Ben’s Blog

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.

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.