Ben’s Blog

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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Cassie, Luke, and I went to the football game with my parents yesterday. It was Luke’s first college football game, and we had a great time. Several other members of my family were supposed to join us, but they all backed out for one reason or another. As you might expect, I took a lot of pictures, and they can be found here.

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.

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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.

I’m a little late with this, but yes, we lost to South Carolina last weekend. We jumped out to a 14-3 lead, but just couldn’t hold on. We only scored 3 points in the second half.

Last week, after our win over Florida, I optimistically predicted we would go 7-5 this season. While that’s still a possibility, I’m going to revise my prediction to 6-6. That’s us losing to Alabama, Auburn, and LSU, and winning over Arkansas, Louisiana-Monroe, and Mississippi State. We could certainly beat Auburn, but I think our chances of winning are worse than our chances of losing. We could certainly get beat by Arkansas or Mississippi State too, but we should beat both of them based on the season so far. Being 6-6 would make us bowl eligible, but not guarantee a bowl game. If we were to beat Auburn, I feel like we’d definitely get one.

We will not lose this weekend; we’re off. Our next game is against Alabama the next weekend. They are now ranked No. 2 in the country. It has just been announced that we’ll be humiliated in front of a national audience at 2:30pm on CBS that Saturday. Please forgive my pecimism.

Ole Miss beat No. 4 Florida 31-30 on Saturday. It was a combination of a bad day from Florida, some opportunistic plays by Ole Miss, a blocked extra point in the fourth quarter, and a little luck. Surprisingly, we’ve beaten Florida three out of the last four times we’ve played them, including the last two games in Florida. I doubt our recent record against any other SEC opponent is that good, possibly excepting Vanderbilt.

Our upset of Florida and some of the other games that took place this weekend force me to reevaluate my predictions for the rest of the year. We are currently 3-2, 3 wins from being bowl eligible. Louisiana-Monroe should be a “gimme,” so we only need to beat two of South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, and Mississippi State.

I’m going to go ahead and count Alabama and LSU as loses. Yes, upsets happen, as we can see, but they are unlikely. South Carolina is very beatable. Arkansas continues to have a horrible year (52-10 loss to Texas), so we should beat them. While Auburn is winning for the most part, they haven’t been too impressive. An upset against them is looking less unlikely. Mississippi State is a wild card just like most years.

We could have a 7-5 year by beating 3 of South Carolina, Arkansas, Auburn, and Mississippi State, and that doesn’t look as unlikely as it did a few weeks ago. Is 7-5 optimistic? Yes. Could it happen. Absolutely. This week’s game against South Carolina will tell us a lot.

This year’s SEC West champ will almost certainly be LSU or Alabama. In addition to each other, LSU has Florida and Georgia remaining, while Alabama has Auburn.

With the upset of USC, Geogia, and Florida this weekend, the top 25 looks a lot different. Oklahoma is now No. 1, despite the fact the only ranked team they’ve played is no longer ranked. They still have to play Texas (No. 5) and Texas Tech (No. 7). Alabama and LSU are two and three, respectively.

The first BCS rankings (boo) will be out in three weeks.

As I mentioned the other day, Oxford is hosting the first 2008 Presidential Debate. Luke and I went to campus on Monday to take some pictures around the Ford Center, where the debate will take place. The pictures should give you a decent idea of the work that went into hosting the debate.  Here they are. Read the captions for more information about each picture.

The pictures aren’t that great for two reasons. First of all, I used my Fuji point and shoot instead of my Canon SLR. I did this primarily because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle Luke and the SLR on the walk to the Ford Center. Also, I was a little concerned the security guys might flip out if I pulled out the SLR. As it turns out, that fear was completely unfounded. There were only a couple of rent-a-cops around the Ford Center, and I saw other people with SLRs. Also, Luke wasn’t real thrilled about being strapped into his stroller. Now that he can walk he likes a little more freedom.

A large tent set up for the journalists covering the debate just east of the Ford Center.

I plan on going back up there in the next few days with my SLR. Hopefully they won’t move anything around until I have a chance to take more pictures. With a tripod and a little time, one could take some really nice pictures around twilight. They have some very interesting lighting on the exterior of the building after dark.

Earlier in the week, the was some concern over whether or not the debate would actually be held. The latest news I’ve heard is that the debate will definitely take place, but possibly without McCain. Early this evening one of the Memphis stations was reporting the McCain “advance team” had done a walk through of the Ford Center. Also, it was being reported that both parties had reached an understanding on the financial bailout. However, it turns out that’s not the case, so it’ll definitely be interesting to see if McCain shows up. If he doesn’t, a one man debate will be interesting as well.

A lot of Oxfordians, myself included, will be upset if the debate doesn’t proceed as planned, with two candidates.

This weekend Ole Miss lost to Vanderbilt, the perennial whipping boy of the SEC, at home no less. We did it in style too, with six turnovers. It’s hard to beat a good junior high team when you hand them six turnovers.

Looking at the rest of the schedule, we’re going to be doing good to get a six win season, which would make us bowl eligible. Assuming a win over Louisiana-Monroe and losses to Florida, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU, that leaves only the South Carolina, Arkansas, and Mississippi State games in question. Winning all three of those games would make us 6-6. We should win all three of those games, but we should have beaten Vanderbilt too.

Beating us put Vanderbilt at no. 21 in the Associated Press poll. That’s the first time in 24 years that Vanderbilt has been in the top 25. Currently the SEC has 3 teams in the top 5, 4 teams in the top 10, and 5 in the top 15. Not too shabby.

It looks like the SEC will come down to Georgia, Florida, and LSU. They are ranked 3, 4, and 5, respectively, in the AP Top 25. They will all play each other in the next month. It should be fun to watch. Auburn has a chance to climb back into the mix depending on what happens.

It’s become public knowledge that the SEC is the toughest football conference in the country. The New York Times (of all places) has an article about why the current national championship system doesn’t give the SEC a fair shake.