Rebels end storybook campaign

By By Will Bardwell/staff writer
January 3, 2004
DALLAS I remember Sept. 27 like it was yesterday.
The thermometer read 70 degrees, but it was as cold as death in Oxford.
Ole Miss had just blown its second fourth-quarter lead in three weeks in a 49-45 loss to Texas Tech. The Rebels were 2-2, and after giving up 661 passing yards in a single game that's 11 yards per minute, mind you the annual late-season Ole Miss meltdown seemed to have arrived early.
I stood with a prominent Mississippi sports writer in the Rebels' field house, waiting for head coach David Cutcliffe to face the music. I decided to make small talk.
And he was right for then. For a month, Ole Miss was a terrible football team. They scraped out a win against Vanderbilt, lost to Memphis and Texas Tech and didn't look terribly impressive against pushover-for-pay Louisiana-Monroe.
But a funny thing happened with that late-season meltdown. It never came.
The Rebels won eight of their last nine games scaring the supper out of national-championship candidate LSU along the way in a season for the ages. Wins at Florida, Auburn and Mississippi State highlighted the resurgence, and Friday, Ole Miss dropped the cherry on the ice cream with a 31-28 win against Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl.
Three months ago, if you'd told me this team would be in the Cotton Bowl, I would've said Pete Boone sprang for a heck of a Christmas present if he bought 100 or so tickets at $75 a pop.
Not only did the Rebels make it on their own, but they won the darn thing against one of the best running teams in the country. This was no Arkansas, Alabama or even Auburn. The Cowboys' tandem of Vernand Morency and Tatum Bell is probably the best in college football.
We're talking about a team that produced an 80-yard rusher in all but two of its games. Make that three after Friday, when Morency was held to 64 and Bell to 52.
The Cowboys had out-rushed nine of their 12 opponents. Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma kept themselves out of that company. Friday, Ole Miss did the same thing.
Heck, with 133 yards, Tremaine Turner out-rushed both Morency and Bell all by himself.
The defense improved immensely this year as well. In 2002, the Rebels were the worst defensive team in the Southeastern Conference. They were just as bad the year before that. And the year before that too.
And they were just that bad in the Texas Tech game back in September. But not after that.
When the Rebels came back to win in Gainesville, I figured the Gators had a bad day. The same with the Crimson Tide and Razorbacks when the Ole Miss defense shut down Alabama and Arkansas. The same with Mississippi State when the Rebels pitched a shutout against their arch-enemies for the first time since 1971.
I was half right. All those teams did have bad days but it was because Ole Miss made them look bad. This was a great football team, and I don't think people will fully appreciate how good for years.
Of course, the guy pushing all the buttons on the field was a quarterback for the ages, Eli Manning. The son and brother of Heisman Trophy finalists, Manning had every reason in the world to crack under the pressure. Every 30-year-old piece of corny Archie Manning memorabilia was re-hashed with his name newly emblazoned on it before the kid had even taken a snap.
Eli did a whole lot more than to not crack under the pressure. He did a whole lot more than remind people of his old man, too. He out-did him.
Thirty years from now, people won't remember Eli Manning as Archie's son. Archie will be remembered as Eli's father.
Twenty-nine touchdowns against 10 interceptions and 3,600 passing yards in a single season? I couldn't put up those kind of numbers in a video game.
No one in Ole Miss history has put up those kind of numbers. I suspect it won't be done again in Oxford for a long time.
I remember wondering in late September when reporters would start to ask Cutcliffe if he feared for his job security. By the time I figured that question would pop up, it had been replaced by people wondering if he deserved the league's Coach of the Year award.
He won that too, by the way. But Cutcliffe admits the challenge facing the Rebels now is to do more than just savor the school's best season in three decades it's to repeat it.
The Rebels probably won't win 10 games again next year, but Cutcliffe has proven he can bring Ole Miss to the big time. And he's earned the right to be given the time to do it again.