{"id":1376,"date":"2012-04-23T14:57:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2012-04-23T14:57:39","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:57:39","slug":"red-cup-rebellion-grove-bowl-time-again-time-for-yall-to-get-excited-about-a-new-year-from-tlv-154","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/red-cup-rebellion-grove-bowl-time-again-time-for-yall-to-get-excited-about-a-new-year-from-tlv-154\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Cup Rebellion: Grove Bowl Time Again: Time For Y’all To Get Excited About A New Year (from TLV #154)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Right about now is time for our annual \u201cyou know, spring football doesn\u2019t really matter being that it\u2019s glorified practice, but just watch it anyway because you\u2019re bored\u201d column. You know, the one where we would try to convince you that watching Houston Nutt<\/strong>\u2019s offense would be something more than a better-than-average way to spend a sunny Spring day in Oxford? The one where we\u2019d offer up some platitudes about team \u201cdevelopment\u201d or something else just as vague? Well, yeah, this is sorta that column all over again.<\/strong> But, then again, it\u2019s not.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have a new head coach, a handful of new quarterbacks, a new offensive scheme, and a yet again renewed sense of excitement and optimism, albeit tempered, about our fan base. New head football coach Hugh Freeze<\/strong> and staff will be running an offense in a way that has never really been attempted at Ole Miss. Instead of the previous regime\u2019s road grading offensive line plowing away for a workhorse halfback and an under-coached quarterback, this staff\u2019s offense will rely on speed, athleticism, mismatches, and the mistakes of the opposing defense to move the ball down the field.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll see a slimmer offensive line moving laterally, into space, or even downfield some to set up plays and blocks. You\u2019ll see wide receivers flying in all sorts of haphazard directions. You\u2019ll see quarterbacks throwing the ball early and often. You\u2019ll see halfbacks breaking off to the outside, hoping to turn the corner and move upfield against the defense. And you\u2019ll see all of this take place with a sense of urgency. This hurry up style of offense, which Hugh Freeze himself has called \u201cbasketball on grass,\u201d is unlike anything you\u2019ve seen in a Rebel uniform. Will it work? I haven\u2019t the slightest idea, but I do have a feeling that it will be a good bit of fun to watch operate when it is working.<\/p>\n

While what you see in the spring practices this weekend won\u2019t be much of anything close to what plays you\u2019ll see run in actual football games this fall, you will get somewhat of a gist for how things are going to go. It will be fast and, at times, pretty exciting. It will also be horribly frustrating, agonizing, and even embarrassing, but we are Ole Miss, are we not? That\u2019s sorta what we do around here.<\/p>\n

\"\"More importantly than all of that, though, is the opportunity this weekend presents to you, the fan, to show whatever support you may have for the direction of the Ole Miss Athletics administration and, by extension, programs. After nearly a decade of fans clamoring for the man\u2019s ouster, Pete Boone<\/strong> was officially relieved of his duties as Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and replaced with Ross Bjork<\/strong>, a young yet successful athletics administrator who sought to immediately pump some new life into our admittedly behind-the-times administration. Via his first hire \u2013 that of a highly successful Adrian Wiggins to coach our women\u2019s basketball program \u2013 his dedication to fundraising, and his haste to embrace the internet and social media as marketing tools, Bjork has already demonstrated himself to be an astute and effective administrator.<\/p>\n

But even if none of that resonates or even matters to you, as an Ole Miss Rebels you fan have got to at least be excited about the potential for innovative and progressive change in the way Ole Miss athletics are run. Sure, Ross Bjork could be run outta town on a rail \u00e0 la Homer Stokes in the closing scenes of O Brother Where Art Thou<\/em> after a few years of horrible decision making, money laundering, and motorcycle wrecks involving unethically hired subordinates (Too soon? Of course not.), but the potential for success is there in a way to at least generate some sense of optimism about the future of our athletics director.
\nWith that being the case, I am fully inclined to thrust all of my support behind Bjork and find no better way to immediately do that \u2013 aside from donating money that I don\u2019t have \u2013 than to enthusiastically attend the Grove Bowl, its preceding festivities, and the following baseball game against the University of Arkansas. An exciting showing of Rebel fans in the Grove and at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium this Saturday is, per my estimation, a perfect way to show support for the Hugh Freeze regime and the Ross Bjork administration. Hotty Toddy!<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"This article was published in The Local Voice<\/em> #154 (April 19-May 3, 2012)…<\/strong>Click here to download the PDF of issue #154.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right about now is time for our annual \u201cyou know, spring football doesn\u2019t really matter being that it\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-athletics","category-red-cup-rebellion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}