(Photo from Ole Miss Athletics)
- Parrish Alford says the foundations for special seasons are built on just a handful of plays during the year.
There’s an acronym that drifts in the air around Ole Miss athletics and was widely used Saturday afternoon following the then-No. 6-ranked Rebels’ 20-17 home loss to Kentucky. It’s used to explain the unexplainable, the answer to an appeal for understanding when none is easily found.
WAOM. We are Ole Miss.
When the clouds seem properly aligned, the puzzle pieces seemingly in place, all the necessary ingredients there to make magic happen, why can’t the Rebels deliver?
WAOM.
It’s why the Rebels can’t have nice things.
WAOM.
For Ole Miss fans those letters are the alphabet’s fearsome foursome, and they comprised the central theme of a number of social media posts in the aftermath. Even some opponents got into the act.
I didn’t attach the acronym to Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin after blowout wins against a weak early-season schedule.
Expectations like these, like competing for the SEC championship and, beginning in 2024 a college football playoff spot, aren’t around every season for Ole Miss football.
The history isn’t only John Vaught. There have been years in the post-vaught Era. The 1990 SEC championship hopes. Expectations were there in 2003, again in 2009. They came into play in 2014 and 2015.
Ole Miss has that history, but Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss does not. The program has risen under his guidance, but this is the first time he’s had the Rebels with expectations at this level.
I can’t answer why things happened in the past or to recognize the current environment with the present tense, why things happen. Mystic forces, though, seem an inadequate response. There’s some level of “football happens,” but I gravitate to football solutions to solve football problems.
Recruiting and staff, roster building and culture, play-calling and execution, all those things are examined.
The schedule didn’t help
Many Ole Miss fans feared the schedule did not prepare this team for SEC play, and I believe that to be the case.
When you make those schedules years in advance you don’t know what kind of team Wake Forest has. That was a top-25 team with Ole Miss lost there 30-28 in 2008.
The schedule isn’t that different from most of the SEC brothers: Two Group of Five teams, an FCS opponent and the required power league non-conference game.
The problem with the 2024 Ole Miss schedule is more placement than opponent. If Kentucky had appeared on the calendar earlier preseason preparation would have had a different feel. Instead, the Rebels now close the season with eight-straight SEC games.
The week before Ole Miss hosts Georgia it travels to Arkansas. In November, Alabama plays Mercer, and Georgia plays UMass.
The foundations for special seasons are built on just a handful of plays during the year.
If Ashanti Cistrunk doesn’t get Jayden Daniels to the ground with less than 3 minutes to play or if Tre Harris drops a touchdown pass in the final seconds, that LSU game and the 2023 season look a lot different.
Kentucky made those plays against Ole Miss. The Rebels are experiencing that down side right now, but does that make them a different team? It does not. It makes them a better understood team if there were some fans who clung to the fools’ gold of the weak early schedule.
This was the theme of Kiffin’s comments in his postgame presser.
“All of a sudden our program is terrible when (we) miss a field goal or don’t get a two-point conversion at the end of the game. I wouldn’t tell you we have all the answers. We have seen a lot of these things when we have won (games), and all kind so things can happen there,” he said.
It doesn’t make Ole Miss a different team. Hopefully it makes the Rebels more concerned with technique and detail, which they were not in some earlier games.
It changes the complexion of the season.
Season will be determined away from VHS
It doesn’t put the playoffs out of reach, but it forces the Rebels to win big games – not singular – on the road.
There was a mulligan to be used somewhere, but now the Rebels have used it.
Maybe they gear up and beat Georgia at home, maybe not, but they’ve got to win at places like LSU and Arkansas where success has been rare. They’ve got to win this week at sneaky good South Carolina which is coming off an open date.
Kiffin’s roster management and deft handling of the transfer portal have closed the gap with the Alabamas and Georgias, but the league is the league. The Rebels got the house in order and put in work in the offseason, but Kentucky was at work too.
There’s a reason Mark Stoops is in his 12th season in the league, all in Lexington.
When Ole Miss doesn’t make the single plays, games tilt the wrong direction. Usually, it’s about execution and not mystic forces.
Parrish Alford
