The fumbles were gut-wrenching, but how can you not like Dexter McCluster? (And he really covers the ball up with both hands now when he’s about to take a hit.)

The LSU number is now down to four. What the hell is going on here? I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, since national television audiences saw Georgia and Florida run through the Tiger defense like it wasn’t really there. Maybe it’s the remnants of my Post Orgeron Stress Disorder talking, but I can’t quite bring myself to buy into the optimism of the Ole Miss fanbase about this game. The 2005 LSU disaster in Oxford is burned into my consciousness. The score was 40-7, but it was not nearly that close.

But: LSU is only 2-7 against the spread this season. They have enjoyed too much respect so far from the oddsmakers, which is why I thought the line would be close to 10. Maybe the Troy near-meltdown was the last straw? The Rebels are 6-3 ATS, and we easily covered the last three games in Tiger Stadium (’02-’04-06), which were all close losses for Ole Miss. Before that string of close losses, we had won three in a row in Baton Rouge in ‘97-’99-’01. So the low number does make more sense when you put in context.

The basketball team thumped South Alabama last night to get to 2-0, and I listened to the first half on the radio. I also listened to State on Monday night when I was driving home. But when it’s LSU week and we’re all talking about what bowl we’re going to, it’s hard to really get into basketball yet. With Gaskins and Polynice out for the season now, the NCAA tournament ambitions are probably put off another year. That is depressing enough to keep everyone focused on football as long as possible. I was looking forward to finally watching the selection show with a sense of anticipation. We do play in Oxford the day after the Egg Bowl, and I’m looking forward to going to that game.

The number on Ole Miss-LSU right now: LSU -5. The 2003 game in Oxford during Eli’s senior season had a line at LSU -6.5, which as we all know, was covered in a losing effort. Ever since then, the number in this game has been around three TDs in Oxford and four TDs in Baton Rouge. So this is a major, major change in the trend. Five points is way lower than I thought it would be. I bet that the Troy scare (LSU was down 31-3 before coming back to win) had a major impact on the line.

In an impossible-to-imagine-in-August scenario, the University of Tennessee is an underdog to Vandy (three points). Less than a year ago, UT was in the SEC title game. Unbelievable. I watched the end of UK-Vandy after the State game got out of hand, and I grudgingly felt happy for Vandy. But whenever I watch them, I know how Florida fans feel when they ask themselves, ‘how did we lose to Ole Miss?’

I did not attend the game on Saturday, but I did thoroughly enjoy listening to it. Garry Darby, or “G-Darb” as David Kellum affectionately calls him, did a very professional job on color. Of course, if we’re winning 59-0, I don’t care if the two drunkest assholes in the student section are doing the play-by-play. As we kept scoring, I was kicking myself for not being there. I love cold weather games and Ole Miss touchdowns, and that game will probably have the best ‘low temp/high TD’ ratio of my lifetime. I missed the 2003 Arkansas State game because I was in a wedding, which was the last time we put it on another team like that. The score in that game was 55-0. Hopefully now, it won’t be a once-in-every-5 years proposition. I remember Nutt regularly beating the hell out of directional schools when he was at Arkansas.

Way back on October 1, I wrote a post about Snead and Shay Hodge breaking the record for the longest TD pass in Ole Miss history against Florida. Snead matched that record on Saturday, with another 87 yarder that went to Mike Wallace. Eli is all over the passing record books of course, but Snead has one on him in this category.

Hmmm..a reality show starring Houston Nutt’s twin 20 year old daughters. They are the Deadspin stars from last week’s Halloween photo shoot, so apparently they are not afraid of exposure or publicity. There are about 5,000 different ways this could go horribly, horribly wrong. It’s all very vague though. No channel, no approximate air date, just a show about “women at Ole Miss.” That could mean the coach’s daughters, the homecoming queen, and the old lady who restocks the salad bar in the Union food court. Probably not that last one though.

La-Monroe @ Ole Miss (-21)

On Tuesday, I went through our surprisingly positive history of covering very large lines. My theory is that the only time Ole Miss is that highly favored is when a) the other team really blows, and b) our quarterback is a future overall number one pick and Super Bowl MVP. This is probably not the case tomorrow. They are a 3-7 Sun Belt team, but (you may have heard about this during the week) they beat ALADAMNBAMA last season. And almost Arkansas this season. And they covered against Auburn earlier this year too. Their QB will probably throw for 250 yards and keep the game relatively close until the final gun.

Unless we just totally impose our will on them and really control the clock via the run game, I don’t see us covering 21. I foresee something like a fairly ho-hum 33-17 victory that we’ll all forget about as soon as we pour our first post-game bourbon and coke in the grove and start talking about LSU.

M-State @ Alabama (-20)

Alabama…a team that lost to La-Monroe last year. And State. (Twice in a row!) Bama has not covered the big lines at home this season, with the exception of Arkansas St. two weeks ago. This is the part where I talk about Croom getting the team up for Bama every year, and as a result State playing better than conventional wisdom. It has been the smart play recently, so I will stick with it. After that Kentucky debacle, State really has nothing to lose.

We’ve also got Bama coming off the emotional overtime win in Baton Rouge. If they blow out State, I will really be impressed. (Unless the blow out happens because State just gives up and Terrence Cody eats Tyson Lee on 3rd & 17 and the refs don’t throw a flag. But as I said, I don’t think Croom lets that happen in this game.) I am really looking forward to watching this one on Saturday night.

Vandy @ Kentucky (-4)

ESPN 2 8 o’clock kickoffs are the bomb yo. Maybe since we have come back from the dead, we can get some of these in Oxford next season. I also can’t wait to watch this one. If Vandy loses this one (oh please oh please oh please), it would set up the greatest JP game of all time, in the last JP game of all time: Vandy playing a terrible UT team at home for its first bowl since back in ‘82 in Phat Phil’s last game. Now that would be something to savor.

I just jinxed it though. Vandy covers and wins straight up. Pandemonium erupts among the 75 Vandy fans in the visitors’ section at Commonwealth Stadium as the ESPN 2 cameras show Bobby Johnson break down like Steve Martin does when his kid catches the fly ball at the end of Parenthood. (@ the 2:30 mark of that youtube video)

Georgia (-8.5) @ Auburn

If on August 31st I told you that this would be a JP game, what would you have said? I think we should just get on the Kodi Burns train here. At this point, isn’t he due for an inexplicable break-out game in a huge win? Isn’t that something Tuberville would pull out of his ass? I say yes. I’ll take the home team in a rivalry game with all of these points. After picking them last week and watching the end of that UK game, I don’t want to have to cheer for Georgia to beat a team by more than a touchdown. This is also the second JP game for Georgia in a row, which probably depresses the hell out of them.

Florida (-21) @ South Carolina

Everybody, and I mean everybody, loves South Carolina at home with all of these points. The line is so high because Florida has been covering by halftime since we beat them. Even though I agree with everyone that this is too high, there’s no way I’m going to go with the public when it’s so heavily on one side. That means that the power of Tebow’s Ole Miss tears continues to power the unstoppable Florida covering machine.

Troy @ LSU (-18)

We are bigger home favorites against the Sun Belt team du jour than LSU. Times have changed haven’t they? LSU should just run the wishbone and maybe, MAYBE, if it’s 3rd and 25, throw a screen pass. Maybe. And if it gets anywhere near a Trojan player, then that QB gets yanked and is forced to wear a Les Miles dunce cap on the bench for the rest of the game. If they do that, then they’ll cover. If they try to “work on their passing game” who knows? Since we’re playing them next week, I will go with LSU to cover the spread.

Boston College @ Fla. St (-6.5)

You know it’s a weak slate when Gameday sets up at Florida A & M. Yes, Florida A & M has now hosted Gameday more than State and Ole Miss combined. With them going to an historically black campus, and Croom on ESPN that night, expect a heavy dose of scolding about the lack of black coaches. State fans who want Croom fired yesterday might want to skip this one.

So this is the “national” game of the week. I have picked Fla. St. and lost over and over, so why change? Go Noles.

Greg Easterbrook at ESPN.com:

The defensive line of the New Jersey Giants is a prime reason the defending Super Bowl champions are 8-1, and on a 22-5 streak overall. Sports-yakkers obsess over stats, but what strikes me about the Giants’ starting defensive line is its college bumper stickers. Justin Tuck went to Notre Dame; Barry Cofield went to Northwestern; Fred Robbins went to Wake Forest; Mathias Kiwanuka went to Boston College. The backups are Jay Alford of Penn State and Reynaldo Wynn of Notre Dame. These are all high-quality colleges where academics come first.

Let’s not forget the rest of the Giants’ roster. It includes Kevin Boothe of Cornell; James Butler of Georgia Tech; Jerome Collins of Notre Dame; Zak DeOssie of Brown; Jonathan Goff of Vanderbilt; Mario Manningham of Michigan; Michael Matthews of Georgia Tech; Kareem McKenzie of Penn State; Chris Snee of Boston College; Amani Toomer of Michigan; and Gerris Wilkinson of Georgia Tech. Seventeen guys on the Giants attended high-quality, academics-first colleges. This isn’t some charity-event roster we are talking about. This is the defending Super Bowl champion.

Where’s Eli? He got his degree in four years and was working on a grad degree his last season wasn’t he?

We are favored by 21.5 points against ULM on Saturday. The last time we were favored by at least 20 points was, as you probably would have guessed, Eli’s senior year in ‘03. We were favored by 19 in the Egg Bowl in Starkville that year, and we covered the shit out of that. We were favored by 26 over Arkansas State, and we covered that easily as well 55-0. And we played ULM that year, were favored by 28, and covered that one too. Having the best offense in school history certainly helped. Post-Cutcliffe, the biggest spread in our favor was last year’s La Tech game at 13 points. We also covered that one. Am I trying to talk myself into taking the Rebels as the big favorite? Maybe so.

This story is really funny. I did not know about it until I read the CL this morning.

ABC ditched its NASCAR coverage for “America’s Funniest Home Videos” with 34 laps left in Sunday’s race. That’s right: Johnson’s seventh win of the season was interrupted by cats running into walls, dancing brides falling and children inflicting unintentional pain on adults.

“I knew we were in trouble when I looked at the monitor and saw a monkey scratching its butt,” one team member said after Johnson’s victory.

And this wasn’t just any race, it was the race that clinched the title for the winner. Of all the things that a network could cut away from your sport to show instead, is there anything remotely as embarrassing as America’s Funniest Home Videos? How many hours of that show exist, and how many have the average person watched in his lifetime? How many nut shots are enough? How many fat ladies falling down on the dance floor at a wedding do we need to see? Manimal reruns would be less embarrassing than the idea that people would rather watch groin shots from a family in Indiana that happened in 1991 than you crown your sport’s champion.

State and Ole Miss are off this weekend, and beyond the Return of the Saban game down in Red Stick there’s not much to make you stay inside and watch. It is a good weekend for us to catch our breath and gird up for our bowl run. After actually cheering at a football game last weekend, Ole Miss fans might be a little tired.

I had a tough week last week at 2-6, but I’m still a highly respectable 41-30 for the season.

Alabama (-3.5) @ LSU

Since this is the only intriguing conference game this week, it has received as much attention as it would have if LSU hadn’t laid those eggs against Florida and Georgia. Despite that, LSU still has tons of respect when playing at home and are only 3.5 point dogs. I would not be surprised if John Parker Wilson reverts to form somewhat and gives the game away. This one should be an old-fashioned type run-heavy field position type of game. I think I like Bama in that situation. I’ve gone against them on big lines a lot this year, but this one is low enough to make me bite.

Ole Miss fans should probably cheer for Bama so the conference has two BCS teams. I still think we’re going to the Liberty regardless, but in theory every little bit helps. As I said earlier in the week, hopefully Cody comes back from injury and assaults those two LSU QBs and leaves them broken men that the fans can’t wait to boo when we roll in there two weeks from now.

Florida (-24) @ Vandy

Tomorrow I will be at the wedding of a Vanderbilt girl, so there should be plenty of Vandy alums about. I can’t really talk shit to them since they beat Ole Miss, but I will ask somebody what bowl they’re planning to go to once Florida starts covering. That’s a fairly innocuous question. If Vandy goes 0-7 and misses a bowl again, they might as well just shut it down. I can’t see anything but Florida wearing Vandy down and covering comfortably in the second half. If Florida wins the national title, which is plausible but iffy at this point, Florida fans should thank Ole Miss for beating them early in the season and making Tebow weep tears of rage and the rest of the teams on the Florida schedule reap the resulting whirlwind.

Arkansas @ South Carolina (-10)

The Arkansas-South Carolina game doesn’t really seem like an SEC game, but I guess it is. Maybe Petrino and Spurrier will get together and compare notes on abandoning NFL teams in the wake of spectacular failure while becoming fabulously wealthy. Laying double digits with an iffy offense like South Carolina makes me nervous, so I’ll take Arkansas here.

Georgia (-10) @ Kentucky

I was stunned when I got in my car last Saturday after enjoying the post-game atmosphere in the Grove and heard Jack Cristil say that State lost to Kentucky. I was under the impression that Kentucky was starting a backup freshman at QB for the first time. On the road in the SEC. That should be an automatic loss. Oh well. I like Georgia laying 10 much more than South Carolina. They can score on big plays when Stafford is on, and I don’t see Kentucky causing quite as many problems as Bama and Florida. He will pad his stats, and the JP guys will stop the broadcast in the third quarter and just start worshiping him.

Wyoming @ Tennessee (-25)

How shitty is Wyoming if they are 25 point dogs to this awful Tennessee team that, as Bill King likes to say, couldn’t score in a womens’ prison with a handful of pardons? I am amazed. Why did we play Wyoming when they were good instead of this year? Regardless of what happened with Fulmer resigning, I can’t think of many teams I wouldn’t take if they’re getting 25 against Tennessee. How bad can they be? How many people will be at the game?

Oklahoma St. @ Texas Tech (-3.5)

Texas Tech doesn’t get long to enjoy the biggest win in program history with Okie State coming in, which will require them to score another 30 points to win. The total on this game opened at 75. 75! Now it’s ‘down’ to 69.5. Hopefully it’s half as good as last week’s game. Even with the letdown potential, I’ll take Tech at home with the small number.

A bye week before the La.-Monroe game, coming just as things really heat up in November, does not seem right, does it? That’s what we’ve got though. I thought that with the 12-game schedule, now there was only one bye week. Did we use to have three bye weeks during the 11 game seasons? That doesn’t seem right.

So we have an extra week to dissect the Auburn game. What if I went back in time to last season and told you that one year later, Ole Miss fans would be bitching about how the team beat Auburn to get within one game of the Shreveport plateau?

Check out this from ESPN about the UT job:

The rest of Kiffin’s staff could have a distinctive SEC feel to it. He and former Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron worked together when Kiffin was the offensive coordinator at Southern California, and Kiffin would almost certainly try to bring Orgeron with him as a defensive assistant and recruiting coordinator. Orgeron is now on the New Orleans Saints staff.

Do you think Kiffen would make Mississippi part of Orgeron’s recruiting territory? He would have to wouldn’t he? Imagine Nutt and Orgeron recruiting against each other on a high profile recruit. I can already imagine the Ole Miss message board meltdowns. They would be epic.

I’m trying to figure out who to cheer for in the Bama-LSU game. Any thoughts? Part of me wants to see Bama lose, but I would not mind seeing Bama put it on LSU and really mess with the head of that QB. If he hears some boos this Saturday and the Tigers lose, imagine what would happen after throwing an INT against Ole Miss. That could really help us. Of course, since Kodi Burns probably put up more yards last Saturday than he ever will again, maybe I’m just dreaming.
Not much else going on right now. Assuming we beat the La-Monroe whatevers, the next two weeks will be huge though. I can’t wait.

It’s a sad day for everybody who has ever mad a Phat Phil joke. It was weird to see him crying during his press conference, wasn’t it? A lot of the players were crying too. It was Niagra Falls at that press conference.

This, along with Houston Nutt’s experience at Arkansas, is a cautionary tale about hiring an alum as head coach. When things are going well, it’s great. How great did Ole Miss fans feel about Rod Barnes the year we went to the Sweet Sixteen? But when things go bad, as they inevitably do if somebody stays at one job long enough, it is especially wrenching for a native son to fail at his alma mater.

On Rivals Radio this morning, Bill King said that Fulmer’s downfall started the day David Cutcliffe left and went to Ole Miss. They never replaced his competence (except when they got him back briefly before he left for Duke), and at this point their offense is just mindbendingly awful. Phat Phil should send Coach Cut some of that six million dollar buyout; he never would have gotten that extension last year without Cut making the offense decent last season.

Fulmer has been the head coach at UT since 1992. Let’s say that the average kid in the South becomes cognizant enough of their parents’ football team to know who the head coach is when they are about 10 years old. That means that every UT fan under the age of 25 or so has never known another coach besides Fulmer. Outside of State College PA, that is very rare these days. I personally don’t want to try to estimate how many hours I have spent listening to arguments on Memphis sports talk about the merits of Phil Fulmer as coach of Tennessee. It was a lot.

When the new guy is wearing an orange polo on the sidelines next year, it will be hard to get used to.