re: What Killed Ole Miss Football?

A few reasons:

-The obvious is our inability to recruit black players. Other schools in the South, namely Alabama, had the same issues the University had, but Bear Bryant realized they were superior athletes. Once he decided this was fine, UA was cool with it. Ole Miss did this far too late, and the gap worsened.

-We divided our home games between Oxford and Jackson, like Arkansas does with LR & Fayetteville and Alabama did with Birmingham & T-town. For years, we would play our bigger games in Jackson because the stadium was bigger, thus neglecting VHS and not improving our facilities until 1997 when Tuberville arrived. He made a focus to improve the facilities in Oxford, getting rid of all home games in Jackson and increasing the home field advantage on campus. This is also when the Grove became the tailgate spectacle it is today.

-Lack of leadership in the athletic department. UM has had horrible leadership from 1960 until 2011, hiring ex-Vaught players to run the department when they absolutely were not qualified. The Good Ole Boy System completely destroyed all athletic programs in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Our current AD, Ross Bjork, is the first AD we have had that was a complete outsider to the program, and he has made tremendous improvements from an admin. level that Oxford has never had before.

-There are around 8 public universities in a state that has less than 3 million residents. Two are in the SEC and have to split resources between each other and smaller schools. You have one College Board running the entire system, not individual Board of Trustees making decisions for each school like everyone else has. There again, it comes down to leadership.

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Why do LSU fans keep forgetting that Ole Miss has won 2 of the last 4 football games?



Wut? No we haven't.

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Brain fart and it stinks. I meant 3 of the last 6.

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How awesome would it be if Mississippi only had one large University in the state and that was in the SEC? How different would things be and how good would their history have been?

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Meh, people always say this but the persona and culture of the school would be completely different if that were the case.

You probably don't know this, but the sole reason Mississippi State was established was out of hatred toward Ole Miss. When the federal Morrill Act (I believe ) was enacted in the 1870's designating land grant institutions with funding for Agricultural schools, an ag school was established at Ole Miss. The ag school opened and NO ONE came. The kids that were targeted for this would not attend the school where the "uppity" kids from the Delta and river counties went to school. (Ole Miss was regarded at that time as a bastion for old Mississippi aristocracy). So the ag schools doors were shuttered and the legislature voted to open an ag school in Starkville. MSU was called A&M until the late 1930's I believe. It didn't become a university until 1959. Prior to 1959, Ole Miss was the only university in the state.

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In saying this I'm assuming that they would have gotten their shite together RE: civil rights and integration a little sooner.

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I don't understand how having one school versus two would have had any effect on this. You do know that all of the unrest at Ole Miss during the Meredith crisis was caused by out of town and out of state people that traveled to the university? The students were by and large not the instigators.

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I truly believe if we were not called the Rebels and didn't use all the symbols associated with it for decades, we would not be in this position.

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"Rebels" isn't racist in any way. Colonel Reb was modeled after a black man but with so much hate associated with the mascot, it was time to go. The confederate flags hurt more than anything recently.

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"Rebels" isn't racist in any way.

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Perception is what we're talking about IMO. Mississippi sort of posterized itself as the symbol of southern racism by continuing to cling to the more visible symbols of the civil war and the old south associated with racism. It isn't entirely fair given that plenty of racism obviously existed in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina... but a lot of the damage is frankly self inflicted.

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I truly believe if we were not called the Rebels and didn't use all the symbols associated with it for decades, we would not be in this position.

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There is no doubt that all of the Old South symbolism has hurt us. Most people don't realize this, in 1936 when the "Rebels' name was chosen for the team, a LOT of alumni and students were not happy with this. Many people didn't want a team name as they thought the name "OLE MISS" was strong enough to stand on its own. Many thought adding a team name tarnished the "uniqueness" of the school. I kinda wish that sentiment had prevailed.

Everyone is missing the biggest factor.

Bear Bryant came to Bama in 1958 and won 3 national titles in 8 years and took the mantle away from Ole Miss.

Really very simple, Bear moves in and Ole Miss is history.

Doesn't have a damn thing to do with anything else.

So why was Bear so ineffective while at Kentucky?

Why did the SWC leave him behind while at aTm?