Ben’s Blog

We were supposed to beat Mississippi State, but we didn’t just beat them, we embarrassed them. We beat them 45-0, which is the biggest blowout in the Egg Bowl since we beat them 48-0 in 1971. And even though 45-0 sounds bad, the score really doesn’t reflect how badly we beat them. Allow me to elaborate. We had 461 yards of total offense to State’s 37 yards. State had -51 yards rushing. Yes, that is a minus sign. Sylvester Croom, State’s coach for five years, resigned the day after the game.

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.

Ole Miss crushed Louisiana-Monroe 59-0 yesterday, making us bowl eligible for the first time since Eli Manning took us to the Cotton Bowl after the 2003 season.

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.

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Yesterday Ole Miss defeated Auburn 17-7. I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect us to win. And we wouldn’t have won without those three interceptions and zero turnovers for our part. On at least two of those turnovers they were driving and looking to score.

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.

Ole Miss beat Arkansas 23-21 yesterday. It was Houston Nutt’s first trip back to the place he had been head coach for ten years. The win puts our record at 4-4, just two games away from being bowl eligible.

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.

Yesterday’s football post failed to mention that we’re playing Arkansas this weekend. A few weeks ago it was looking like Arkansas was going to be a gimme. They’ve had a horrible year, but managed to upset Auburn two weeks ago. They’ve since lost to Kentucky. We should definitely win this game, but you never know with this team.

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.

You would think with a headline like that I might be a little upbeat about the game. I’m not. While we played better than I expected, and had a chance to win the game well into the fourth quarter, it’s hard not to be depressed when you think back to the games we could have won this season had we played half that well. Alabama has struggled in the second half all season, and that proved to be the case this weekend as well. Alabama took a 24-3 lead into halftime, but couldn’t score the entire second half.

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.