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Behind The Scoreboard
By Claude Vinson State squads While
all gridiron squads battled sweltering field conditions and juggled
practice sessions dictated by the extreme heat, three of the major
college squads in Mississippi were busy attending to other attention
grabbing problems. Immediately south of us, the
Ole Miss squad is not so much concerned with which mascot will be
helping to publicize the Rebels as they are with which quarterback will
be leading the huddle and the team. Head coach
Houston Nutt voiced better than mild satisfaction with how well his
contenders fared in their first major stint with the pigskin on
Saturday in front of almost three thousand of the Ole Miss faithful. The
Rebels exhibited a trio of signal callers in that workout with the
ex-Duck from Oregon grabbing most of the nods. When Coach Nutt welcomed
Jeremiah Masoli to Ole Miss, he alluded to the less than stellar
reputation that Masoli had brought with him. Nutt let it be known that
his non-kid gloves policy was zero tolerance. In his public interview,
Masoli stated that his focus was to aid the Ole Miss program in any way
possible and to thank the coach for giving him a chance. He did not
plan to detract from it. Earlier it was indicated
that this was a tale of three Mississippi teams. So before you start to
point to my obvious bias, I’ll get to the other two. Farther south from
us nest the Golden Eagles. Now these three teams share a common
denominator – their head coaches have not been there for ages. Coach
Larry Fedora is starting his third season at Southern Miss and still
trying to establish some solid footing. The Golden Eagles went 6-6 last
year and took out Virginia’s Cavaliers by three points. Some think
Kansas was the only obstacle last year to a winning season. Southern
faced Kansas in game four in ’09 and have them scheduled for game three
in ’10. Will South Carolina and Prairie View afford enough prep before
tangling with the Jayhawks? Mississippi State
perhaps made a wise choice in opening with Memphis. They have a solid
record when facing the Tigers to open the campaign. Should the ’Dogs
continue their streak (they have won six consecutive), it might be a
good one to savor because four of their next six games are enough to
make any coach shudder. State needs to keep the cleaners open because
they have a lot of problems to iron out. Ole Miss
won’t meet Alabama until the sixth game. The weekend’s top 25 coaches’
poll had the NCAA champs firmly ensconced at number one. Last season
the Tide went 14-0 (as did Boise State), and that, too, is enough to
make the coach and team shudder.
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