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.

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?

Right now I’m going three days a week before work. I’m doing some running and lifting weights. I would go every day, but Liam’s still getting up once early in the morning, and I hate to stick Cassie with that every morning. Hopefully he’ll stop that soon.

Back in my prime I could bench press 315 lbs. I started out with 130 lbs. on Monday. It was a lot harder than I expected. I finished up with 180 pounds. I could have probably done 220 lbs., but I didn’t push it. I used to work out with 220 lbs. Time and sloth are cruel mistresses.

Cassie has also started going to the gym. She’s going with a friend three afternoons every week. I don’t expect she’ll have much trouble keeping up her routine. Right now it’s the only regular chance she has to get away from the boys. :)

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. :)

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.

I could have been a football coach in another life. I find all the scheming fascinating. Unfortunately it didn’t work out in this life because high school coaches don’t make enough and college and pro coaches have to be married to their jobs.

My research primarily consisted of reading some bowl picks on ESPN.com and looking at schedules. I spent a total of an hour and a half making my picks, so I’m not going to be able to claim much skill in the case that I do well.

So far I’ve picked 8 of the 11 bowl games correctly, putting me in top 54 or the top 9%. No one has picked all 11 correctly, only 1 person has picked 10 correctly, and only 8 people have picked 9 correctly, so making these picks is a little harder than you might think.

A couple of my picks that went the wrong way have been very close. Troy lost to Southern Miss in overtime by having a relatively short field goal blocked in the New Orleans Bowl. North Carolina lost 30-31 to West Virginia in the Meineke Bowl.

Because someone will ask, I’ll go ahead and tell you that I did pick Texas Tech to beat Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl. I’ll be cheering for Ole Miss, but the reality of the situation is that we’re unlikely to win. It could happen, but the odds are against it.

As I mentioned, the score of the championship game serves as the tiebreaker, and I picked Florida to beat Oklahoma 34-27. It could really go either way, but I picked Florida to win because I want them to win. I noticed that some people played twice, turning in identical sheets with the exception of the championship game pick and score. That’s a good strategy, but I’m too cheap.

I’ll post a couple of updates as the bowl season progresses.

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.

The win puts us at 8-4 for the regular season, our best season in a long time. It moved us into second place in the SEC West behind No. 1 Alabama, and moved us into No. 22 in the AP poll. My dad follows Ole Miss football closer than I do, and I haven’t seen him this giddy about anything in a long time. Things really do look bright for the future of Ole Miss football.

My money is still on us going to the Cotton Bowl. We certainly won’t go to anything worse. However, there’s a slim chance we could be picked up by the Capital One Bowl, which would be a huge deal. Georgia, who had been predicted to be in the Capital One Bowl, lost to Georgia Tech Saturday. While they still have a better record than us at 9-3, the Capital One Bowl could choose us over Georgia. Unlikely, but possible.

We would most likely face Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl or Michigan State in the Capitol One Bowl. Strangely, the better bowl would be easier to win. Texas Tech is ranked No. 8 while Michigan State is ranked No. 21. The BCS and conference tie-ins make for odd bowl pairings. That, and the Big 12 being incredibly strong this year. We should know where and who we’ll be playing late next weekend.

As for the national championship game, it looks like it’ll be the winner of the SEC Championship Game (Alabama or Florida) against Oklahoma, assuming they can beat Missouri in the Big 12 Championship Game. If they lose, things get interesting, but no one really expects them to. I expect to see Florida and Oklahoma play for the national championship.

It’s interesting to note that Oklahoma will probably go to the national championship game, despite having been beaten by Texas and both teams having only one loss. You can read more about that here.

As it turns out, we didn’t just beat them, we beat them very solidly, 31-13. It could have been worse too. At the end of the game we went to the “victory formation” inside their five yard line. We missed another good opportunity to score when we intercepted the ball on their end of the field. It was just a well-played ballgame all the way around on our part. Ole Miss football teams have a tendency to fall apart in big games like this, but we didn’t. A lot of credit for that has to go to Coach Nutt. He has a lot of big game experience. His Arkansas Razorbacks beat LSU at home, in triple overtime, last season. LSU went on to win the national championship.

Saturday’s game was the first annual “Magnolia Bowl.” Also, we are now ranked No. 25 in the country in both the AP and Coaches polls.

Assuming we beat Mississippi State next Friday, we’ll get a spot in the Cotton Bowl. I don’t see any way around it. On paper, we beat Mississippi State every time. You can never be sure about rivalry games though. We better not overlook them.

The last bowl game we went to was the 2004 Cotton Bowl. It was Eli Manning’s senior season. The Cotton Bowl is a good, quality bowl, and Ole Miss fans should be thrilled. I know I would have been happy with the Music City Bowl at the beginning of the year.

This weekend there was one game with definite national championship implications. That was Oklahoma vs. Texas Tech. Texas Tech came into the game ranked No. 2 in the country, and Oklahoma was supposed to be somewhat of an underdog. The Sooners crushed Texas Tech 65-21.

I’ll spare you the “in-depth” analysis, but my prediction is we’ll see Florida vs. Oklahoma in the national championship game. Texas is ahead of Oklahoma in the BCS rankings right now, but that should change if Oklahoma beats No. 12 Oklahoma State next weekend. Oklahoma State is not a gimme by any means, but I expect Oklahoma to pull out the win. That would put Texas in the Fiesta Bowl, and Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl.

Yes, that’s right, we’ll be playing Texas Tech, an 11-1 team (after they beat Baylor next weekend) that was one win away from being (beaten by Florida) in the national championship game.

With any luck there will be a lot of controversy over whether it should be Oklahoma or Texas in the national championship game, and we’ll move a little closer to finding a sane method to select a national champion in college football. The BCS is definitely not it.

We play No. 20 LSU next Saturday in Baton Rouge for the Magnolia Bowl, and Mississippi State at home the day after Thanksgiving for the Egg Bowl. My State friends have already conceded the Egg Bowl, though you can never be sure with that rivalry. What Troy did to LSU in the first three quarters yesterday should give our players some hope. I give us 50-50 odds, which is pretty good considering we’re playing in Death Valley. LSU comes into the game having beaten us six games in a row.

Now that we’re bowl eligible, which bowl are we going to? We probably won’t know for sure until after the conference championships are finished, but we can prognosticate, which I will. Most bowls now have conference tie-ins, which makes predictions easier than it was in years past. The SEC has tie-ins with the Sugar Bowl (#1), Capitol One Bowl (#2), Cotton Bowl (#3/4/5), Outback Bowl (#3/4/5), Chick-fil-A Bowl (#3/4/5), Liberty Bowl (#6/7/8), Independence Bowl (#6/7/8), Music City Bowl (#6/7/8), and the PapaJohns.com Bowl (#9). This year, the SEC champion will most likely end up in the national championship game. That would essentially move us up a bowl game. Looking at the SEC standings, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia will all be taken ahead of us. LSU, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt have similar records to us.

Let’s assume for a moment we beat Mississippi State. If we beat LSU, we would have a good chance at the Cotton, Outback, and Chick-fil-A bowls. If we lose to LSU, they would presumably go to the Cotton Bowl and we would be competing with South Carolina and Vanderbilt for the Outback and Chick-fil-A bowls. South Carolina is currently 7-4 (4-4 in the SEC) and still has to play Clemson. Vanderbilt is currently 6-4 (4-3 in the SEC) and still has to play Tennessee and No. 24 Wake Forest. If we lose out on both those bowls, we’d most likely go to either the Liberty or Independence Bowl. We’ll know a lot more after next Saturday.

What happens if we lose to State? Well, that gets ugly and I don’t want to think about it.

In others news, Auburn continues to lose. No. 20 LSU beat Troy 40-31, which wouldn’t be news except for the fact that they had to score 40 points, at home, to pull it off. Vanderbilt became bowl eligible for the first time in 26 years by beating Kentucky 31-24.

Looking at the teams still in the hunt for the national championship, No. 1 Alabama beat Mississippi State 32-7, No. 3 Texas beat Kansas 35-7, and No. 4 Florida crushed No. 25 South Carolina 56-6. No. 2 Texas Tech and No. 5 Oklahoma were off this week, but will play each other next week in a game with huge implications. See last week’s football post for a more thorough look at the national championship race.

No. 1 Alabama beat No. 16 LSU 27-21 in overtime, in Baton Rouge; no small feat. No. 2 Texas Tech beat No. 9 Oklahoma State 56-20. No. 3 Penn State was upset by unranked Iowa 24-23, effectively putting them out of the chase for the national championship. No. 4 Texas, No. 5 Florida, No. 6 Oklahoma, and No. 7 USC (all one loss teams) won their games this weekend.

If Alabama and Texas Tech continue to win, it’d be a huge surprise if they don’t end up in the national championship. The big question is whether or not they continue to win.

Alabama finishes up the regular season with Mississippi State and Auburn. Auburn has had a very rough year, but have beaten Alabama seven years straight. It should be a good game. Also, Alabama will face No. 5 Florida in the SEC Championship game. With the way Florida has been playing since we beat them, I don’t see Alabama winning that game. It’ll be fun to watch either way.

Texas Tech plays No. 5 Oklahoma and Baylor to finish up its regular season. A week ago I would have said that Oklahoma wins that game. However, Texas Tech was impressive against a very good Oklahoma State team this weekend. If Texas Tech beats Oklahoma, they would most likely face Missouri in the Big 12 Championship game. If Oklahoma wins, that would put the Big 12 South into a three-way tie between Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and Texas. Normally the tie would go to the team with the best record against the other two teams, but since Texas beat Oklahoma, but lost to Texas Tech, the tie would go to the team with the highest BCS ranking after the last regular season game. That would be Oklahoma or Texas, and it’d be hard to argue one over the other.

ESPN’s BCS guru suggests that the SEC champion will face the Big 12 champion in the BCS Championship game. That’s certainly not a bad guess, but it’s not a given by any means. I’m hoping that Florida beats Alabama and that they find their way into the BCS championship game.

If Alabama and/or Texas Tech lose before making it to the national championship game, it could throw the system into enough chaos that more people would start calling for a playoff; the way it should be.

In an appearance on Monday Night Football, the night before the election, when asked what one thing he would change about sports, Barack Obama said he would like to see a playoff system in college football. So, it seems Obama finally agrees with me on an issue that I’m passionate about. Of course, I hope he won’t try to change anything directly, but his comments have got some people talking.

(James, I have to know. Did my title trick you into reading a sports-related post? :)

Luke and my dad at the game.

Those are 53 out of the 343 I took. Consider yourself spared. I turned up the saturation on a few of the wide shots. It makes them look more like a painting than a photo. Look for the radioactive green grass. I would have loved to have had a longer lens to take pictures of the action on the field. (Christmas present, anyone?) It’s for the best I suppose. I don’t really need pictures of the action on the field. It’d just be something else to process. I spent around two hours processing these pictures. I will have to acquire a long lens before Luke starts playing sports though.

Wide shot with lots 'o saturation. To me it looks like one of those paintings they sell on the Square. Needs a little Gaussian blur I suppose.

Luke didn’t pay much attention to the game itself, but as you can see in the pictures, he loved being around all the people. He took a quick nap during the second quarter and halftime, but woke up for the good part. I was amazed he went to sleep when he did. He normally needs to be at home with nothing going on. He didn’t have a nap the day before, which might help explain it.

Luke resting up for the second half.

As part of the pre-game show there was a demonstration by the Air Force Parachuting team and a fly-by by two F-16s. I’m sure parachuting into a stadium is not terribly safe, but they made it look effortless. The F-16s were impressive as always.

A member of the Air Force Parachuting team prepares to land on the field.

A few of my favorite pictures:

Luke shoving apple bites in his mouth.

Luke clapping for the Rebels.

Luke getting a better view of the action.

Cassie and Luke back at home after the game.

A win against Louisiana-Monroe in two weeks would make us bowl eligible. A win against LSU or Mississippi State would nearly guarantee us a bowl game. Wins against both of them might even get us a decent bowl. I feel fairly confident about Mississippi State. Rivalry games are unpredictable, but they’ve had a horrible year. LSU hasn’t had the best of years, but they’re still ranked No. 15 in the country. It’d definitely be a big upset if we beat them, in Baton Rouge no less.

The big news this week is that No. 7 Texas Tech beat No. 1 Texas. Also, No. 8 Florida beat No. 6 Geogia 49-10. I had predicted Florida would beat Georgia, but I would have never suspected such a blowout. The new BCS poll has Alabama at No. 1, Texas Tech at No. 2, and Penn State remaining at No. 3. Texas Tech jumped right over Penn State from the No. 7 spot. Texas is at No. 4 and Florida has moved up to No. 5.

I was glad to see Texas Tech jump past Penn State in the polls. Penn State is undefeated, but their schedule hasn’t been too impressive. Texas Tech’s schedule hasn’t been that impressive either until beating Texas. We’ll see if they’re the real thing in their next two games against No. 9 Oklahoma State and No. 6 Oklahoma. If they continue winning, they’ll have to play Missouri in the Big 12 championship. If they win out, they’re in the national championship.

The same goes for No. 1 Alabama. However, I predict they will lose to Florida in the SEC championship. They have to play No. 16 LSU next Saturday, too. That won’t be a cakewalk. Losses by both Alabama and Texas Tech could allow Florida a shot at the national championship. That’s what I’m hoping for. I don’t think I could put up with Alabama fans if they actually won another national championship. And if they did make it to the big game, I might actually have to pull for them. I’d just prefer Florida beat them so I don’t have to worry about any of that.

Arkansas cut the lead to two points with 1:07 left to play. Needing the ball back in a hurry, they tried an onside kick and appeared to recover the ball. However, the referees said they recovered the ball out of bounds and that it was our ball. The replays they were showing on TV made it impossible to tell what happened. Upon review, the referees reversed their call and said Arkansas had recovered the ball inbounds. While it was probably the right call, I don’t see how they could tell that from the video, and I certainly don’t see how they could say there was “indisputable video evidence” that Arkansas recovered the ball inbounds. Luckily, we were able to keep them from scoring.

Next weekend we face Auburn at home. We’re planning to go. It’ll be our first game in two seasons and Luke’s first college game period. There are a lot of Auburn fans on my mom’s side of the family, and they’ll be coming up for some tailgating. Auburn has had a rough time of it the last few weeks. They’ve been beaten by Vanderbilt, Arkansas, and West Virginia, all teams they should have beaten. Here’s hoping they’ve got one more loss in their system.

Barring some big upsets, it looks like Alabama will be playing the winner of the Georgia/Florida game for the SEC championship. Both of those should be good games.

The top 5 in the AP Top 25 remained unchanged this week. No. 1 Texas still has to face No. 8 Texas Tech in two weeks. They would most likely face No. 15 Missouri in the Big 12 championship game.

No. 2 Alabama plays No. 13 LSU in three weeks, and plays Auburn the last game of the season. While Auburn has had a horrible year by their standards, they’ve beaten Alabama for the past seven seasons. As mentioned, they would also play Georgia or Florida in the SEC championship game.

No. 3 Penn State played what will probably be their last ranked team of the regular season this weekend. They beat No. 9 Ohio State 13-6. However, Michigan State is 7-2 and could pose some trouble. The Big Ten does not have a championship game.

It would be very interesting if Alabama continues to win, only to get beat in the SEC championship game. Penn State, who didn’t have to play in one, would almost certainly get to play for the BCS championship. That’s just one of the hazards of playing in a good conference like the SEC I suppose.

Remember that our coach, Houston Nutt, had been Arkansas’s coach for many years until they ran him off at the end of last season. Arkansas hired Bobby Petrino, the former Louisville coach coming off a bad year as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. I’m guessing a lot of Arkansas fans would like their coach back.

We need to win three of our remaining five games to be bowl eligible. Arkansas, Louisiana-Monroe, and Mississippi State are all very winnable games. We should be able to beat Auburn too, but they’ll be though. Beating LSU would be a big upset, so I’m not going to count on that. In short, we need to beat Arkansas this week.

No. 1 Texas impressively beat No. 11 Missouri 56-31 this weekend, proving that they belong at No. 1. Texas has a tough schedule ahead though. They play No. 6 Oklahoma State next weekend and No. 8 Texas Tech the week after that. No. 2 Alabama still has to play No. 13 LSU and presumably the winner of the SEC East in the SEC Championship. No. 3 Penn State’s big challenge comes next weekend against No. 9 Ohio State. I think they’re up for it.

If Texas, Alabama, and Penn State all continue to win, there could be a huge controversy as to who belongs in the BCS championship game. I’m all for controversy, as it’s the only way we’ll end up with some sort of a playoff. Oklahoma State and Texas Tech have a shot at the BCS championship game if they continue to win, but that seems pretty unlikely. They both have to play Texas, Oklahoma, and each other before the year is out.

For the second time this year, three of the top four teams in the country lost. No. 5 Texas beat No. 1 Oklahoma by 10 points, No. 3 Missouri was beaten by No. 17 Oklahoma State, and No. 4 LSU got spanked by No. 11 Florida. Also of interest is unranked Mississippi State beating No. 13 Vanderbilt. It was bound to happen eventually.

In the new poll, Texas moves to No. 1, Alabama stays at No. 2 after an off week, Penn State moves into No. 3, and Oklahoma drops to No. 4, and Florida moves up to No. 5.

The remainder of Texas’ schedule is pretty rough. They play four teams currently in the top 16.  The only currently ranked team Alabama has left to play is LSU. However, assuming they continue to win, they’ll end up in the SEC championship game where they are likely to face Florida or Georgia. The SEC championship game could easily decide who goes to the BCS championship game.

This year there are several really good one loss teams out there. Could this finally be the year college football gets talked into some sort of playoff system? Probably not, but it’s fun to dream.