You may not have noticed during ESPN’s breathless “will-he-or-won’t-he” coverage of the Lane Kiffin saga, but there was a football game Friday in Starkville.
You know, the Egg Bowl; that annual matchup between bitter Mississippi rivals of which Black Friday marked the 122nd meeting. I’m told it was a pretty entertaining game, at least for a couple of quarters, though you wouldn’t know it from the broadcast. Every pregame show, studio cut-in and every sideline report – heck, even the halftime show – was more focused on what the Rebels’ now-former head coach might do after the game as opposed to what his team was doing during the game.
For a sports editor, I admittedly don’t spend much time watching sports “news,” partially because I value my sanity but mainly because I’m more interested in what happens on the field than off. But the content machine must be fed, and ESPN and its entities – along with fansites, amateur flight trackers and social media personalities who might be bots – are always there to deliver. And no topic is more ripe for takes than the dreaded coaching carousel.
College football has long operated as a cult of personality. Every new coach is the perfect coach while every discarded coach was never the right fit. Every quote, post or comment is dissected within an inch of its life in a search for meaning where almost none exists. And each new contract is more onerous than the last as salaries and buyouts balloon to Fortune 500 CEO levels.
And while MSU fans watched the whole wretched circus with bemusement and no small measure of schadenfreude, it must’ve been agony for Ole Miss fans. The Rebels are in their Golden Era, post-integration edition. With an almost certain home College Football Playoff game and an outside shot at the SEC Championship Game on the line, the focus should’ve been on the players. Trinidad Chambliss, the Division–II-unknown-turned-Heisman-candidate, deserved more love. So, too, did Kewan Lacy, the little-used Missouri transfer who might now be the most complete running back in the SEC.
But the focus, like it almost always is, was on Kiffin, who’s now taken his big top to Baton Rouge. Ole Miss, meanwhile, prepares for the actual main attraction – the College Football Playoff.
QB1 in our hearts
In actual football news, Friday marked what anyone who’s seen an MSU game this season recognized as a long-delayed beginning of an era – the first start for true freshman quarterback Kamario Taylor. Taylor, a Noxubee County product, saw his reps increase throughout the course of the season but had to wait until Week 14 to ascend to QB1 on the depth chart.
About halfway through Taylor’s remarkable 35-yard touchdown scramble early in the fourth quarter, I asked a question many of us had been pondering for months: “What took so long?”
This is no slight on Blake Shapen, who, by all accounts, is a fine young man and a serviceable quarterback. In fact, on an otherwise-great team, I believe Shapen could be a good quarterback.
But for an MSU team that spent most of the season fathoms below great while only occasionally surfacing to mediocrity, serviceable was never going to be enough. What they needed was someone dynamic – which is about the best description of Taylor I could offer.
Kudos to Jeff Lebby (and maybe Zac Selmon) for finally seeing the light and giving Bulldog fans a much-needed glimpse of the future.
Philip Poe is sports editor. He can be reached at [email protected]
Philip Poe is sports editor.
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