In the 2016 Sugar Bowl, Hugh Freeze of Ole Miss will not coach for his job.
He won’t coach a game he has to win for purposes of maintaining top recruiting classes in Oxford.
No, this game in New Orleans is not about Ole Miss’s future as a program. When the Rebels face Oklahoma State in the Superdome on Jan. 1, they’re playing for the present moment, and to a certain extent, the recent past.
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The New Year’s Six bowl structure is the best friend of third-place SEC teams. The Bowl Championship Series limited conferences to no more than two entries in the five BCS bowls (2006 through 2013). The advent of the NY6 last season gave Ole Miss, despite three losses, the ability to participate in a signature bowl game with a larger payout and a bigger national platform.
Under the BCS, Ole Miss would have been shut out of a bigger stage. Alabama would have played in the BCS National Championship Game against Florida State. Mississippi State would have been the SEC’s second team in the BCS rotation. Ole Miss would have gone to a non-NY6, non-playoff version of the Cotton Bowl. Instead, the Rebels gained a ticket to the Peach Bowl for a date with TCU, one of the two Big 12 teams locked outside the playoff last season. The contest gave Ole Miss the kind of spotlight which has been extremely rare over the past several decades.
Ole Miss was a national powerhouse for most of the 1950s and nearly all of the 1960s under head coach Johnny Vaught. One of the best coaches in SEC history, Vaught led the Rebels to eight Sugar Bowl appearances from the 1952 season through the 1969 campaign. Along with Bear Bryant, Steve Spurrier, and General Robert Neyland, Vaught belongs on the Mount Rushmore of SEC football coaches (with Nick Saban steadily making his way into this conversation as he acquires more longevity at Alabama). His legacy is substantial, and it recalls a time when Ole Miss stood at the center of the college football universe.
However, when Vaught left, the magic left Oxford. Ole Miss played in the 2004 and 2009 Cotton Bowls, but at that point in time, the Cotton Bowl was a consolation prize game, not the New Year’s Six premium attraction it is today (or the champion’s bowl it was for the Southwest Conference through the 1995 season). Ole Miss waited a long time for a game as big as the 2014 Peach Bowl. Playing TCU offered the Rebels a prime target in a very tasty and highly-anticipated matchup.
As soon as the game began, it became apparent that Ole Miss did not belong on the same field.
TCU won, 42-3, and the scary part of a completely lopsided Peach Bowl is that the Horned Frogs left plenty of points on the field. TCU made a bunch of mistakes and still coasted to a 39-point win. Ole Miss’s offense didn’t have a chance, as Gary Patterson gave the impression that he knew every last nuance of Hugh Freeze’s playbook.
Ole Miss did respond in 2015 by winning at Alabama — beating the Crimson Tide for the second straight season — but as was the case in 2014, this year’s Rebels couldn’t maintain that high standard. Beating Nick Saban was Ole Miss’s bowl game, but the Rebels lost to Arkansas for a second straight season. They also got paddled by Memphis and flummoxed by Florida.
Of all the SEC West member schools which existed in 1992, Ole Miss is the only one which hasn’t made a single appearance in the league championship game. Viewed through that lens, the 2015 season — not without its share of successes — remains frustrating in Oxford. It’s not a disappointment, but it did leave something on the table.
Enter this Sugar Bowl against Oklahoma State.
For a second straight season, Ole Miss has been gifted with a bowl game which is frankly above the pay grade of a three-loss team. The Rebels face a Big 12 school in a Southern domed stadium — again. They have a chance to prove themselves and stick up for the SEC — again. This time, however, they want to avenge the 2014 Peach Bowl.
All the right things can be affirmed, and all the wrong labels can be erased, with a win. A loss would double down on the disappointment and humiliation experienced a year ago in Atlanta versus TCU.
How does Ole Miss want to be regarded in the present tense? It must ring in the New Year with a victory in the Big Easy… in a game which figures to be extremely difficult.
Hugh Freeze, this is your big chance to change a lot of perceptions about your program.
