at times against a relatively weak Memphis offense.

On the other hand, we did score 28 points in the fourth quarter. But, then again, we’re still talking about Memphis here. A lot of Ole Miss fans would have been very depressed if not for that flash of hope in the fourth quarter. I was a little pessimistic before the game, and I haven’t seen anything to calm my fears yet. Our next game is Southeastern Louisiana in two weeks.

Elsewhere in the SEC, Florida dominated Charleston Southern, Kentucky looked impressive against Miami (Ohio), South Carolina won, but looked weak against NC State, Tennessee blew out Western Kentucky, Vanderbilt blew out Western Carolina, Georgia lost to a tough Oklahoma State, Alabama looked sloppy at times, but beat a good Virginia Tech team, Arkansas beat Missouri State, Auburn looked a lot like us against Louisiana Tech, LSU looked sluggish against Washington, and Mississippi State looked decent against Jackson State.

Nationally, No. 6 Ohio State just barely beat Navy at home. No. 3 Oklahoma was beaten by No. 20 BYU, and their QB, Sam Bradford, was injured. No. 14 Boise State beat No. 16 Oregon at home and everyone is acting surprised. Boise State, you’re obviously pretty good. Could you perhaps join a real conference so I don’t have to listen to people be surprised when you win?

Finally, if you haven’t heard about the punch, please get out from under your rock. Blount was suspended for the year. Too much? Maybe, but not by much.

The preseason USA TODAY Coaches’ Poll was released last week and Ole Miss is ranked 10th behind SEC teams Florida(1), Alabama(5), and LSU(9). We could certainly be that good, but I want to see a little football played before I get too excited.

After our 9-4 season last year (with the bowl win), it’s going to take at least nine regular season wins to keep the fan base happy. We have a reasonably soft schedule, so If we’re anything like as good as they say we are, 8-4 in the regular season should be no problem. Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, and LSU will be a little tougher, but are all beatable.

We’ll know a lot more after the Memphis game. I’m hoping for a blowout. Anything other than a solid win and we start dropping in the rankings.

David Cutcliffe’s last two years we virtually had no recruiting, no signing of people who could play. It was pretty natural to go for the person who was viewed as the best recruiter in the country. What we didn’t realize was that Ed was going to have so much difficulty coaching.

Who said that? Some random sports commentator? No, that would be a quote from Dr. Robert Khayat, our chancellor for eight more days. He seems to be opening up a bit in the waning days of his administration. What he said is common knowledge among Ole Miss football fans, but I wouldn’t have expected to hear it from him.

A sports post? I didn’t see it coming either.

Link to yet another feel good article about our upcoming football season. Why do I feel like we’re being setup for a big letdown?

Thursday night the Florida Gators defeated the Oklahoma Sooners 24-14 to win the BCS National Championship. The game was closer than the score made it sound. Twice in the first half Oklahoma drove into the red zone only to be stopped by the Gators. They were driving in the fourth quarter when one of their receivers bobbled the ball on a long pass and the Gator defender grabbed it out of the air. Both quarterbacks, Heisman winners from this year and last, threw two interceptions.

Even before Florida had beaten Oklahoma, some were arguing that Utah should be the national champion. They convincingly beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and were the only undefeated team in Division I football. I don’t have much sympathy for that claim. If you look at their schedule, they only played three top 25 teams. Florida played four top 10 teams and two more top 25 teams. Could Utah beat Florida? Maybe, but we’ll never know. If they had a stronger schedule maybe we would have.

Should we have a different way of determining the national champion? Yes, we need a playoff. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon. Utah’s Attorney General has announced an investigation into whether or not the BCS runs afoul of antitrust laws. This could get interesting.

The last AP poll of the season came out today. Florida is No. 1, Utah is No. 2, USC No. 3, Texas No. 4, and Oklahoma dropped to No. 5. Ole Miss came in at No. 14, making it the fourth highest ranked SEC team. Does anyone know how we were ranked after Eli’s senior year? One of ESPN’s prognosticators has Ole Miss at No. 12 in his list for next year. Don’t get your hopes up too much, but there is a lot of promise there.

In The 29th Annual Lafayette County Bowl Pick, I placed 35th, tied with 41 other people. (They didn’t bother breaking ties past the first few people.) Not too shabby. I picked 23 of the 34 bowl games correctly. The winner picked 27 correctly and won $9,196. Even though I’ve done this before, I’m still amazed at how tough it is to pick these things. We weren’t even picking against the spread.

To all you sports haters, that should be all the football for a while. Be glad the NFL doesn’t interest me that much. College baseball does start in a few weeks though. :)

As you’ll recall, I picked Texas Tech to beat Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl. I was wrong. So where a lot of other people. Not only did we win, we did so in convincing fashion, beating them 47-34. In a poll on ESPN.com prior to the game, 94% of respondents picked Texas Tech to win the game. In the Lafayette County Bowl Pick, where surely at least 95% of participants are Ole Miss fans, only 46% picked Ole Miss to win. When your own fans don’t think you’re going to win, that’s not a good sign. The funny thing is, it could have been been a lot worse. We gave up a couple of touchdowns we shouldn’t have (after fumble and interception), and should have scored a couple that we didn’t (punt return called back and fumble on the one yard line).

Things didn’t look good right off the bat. With over five minutes left in the first quarter, we had given up a fumble and an interception, and Texas Tech was up 14-0. However, with a little more than a minute left in the first half, we took a 24-21 lead and never looked back.

Not only was this win a great way to end the season, but it’ll help us a lot going into next season too. You can’t underestimate what it’ll do for our recruiting.

But wait, there’s even more good news! Last week it was announced that Ole Miss football team was the best in the SEC, academically. We were also 13th best in the country.

I don’t try to hide the fact that I hate the University of Alabama; particularly their football team and their fans. I realize it’s not rational, but I can’t help it. I was taught to hate them from a very early age. I can remember pulling for Miami, against Alabama, in the 1992 national championship when I was only 11 years old. All that said, I had decided to pull for Alabama in the Sugar Bowl Friday night. I’m not sure why really. Perhaps it was because no one gave Utah a fighting chance? Of course Utah would stomp them. That’ll teach me to cheer for Alabama.

As for the Lafayette County Bowl Pick, I was doing great through the first twelve games. If I remember correctly, I was 33rd out of 576. However, then things went bad. I missed several picks in a row. I’ve done a little better over the last few games (despite my picking Texas Tech and Alabama), and as of tonight I’m 92nd. I’ve picked 20 out of 31 correctly. There are currently two people tied for the lead, and they have picked 24 correctly. Only five people have picked 23 correctly. Picking bowl winners is a tough business.

As I predicted, Ole Miss will be going to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. There was some hope we would go to the Capital One Bowl, which is a slightly better bowl (and easier this year), but I always thought it was unfounded optimism. Our opponent will be No. 8 Texas Tech, who was, at one time, No. 2 in the country and thought to be headed for the national championship game. They will certainly be the favorite, but I think we have a good shot at an upset. The team seems to be very confident and that counts for a lot. Despite not playing this week, Ole Miss moved up two spots in the AP poll to No. 20, and moved into the BCS poll at No. 25.

No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Florida played for the SEC championship this past Saturday in Atlanta. Florida beat them 31-20. Oklahoma beat Missouri 62-21 in the Big 12 championship. Florida and Oklahoma will now face each other in Miami for the national championship. I’ll be pulling for Florida, but it should be a good game. I think the BCS guys got it right by picking Florida and Oklahoma, even though Texas beat Oklahoma and has the same record as them. But, we’ll never really know for sure. Too bad we don’t have a playoff.

Incidentally, some guys at ESPN put some thought into how this season would end up if college football had an eight team playoff to decide the national champion. It sounds good to me. Also, here’s a list of all bowl games.

Tommy Tuberville, a former Ole Miss coach, resigned from Auburn last week. Something’s a little fishy though, as the school will be paying him his $5 million buyout, even though he wasn’t “fired.” Auburn’s athletic director said it was “the right thing to do.” Really? You couldn’t find anything better to do with $5 million? This has led some to speculate that Tuberville was actually fired. His mom says he was. If he was, Auburn made a dumb move. Tuberville is a good coach. Houston Nutt doesn’t care. He and his assistant coaches got a raise out of the deal.

Football news should be slow for a few weeks until some decent bowls get going. Go ahead, celebrate, James.