HOOVER, Ala. — With all respect to the amount of emphasis that Mississippi State University wants to put in the in-state rivalry game, the University of Mississippi still doesn’t share the intensity.
They have admitted to quite frankly having bigger problems with their program in Oxford that have to be solved before the first game of this season before they worry about the last one near Thanksgiving.
“At this point I don’t see that as necessarily a priority today,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “I give credit to (MSU) Coach (Dan) Mullen’s staff and his kids for being able to capture the momentum. We accept that. We don’t run from it. Our kids will understand the importance of that game, I assure you.”
On Wednesday at the Southeastern Conference media days, Mullen ws back to his similar tricks by referring to the in-state rivals as “the school up north” and was asked about billboards that includes one showcasing the three straight victories for the Bulldogs in the battle for the Golden Egg Trophy.
“That school to the north of us, being a conference game, becomes such a bigger game,” Mullen said Wednesday. “Not to downplay the other games, but the overall impact, the conference one ends up being a little bit bigger.”
While Mullen is trying to still get a victory against a Western Division opponent not named Ole Miss, Rebels first-year coach Hugh Freeze is dealing with the task of rebuilding whatever is left from the program that went 2-10 last season resulting in the resignation of Houston Nutt.
“(The Egg Bowl is) a year-round for them,” Ole Miss junior safety Charles Sawyer said. “That’s their thing and we have our thing. We got to win the first game first thing and Coach Freeze is big on us needing to win every day.”
Ole Miss has gone 6-18 over the last two years, has lost 15 of its last 16 games in SEC play and was picked last in the Western Division by both the media and coaches this season.
“I’m a realist, I said. Our program is in a spot that none of us are happy with,” Freeze said. “I get that. I’ve been real pleased that we have a core group of young men that are excited about change and about developing some personal accountability that will lead us out of this wilderness, so to speak.”
Freeze said Thursday he found a lack of “personal accountability and chemistry” when he arrived in Oxford. When he stepped to the podium at the Wynfrey Hotel, he said he believed only “60 percent” of the players had bought into his philosophy so far.
“I think you need to get it to about 80 percent (players buying in) to have a fighting chance,” Freeze said. “Hopefully we can get that done before the fall.”
After Nutt announced he would not be back with the program with a month of games left on the schedule, Ole Miss players admitted Thursday that certain members of the roster stopped going to class, practices and mandatory meetings because of the lack of consequences surrounding the coaching situation.
“I think a lot of the guys started doing things they shouldn’t have been and didn’t care about the rest of the season,” Ole Miss junior linebacker Mike Marry said. “They quit much easier during games because of it, too.”
So while Mullen’s first implementation to the MSU program was to install a countdown clock to the time of the Egg Bowl matchup, the only time piece Freeze is concerned with is the game clock for the matchup with the University of Central Arkansas on Sept. 1.
“I think the reasonable expectation from our fans and our administration that they should have on us, our staff and our kids, is that we compete passionately for our university for 60 minutes,” Freeze said. “Whatever the scoreboard says it says at the end, we’ll have to live with that.”
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