Lemme tell you a little story.
About me.
(Why? Because that’s what I like to talk about most, is that alright, princess? Quit asking questions. Lord..)
So gather around kids: A long, long time ago in the days of light and warmth, of sunshine and honey (2003), I had the audacious courage (Okay, let’s stop the fairy tale right there. In actuality I was just short-sighted and really young as a sportswriter, and the following is a lot more about dumb luck than premonition, but I’ll throw in magic beans and a dragon for fun.) to write a Daily Mississippian column imploring the fans to be patient with David Cutcliffe’s 2-2 Ole Miss team after embarrassing losses to Texas Tech and Memphis. This was on the eve of Gainesville and a rematch with Ron Zook’s Florida, the team that we’d upset the previous year and who was now attempting to replace Rex “Steel Sex Machine” (sorry, that’s actually a legally required title now) Grossman with a platoon of green QBs, one of which was a promising but interception-prone kid named Chris Leak.
The majority opinion around the Rebels was much like the thinking that followed Mississippi State’s 2000 upset of the Gators in Starkville – an unthinkable upset on Mississippi soil which was followed by Steve Spurrier’s machine of an offense unleashing a 52-0 revenge killing in The Swamp that was so brutal and precise it had all the makings of a New Age Russian mob hit. In prison. With a shank. In the gang showers. (I saw it on the Discovery Channel and never regretted HD more than that moment).
But for whatever reason – inexperience, insanity… indigestion (I ran out of “in” words), I was confident a win at Florida would help calm the waters among the fans and boosters and simultaneously convince a shaky but talented team that they could hang for the run through SEC West play. And I had the cajones to ante up and say it in print.
For my bold prediction – that Ole Miss would beat Florida in The Swamp and start moving towards a positive direction – my colleagues, both in college and in the professional ranks, responded by laughing me out of practice that day. One went so far as to Photoshop the Kool-Aid man with my name and picture accompanying, and then circulate his art on campus. Surely the 2-2 Rebels and their colander pass defense would be eaten alive by the Gators, and Eli’s last campaign would be all for nothing.
Thing is – I was right. Deliciously, victoriously c-o-r-r-e-c-t. And that person was painfully unaware of the relentless ego of me being proven c-o-r-r-e-c-t (To this day he speaks with a nervous tic). Not only was I right about a 20-17 Ole Miss win, I was dead on in predicting that a noticeable conference win would stabilize Eli and company and they would make waves nationally. Right, right right. Cotton Bowl right. 10 wins right.
I have never written anything even close to that bold since. I took my 1-0 fearless predictions record and retired. Sure, I’ve done weekend picks and that sort of thing, but never have I dusted off the Excalibur of bold declarations (Imagine like a really heavy ink pen in a stone with like a golden handle, and with that, now imagine how geeky I was at 13).
So guess where I’m going with this. Better yet, before you do what so many foolish peasants did before you in 2003, read the following...
2005: Alabama 13, Ole Miss 10
2006: Georgia 14, Ole Miss 9
2006: Alabama 26, Ole Miss 23
2006: Auburn 23, Ole Miss 17
2007: Florida 30, Ole Miss 24
2007: LSU 23, Ole Miss 20
2007: Alabama 27, Ole Miss 24
All my criticism of his work aside, it has to be time for Ed Orgeron. Moreoever, it has to be time for the lunch pail guys, the true workers who endure the losses. Ben Jarvus Green-Ellis. Jason Cook. Jeremy Garrett. Darryl Harris. Dustin Mouzon. Mo Miller. I could go on, and in essence I could name the whole roster. They’ve endured every criticism we’ve heaped on O’s shoulders, every change in schemes and assistants, every empty seat.
Normally I loathe the sanctimonious “remember the boys” type speech, but I’m not asking for pity on these guys. At this point, in this bleak of a moment, it’s more like begging clemency from a higher football power. This year’s seniors – what’s left – were privy to 2003’s Cotton Bowl run, but almost none played any real role. As long as these current Rebels have been bearing the brunt, it’s been the bearing of a burden.
It’s time. It has to be time. If you’re willing to accept that the last three years have been some sort of made-for-television drama, then surely the big game against the arch-rival program ranked tops in the country has to be the turning point, right?
There has to be a turning point. What if all this strife has been a build up for one single moment, one isolated instance within a national televised game that seems so absolutely unwinnable that a heavens-parting moment of a single play (Paging Greg Hardy: If a certain law-breaking, cocky backup Bengal QB decides to run, see if you can make the noise of impact register in Holly Springs. I want to hear his motor functions impairing) could swing all the long-since-departed momentum to a single moment of total redemption.
This isn’t about Illinois over Ohio State or Stanford over USC or Kansas State over Texas or South Florida over Auburn or even damn Appy State. This is about the highest ranked team in the land. This is about the other team, one no one in this country believes in. That I myself have lost faith in multiple times. A team whose own fan base is marred in strife and on the precipice of total embarrassment.
This isn’t even about LSU. I could have filled this space with my patented anti-corndog fodder, taking apart the repulsive coonass culture like a serial killer on parade (black hearts, they really have black hearts). But that won’t make anything better, and I’ve discovered that many attractive, single and (seemingly) disease-free women from Louisiana tend to get angry when I do that (even admitting that makes me feel as if I’ve submitted to Stockholm Syndrome).
This is about us. This has to be our time. There is no darker moment than before the dawn, or so the Kool-Aid man would tell you. So with that in mind….
24-21 Ole Miss.
It’s time.
Steven Godfrey has probably lost what miniscule amount of credibility he had left, but if college football isn’t about faith in the form of pure insanity, it’s not worth living for. Chat with Jim Jones at www.thegodfreyshow.com
