Ole Miss/Vandy: Another Chapter In The South's Greatest Football Rivalry (Brought To You By Eddie Money)

Early morning start? Check. Low rent broadcast coverage? Oh yeah. The dulcet tones of at least one dude named Dave? Present. A stadium half-filled with red-eyed, overheated fans? Done.

When they all come together, it can only mean one thing-- the South's greatest football rivalry has come around once again to amaze and astound us with feats of self-destruction, apathy and mediocrity. It'd be like if Steve-O from Jackass joined Nickelback on a tour of Topeka and then it was broadcast by the local high school A/V club.

It was an exciting time when we heard about the new, record-breaking ESPN/SEC TV deal. Every game on some branch of ESPN! While we had grown to have a colloquial affection for the Trip-Daves formation and Golden Flake glory of Jefferson Pilot (eloquently expressed by Dr. Saturday here), it was time for us to shine the shoes, cut the hair, wash the ass and go for the bright lights of the Worldwide Leader.

While we were correct that the days of the 11:30 CST starts and Three Dave coverage were over, what we didn't know was that they would be replaced by kickoffs that were actually 30 minutes EARLIER, equally regional television exposure with 2/3rds fewer over-hyped Daves, replaced by the stunning ambivalence of college football's third-most unjustified Heisman winner-- all still under the global empire of Golden Flake snack products (and, at least where I watched it, Eddie Money's 2010 World Tour...good seats only $10. Like the best of Dean Martin last year, I'm buying).



So what went wrong for the Rebels in the 2010 incarnation of this classic match-up? I will defer to the words of John Lee Pettimore, who was one of the brave, sweaty, over-caffeinated crew standing on the line Saturday morning in Oxford:

John Lee Pettimore:  There are few words. Crowd sucked. Team sucked. Grove still kicks ass. Team sucked. Our O-line couldn't block me and three trolls.: 
Atticus: Trolls can be ferocious. I'd take a troll or two on our line these days

John Lee: At least they wouldn't stand straight up and try to lesbian titty rub the opposing D-line. I bitched and moaned about O-line recruiting for the past three years in order to avoid having to watch this. I will continue to bitch and moan.

So where do we go from here? Set new goals and redefine what it means to have "success." What are those new goals you ask? I'm still considering that, but I'd imagine they will include not throwing up on my shoes, avoiding actual rape on the field and beating Arkansas in Fayetteville. 'Till then, I'm riding with Eddie. Take me home, boys.

Ole Miss/Jacksonville State.

I would like to talk about what happened yesterday, but I don't know. I fell asleep after the first half. And if any of the coaches or players were honest, they'd admit the exact same thing.

Like Houston, I was awoken by a flurry of text messages with varying forms of "What the fuck?" I pulled the game back up at the beginning of the first overtime. It was then that Lefty Testudo sent me this:

Lefty: This is awful. What will Bama do to us. There will be no virgins left.

Atticus: Any virginity we've got left isn't worth protecting.

With baited breath, I anxiously await the input of Basil and the rest of the Arkansas nation. That's fine. It's certainly their right. They ate their cupcake without pulling a Mama Cass. The Ole Miss message boards are already thick with calls of "Fire Houston." And then, one voice of unintentional wisdom rings out from the commentariat abyss:

"Let's not overreact. I'm not going to jump ship like the rest of the Titanic survivors."

"I didn't see it, but it sure sounded beautiful."

So says Jevan Snead about the Golden Tips of Dexter McCluster taking a slip screen to the house while Snead was face down in the turf. Jevan found his talent, and Houston Nutt has rediscovered his magical play-calling silver platter buried under the stack of autographed Sports Illustrated preview issues on his desk. After cursing Houston for leaving it collecting dust for almost an entire year, the Silver Platter of the Sacred Grove screamed "GET THE BALL TO THAT LITTLE BASTARD WITH THE GOLDEN TIPS!"



Tyrone Nix called a masterful mix of blitz packages that kept the happy feet of the 8 Mile stepping and the balls sailing. And as if that weren't enough, Nix snuck into Greg Hardy's dorm room the night before, stole Hardy's Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds DVD and then blamed it on Mallett, because as has been pointed out, he looks like a guy who might do such a thing. It adds a whole other level of fear and confusion when the 275 lb future first round draft pick is screaming "GIVE ME BACK MILEY!" as he comes barreling after you (referencing Hardy's quote earlier this week about renting a Miley Cyrus movie...link to come, hopefully).

Next week, Auburn. And what Basil and the rest of the Arkansas fan base will say (when they finally regain their faculties from yesterday), is that this is the classic recipe for a Houston Nutt letdown game. Coming off a great win and thoughtful coaching, the Nutt teams lose focus against lesser opponents and have a hard time maintaining success. I don't know if I'm buying that. Last year, when Jevan's light finally come on, he kept it going for most of the rest of the season. There's no reason to believe our defense has shown any sign of let-up and could actually get better if our offense can start to put up early leads and force opposing teams into more obvious passing situations. Not saying I'm not a little worried about a dropped game next week, Auburn's still an SEC team playing at home. I still have some belief that Gus Malzahn is competent and perhaps genius offensive mind (though he's working with somebody else's parts at the moment). It could very well all come crashing down, but right now, all is right with the world and we're on our way to a mildly satisfying 10-win season. On that note, I give you a beautiful woman singing a badass song. There is probably more football from yesterday to discuss, but the radiance of the Golden Tips prevents me from acknowledging any of it at the moment.

Bombs and Screens (Nobody's Darlings)

The shine is off and now we find ourselves back where we're most comfortable-- lost in the middle of the SEC pack somewhere behind more established powers, playing the early morning lo-fi undercard and our off-field eccentricities getting the bulk of the media play. Nobody really knows where we fit into the fray, but it's clear we're neither leading the back or bringing up the rear.

It's been said by more than a few of my fellow Ole Miss fans that this game is where we'll find out what we are. The same was said for South Carolina. And Alabama. A win, and we're back on track to a 10 or 9 win campaign, another step forward from last January's high and respectable postseason bid. Lose, and we're back in Shreveport playing $5 blackjack with stretch-marked cocktail waitresses wondering if this is all there is for us and cursing our foolish delusions of grandeur.

The biggest problem anybody has is when you start to believe the things other people say about you, good or bad. An outside voice that lends validity to your own wild fantasy/paranoia can be more an incredibly dangerous thing. We've had both. In a vacuum, all Ole Miss fans always harbor wild hopes of a return to glory and prominence, shedding the weight of the past and rising back to national relevance. In the same soaked corner of your brain is the idea that we're the fuck-up sons in a prominent family, and we should be grateful that our more accomplished relations allow us to sit at their table and share their affiliation. What gets expressed will generally trend toward whatever side of the thought process the outside world lends the most credence to. I feel like that's where the Ole Miss and Arkansas fanbases come together, and it's what makes our shotgun rivalry of Houston Nutt-dom so interesting.

What we both need to realize is that, in the end, we'll be judged on our results and any success we have will be on our own backs. It needs to be a trench warfare mentality. Nobody's got our backs. Nobody really believes in us. Somebody's got to be built up so that they can be torn down, and we're useful for that purpose on occasion. But we're nobody's darlings, and what success we have is our own. Fuck everything else.


Everybody wants to see you fall. That's why they always love to get you high.


The Arkansas defense seems to have taken steps forward and the Ole Miss offense seems to have taken steps back. But what has Arkansas done? They've been steamrolled by Alabama like everybody else. They put up a decent fight against an Auburn offense that has since been shown to be lacking and kicked the bones of the elephant graveyard in the Big 12 against Texas A&M. Even the Florida offense has looked uninspired thus far (though it needs to be noted that the same could be said about Florida at this time last year). Their safeties still suck. Their linebackers are athletic and aggressive but don't possess a great deal of sense or discipline. They live off of blind pressure and a prayer of deep inaccuracy.

Florida lived off the screens for what success they had on offense. Georgia lived off of blindly heaving the ball down the field in hopes that the safeties were out of position. Nobody has combined both approaches, but we've got the tools to do it. Let Grandy, Pat Patterson, Lionel Breaux loose down the damn field and tell Opie to chuck the fucking ball. When you run, run hard, quick and between the tackles. When you throw, throw deep. When Jerry Franklin has a boner through his football pants, screen.

Our defense is nothing short of greasy, swaggering violence second only to Alabama in the SEC. Mallett does not handle pressure, and as Kentrell Lockett has astutely pointed out, he'll generally be right where you think he is. "When you get there, he'll be there." Arkansas has put up numbers against crappy defenses and folded spectacularly when somebody has gotten in their face.

The only outside voice I believe is the blind voice of money. People in Vegas know things. I've learned this the hard way during darker times. And the business community, who has no interest in our hype or deflation outside of cold calculus, still believe we're a decent team playing another decent team on our home field and have apportioned a healthy 6.5 point margin in our favor. This gives me more hope than anything else. Vegas cares not for storylines or student section chants or Heisman fluffer missions. It's a weigh and measure in the true sense of the word.

Tomorrow comes early. See you kids out there.

Weasels in a Sack: The Cul-De-Sac On the Road to Damascus

Chapter 5: The Cul-De-Sac On the Road to Damascus


Click Here for the previous chapter


At the edge of the Grove, young Dash McDaniels watched as a man in the darkness talked to his mother’s silver serving tray. He had been trying to beat the rush for the Grove and claim a prime space by the “good tree” off the Walk of Champions for the first game of the season. Deciding a confrontation with a possibly unstable individual trumped the obligation to his family’s Grove real estate standing, Dash took the tent and returned to his car to wait for a better land grab opportunity.

Sweat on a sundress. Bourbon stains on a blue blazer. Finger foods sweating on meticulously decorated tabletops. These are the staples of the first football game of the year in Oxford. It was the first working gameday for Kent Austin since he played quarterback for the Rebels under Billy Brewer. Spread in front of him was a spider web of Post-It notes (off brand, in accordance with athletic department budget rules) representing the best play for every possible contingency. He’d spent the better part of the night devising the complex scheme and was in the process of copying the manic display into a notebook to take to the coaches’ box.

“AHAH!!!” Houston squealed as he burst wild-eyed into the office. He slammed a silver platter onto the table, scattering the yellow tabs. “By God, Kenny, it’s gameday! Can you feel that? HUH! Feel the GAMEDAY!”




“Coach…Coach Nutt…my gameplan—all my night’s work was on that table.”

“Well, now MY gameplan is on that table. Heh.”

“Coach, I am as big of a believer in positive thinking and the power of metaphors as anybody…but it’s no substitute for serious planning and strategy.”

“I don’t know what the heck you just babbled,” Houston tapped his finger on the plate. “But, this here’s our plays for today’s game.”

“A silver plate?”

“Well, obviously, I can’t just carry a silver plate down on the field. I’d look ridiculous. I copied down the plays from the plate onto this here pad.”

Houston flopped a yellow legal pad covered in barely intelligible scratch in front of Austin.

“There is every play we’re gonna call today in the order we’re gonna call ‘em.”

“Coach, this…this is….who did you, where did this come from?” Austin flipped through the pages.

“Right here.” Nutt tapped the silver platter.

“The plate told you what plays to write down?”

“Heck, no. The plate don’t talk. I just wrote down what was written on the plate.”

“I do not see anything written on that plate.”

“Well, course you don’t, now. You have to use the magic Coonass thinking dust. I was up all night writing it. I think I got enough to about cover two games in there.”

“Where did these plates come from?”

“God. God Almighty and Darren McFadden.”

Austin was overwhelmed.

“Now, take them plays up to the sissy booth. I want them called exactly in that order.”

“Coach Nutt, when I was hired, I was reassured that I would have a prevailing role in calling the plays used in the offense.”

“You are calling the plays.” Nutt tapped the pad Austin was holding. “These plays.”

“Coach Nutt, I’m your offensive coordinator, and I was assured…”

“God, in the form of a magical silver plate, is my offensive coordinator.”

“You are out of your mind.”

“Hey, you remember that time I started screaming ‘I got that wood!’ at the television cameras? Ha. I’m always doing crazy stuff like that. Even I don’t know what it means, but I’ll be gosh darned if it didn’t win some football games!”

“You never did that! That was Darren McFadden!”

“Ah, what do you know? You’re just the tight ends coach.”

“Excuse me? You can’t do that…”

“Equipment manager.”

“I won three Grey Cups, I’m not going to be your equipment…”

“Grass cutter.”

“We have artificial turf, Coach.”

“By golly, you just don’t know when to shut yer hole, Jerrell Powe jersey stuffer!”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means Jerrell Powe is fat and he cannot reach around far enough to tuck in his jersey, so you’re going to shove your hands down his pants and help him.”

Silence…

"And while you’ve got hold of him, make sure he isn’t hiding any food down there. I swear, that boy is sneaking candy bars when nobody’s lookin. When you’re done with that, get your pinko, maple leaf heiny up to that sissy booth with the rest ‘a the equipment managers and call those plays into the talky ear muffs.”

The first half was almost finished and so far, the offense had gone just as he had pictured it the night before while transcribing his visions from the reflection of the silver plate. Then, he saw an unfamiliar player grouping heading onto the field. He counted once…counted again, raising each finger on his left hand while muttering under his breath. Realizing something was wrong, he signaled to the referee for a timeout and screamed into his headset.

“What the HECK was THAT, Austin?”

“It was a five receiver spread with…”

“That Rebelwash is not from the danged SCRIPT! What’s the next thing on the script?”

“It says ‘The beaver growing out of my office wall says we should make pancakes with pulled pork in them.’”

“Well, that sounds delicious, but obviously, it’s not a play. Skip to the next play. What does the next play say?”


“…wild rebel…”


“WILD REBEL! Heck yes. The script comes through again.”

Weasels in a Sack: The Continuing Adventures of Houston Nutt

Chapter 4: The Epiphany of the Sacred Grove

Houston Nutt had a headache. It was the night before his first game at Ole Miss, and the coach had just finished a tedious session of game planning filled with the fancy words (and lots of them) and confusing dry-erase board scribblings of his new offensive coordinator Kent Austin. He had returned to his office to clear his head and decide how best to handle yet another enthusiastic, idealistic offensive assistant. Houston stared blankly about his new office.

The walls were pocked with fresh plaster and several head-sized holes still awaiting maintenance’s attention-- just a few of several things left behind by Houston’s predecessor during what looked to have been a frenzied and perhaps violent exit (AD Pete Boone still refused to enter, preferring to conduct his meetings with Houston from the hall in a trembling voice, hiding behind a student assistant). Thinking their owner might someday come to reclaim them, many of the orphaned items still littered the office, including a nutria pelt nailed to the wall, a full box of Meat Market copies with “O” scribbled in red crayon on the inside covers and a filing cabinet haphazardly stuffed with Pop Warner scouting reports from across the country. Also in the cabinet was a mysterious folder labeled “Thinkun Dust” containing a small zip lock bag of powder.

It was then that Houston remembered the Thinkun Dust. A big believer in amateur Louisiana apothecary skills since discovering Boudreaux’s Butt Paste as a treatment for chiggers (a common hazard for those recruiting the athletes of southern Arkansas), he decided to try what he thought to be a homespun Cajun headache cure. Houston stirred a spoonful of the powder into his glass of Ovaltine (a nightly tradition in the Nutt household), drank it down and decided to take a walk around campus.

His headache was indeed gone, but Houston was feeling a growing sense of anxiety as walked into The Grove. What if his offensive coordinator really was as bright as his flowery language and complete, grammatically correct sentences seemed to suggest? If Houston did let him call the plays, and the plays were actually successful…would the fans worship Austin and not Houston? Would they build great statues and design humorous t-shirts riffing on his colorful, Canadian influenced names for various formations?

“Nuttin but fun, my sweet be-hind,” Houston mumbled.

No, no, no. This could not be-- another uppity OC trying to outshine Houston Dale. Hell, he and Markuson had taken that blood oath butt naked. He knew Boone was too cheap to pay another coach’s severance. But, what if he wasn’t fired…but just wasn’t there…went missing…then there wouldn’t have to be any severance package...

The mutinous plot began to become clear to him. Jerking his arms in violent exclamations of treachery, he raged into the night against a conspiracy of Austin, Pete Boone, Jerry Jones, Mitch Mustain’s mother and the Canadian government that he was sure would end with Austin’s ascention to head coach, his own mysterious disappearance and death and Socialist CFL infiltration of SEC football.

“And after I’m gone, whass to keep ‘em from goin afta my family!” he wailed. “Jerrah hess always been afta meh wife…and meh daughters…darlin daughters…Austin’ll probably take ‘em. I seen ‘em eyein’ ‘em, that, that…” an alkali taste grew in his mouth as that last thought matured in his mind. His daughters not only being defiled…but being defiled by that which he detested most-- those who had been the bane of his professional existence. His throat swelled and his lips quivered as he spat the words into darkness—“OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR!”

A spasm of hate from those last words drove him to the ground. But it was at that moment of absolute darkness that a light began to grow around him. A warmness. A sense of comfort and then…a familiar voice from a higher being, an advanced form of humanity…

He squinted as he turned toward the words and saw a figure in red, shrouded in perfect white light.

“Darren….Darren is that you?”





The year was 1989. In Miami, Florida, a program was on the rise, an eccentric graduate assistant was trying to make a name for himself and head coach Dennis Erickson was looking for a way to work his team, and particularly his defense, into a bloodthirsty rage. He was familiar with the stimulating, pain-killing and violence-inducing effects of PCP from…well, needless to say, his time in South Florida had given him an extensive pharmaceutical education, and he had long-contemplated ways to give his team not just a physical chemical enhancement, but a mental one as well.

Spiking the team’s Gatorade would be simple enough, but he wrestled with the difficulty of maintaining control over a sideline full of unknowingly wet athletes. The cheerleaders would almost certainly be sacrificed to the berserker mob—probably the trainers, too. And if they managed to escape the confines of the stadium…well, it’s Miami. It’s questionable whether they’d even be noticed. But, at an away game, well it would be like Attila’s legions being loosed on a Quaker village.

He decided, though, he didn’t need to infect the mob, just the mob leader. One irrational barbarian to work those around him into a state resembling his own—almost a contact high of aggression. It didn’t even have to be a player, it could be a coach.

Rarely do the epiphany and the facilitation of that epiphany occur at the same moment, but it happened on that day in the fringe of the Devil’s Triangle. Ed Orgeron walked through Erickson’s door seeking advice on how to mentally prepare for gameday…and hundreds of miles away in the sleepy hamlet of Oxford, a whiskey drunk student attempted to start a Hotty Toddy at a crowded bar called The Gin. A nameless sadness befell the patrons. Good cheer faded. Stomachs turned. Eyes darkened. And for reasons not understood at the time, nobody answered the drunkard’s call to arms.

More than a decade later in the early hours of the morning, that eccentric graduate assistant, now a positional coach at USC-- under the delusional haze of Angel Dust-- came to believe he was capable of running a major college program, found a payphone and awoke a disoriented Pete Boone, who was in the midst of trying to drink his sorrows away after firing a moderately successful head coach.

“I told that old Pete Boone that I didn’t really need any offensive coordinator, but he insisted,” Houston explained to what he thought was an angel in the form of Darren McFadden. “So, I told him to go on and hire somebody as long as he didn’t cost too much. I’ll be damned if he didn’t go out and hire a danged old illegal immigrant-- and not one of those hard-working Mexicans, but some smart alecky Communist from Canada.”

Kent Austin was neither Canadian nor Communist. He had been a four-time Academic All-American quarterback for Ole Miss during the 80s and went on to have success as a player and coach in the Canadian Football League. When Boone came to tell Houston about the hire, all Houston heard was “Canadian,” and assumed it was a cost-cutting move. In his defense, the miscommunication was probably due in equal part to Houston’s indifference for the offensive coordinator position and Boone’s lingering refusal to enter the office once occupied by Orgeron—preferring to shout from the hallway.

“For no more than we’re paying him, he sure does spend an awful lot of time at work,” Houston continued as he strolled through the dark Grove. “I just slip him a $20 once a week in an envelope, same way we do with the guy who bushRebels our pasture and does our taxes. But there he is, day and night, covered in them sticky notes and charts and graphs about plays and such.

“You know, Spirit Darren, I’ve always hated callin plays. All the stress and decision making and planning, that’s not what coachin’s about. I’ve always wanted to focus on the more personal aspects ARHG!”


He tumbled to the ground. The light around him faded. He looked up from the dirt and there, shimming in the dark, he saw the object that tripped him. What believed to be the answer to his play-calling delimma.

To be continued...