Not worth the trouble

Jamar Hornsby's case was delayed until Mid-August. Houston Nutt wouldn't comment if Hornsby would still practice with the team while his case was in limbo.

It's shameful that we even offered and signed this kid. Call me callous, but the credit card theft crosses a line of decent humanity from which there is absolutely no return. It wasn't his first run-in with the law in Gainesville either, just his most publicized.

And don't feed me the canned "everybody deserves a second chance" line. Hornsby has blown more chances than anyone deserves. The fact that he was recruited at all with his criminal background is a harsh glimpse into the "win-at-all-costs" of major D1 football.

Replacing Jamarca Sanford will not be easy, but Hornsby is not the answer. 2009 has too much potential for greatness to jeopardize it only nefarious characters such as Hornsby.

Slow news day in Georgia

Now that he's committed to Georgia, Mark Deas has thrown away his Florida Gator underwear. Sounds like a non-event, right? Well it got its own story on RedAndBlack.com, complete with this future Pulitzer winning headline: "Football recruit trashes undies after committing to Georgia".

I guess we should just be grateful he didn't pull a Bobbie Massie and drop his Gator drawers before sliding on his UGA ones.

Men’s Tennis Team Screwed Over

24-2, ranked #2 in the country? Check
Undefeated SEC Champions? Check
SEC Tournament Champions? Check
Lead the country in attendance? Check
Hosting an 8th straight regional? Che… Wait, what? No really? What?

What an absolute disgrace. There is no logical or rational explanation for how this happened. None whatsoever. These guys absolutely earned the right to make any team in the country – other than #1 Virginia – travel to Oxford to try and take them down. Instead, the NCAA packs ‘em up and ships ‘em out to the home of our archrivals. Then they’ll most likely tangle with Texas A&M on their home court in the Sweet 16. The current NCAA spin is travel concerns, but with some of the distances other teams are travelling, that rings hollow.

LSU is an incomprehensible 10-11 this year, including a sparkling 4-7 in SEC play, so they obviously earned the right to host, much more so than the Rebels did. Joining LSU as SEC hosts are Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Florida, all of whom got their ass kicked to a varying degree of severity by the Rebels this year. The Rebels have already beaten LSU twice this year – 5-2 and 4-2 - so they shouldn’t have to mess with them a second time.

From OleMissSports.com, Pete Boone had this to say:

"There's no words that can express the boneheadedness of this decision," Boone said. "The NCAA wants to cut down on travel, and I understand that, but to do this to the No. 2 team in the country doesn't make any sense whatsoever. ... We're certainly going to be on the phone in the morning with the NCAA trying to find out what the hell happened."

Head coach Billy Chadwick was a bit more diplomatic, but you gotta figure he’s pissed:

"If you're trying to grow the sport, it seems very odd that the place leading the nation in attendance that's also the second best team in the nation doesn't host."

Two positives can come out of this. The first will be kicking LSU’s ass in front of their home crowd. That’s always fun, regardless of the sport. Secondly, if this doesn’t put a chip the size of Lane Kiffin’s ego on the team’s shoulder, nothing will.

And while I'm not sure how effective it will be, the guys at Red Cup Rebellion have posted some applicable contact information for the selection committee. While it won't change this decision - and if Pete Boone calls something boneheaded, then by golly it's boneheaded - it should serve as a good outlet for creative writing and venting.

Download a full bracket here.

Rebels in the 2010 NFL Draft

With the 2009 NFL draft now just a blip in history, it’s obviously time to get mock drafts together for 2010. Pete Prisco of CBS Sports offers his here, and projects Jevan Snead as the No.1 pick next year and lists Greg Hardy as No. 8. He says this about Snead:

An early look to next year's draft shows a class that could be quarterback heavy. My top guy, as always, is a quarterback. It's not who you think. It's not Oklahoma's Sam Bradford or Colt McCoy of Texas or even Florida's Tim Tebow.

It's Mississippi quarterback Jevan Snead. Entering his junior year, this transfer from Texas has everything
I love in a quarterback. He has good size at 6-3, a rocket for an arm and sees the field.

He transferred from Texas because of McCoy. But I think come next April he will be the first pick in the draft. Snead, if he gives up his senior year, is next year's Matt Stafford.

Andrew Perloff of Sports Illustrated offers his here. He ventures to project the order of the draft and has Hardy going 18th to the Seahawks and Snead going 25th to the 49ers. Then there's this from Sports Illustrated that ranks Hardy #1 and Snead #32.

With a chance the NFL rookie salary cap comes to fruition in the 2011 season, I wouldn’t be surprised to Snead come out early, particularly if he plays like he did in the final 6 games of last season. The 3 consecutive throws he made to McCluster, Summers, and Wallace against LSU were as good as any throws any Rebel QB has made in a long, long time, including Eli.

With 2009 being the first draft the Rebels have ever had 2 players drafted in the first round, accomplishing it two years in a row would be a big statement for the program, particularly with the sad W/L record compiled in the EOr era. Nutt and his staff have done a good job replacing the outgoing talent, and while it remains to be seen whether it blossoms on the field, prospects are certainly high.

And if Snead is indeed gone after next season, here's hoping he goes out with an SEC title game appearance on his resume.

Monday Lunch-Break Thoughts

What an awesome, awesome weekend to be a Rebel and be in Oxford. The weather was absolutely perfect, Double Decker Fest was fantastic (as usual), and oh yeah, by the way, we took 2 out of 3 from Georgia in baseball.

The atmosphere wasn't lost on the Georgia players either. Both slugger Rich Puythress and head Coach Dave Perno had rave reviews of the stadium and the "experience":

“It's the best environment I've been around,” Georgia slugger Rich Poythress said. “I've been to LSU. I've been a lot of places, and it's the best environment, other than Omaha, that I've seen in college baseball."

"It's not just the environment,” UGA head coach Dave Perno said. “It's the stadium. They've got everything. It's done right. It's the best we've been in, not just the environment and being tough to play in, but just the looks, the aesthetics. Everything's done right and I tip my hat to Mike and Ole Miss and their athletic department. They've done a great job."

* While we were partying in Oxford, our #2-ranked tennis team was partying on the Plains, celebrating its 2009 SEC Tournament title to go along with its regular season title. That's two in a row for Coach Billy Chadwick and his boys.

* That's not to forget that our Rebels were well represented in the NFL draft this year. The 4 Rebels drafted tied for 4th most in the conference. Alabama also had 4 players selected, and Georgia and LSU each had 6. But it was South Carolina that led the conference with 7 draft picks this year, stealing the lead with Ryan Succop's announcement as Mr. Irrelevant. Just further proof that you can't win in this league without a competent QB, regardless of who you surround them with.

A big Dead Guy congratulations go out to: Michael Oher (#23 Baltimore), Peria Jerry (#24 Atlanta), Mike Wallace (#84 Pittsburgh), and Jamarca Sanford (#231 Minnesota). As well as Ashlee Palmer closed the season, I suspect he'll wind up somewhere as a free agent as well.

Only one team failed to land anyone in the draft. It was the second straight year that moou achieved this milestone. But hey, at least they're bringing back the Dawg Pound Rock next year. In its first incarnation, the DPR just came across as thuggish. Doing it next year, when they'll be fortunate to win 5 games, will just come across as a combination of sad and comical.

* A big thank you also to Ed Orgeron for stocking us up with the talent that he did. While I refuse to believe he'll ever be a competent head coach - unlike this article - I appreciate the hard work and effort he put it during his time in Oxford. I can't say I wish him luck though.

And I love message board comments. They're the greatest...

mikesean865 writes:

hands down we have the best coaching staff in college football, maybe ever assembled. Who would have thought last fall that by this spring we would be the envy of football fans across the country as far as coaching staff goes. they are all trembling in their little boots right now because they know what awaits them for the next ten years. two national championships minimum, 4 sec championships minimum. Write it down i said it. FEAR THE KIFF!!!

Doug Shows' mother was a hamster and his father reeks of elderberries

One of the joys of discussing sports is the infamous “ hates us” argument. Mention Doyle Jackson’s name around Rebel fans and hairs bristle, fists clench, and teeth grit. As far as Rebel Nation is concerned, he’s cost us two games against the Tide, a series in which wins have been ridiculously hard to come by. Today, I’d like name a new “Rebel Hater” that SEC basketball fans will be familiar with: Doug Shows.

(A little background on this topic before we delve into the facts. Shows was my favorite official when I was in school back in the mid-late 90s. I didn’t have the exact numbers then, but it seemed like we won every time he was on the court with us. Now I hope I don’t see him run out of the portal. I didn’t know how right I was until I looked at it by the numbers.)

Let’s break it down by recent “eras” in Ole Miss basketball. I’ll call them our Ascension to Relevance (ATR) (96-97 to 01-02), Barnes After Dukes (BAD) Era (02-03 to 05-06), and the Andy Kennedy Era (06-07 to 08-09). Each era is defined by the success of the team, not a fixed number of years.


The numbers speak for themselves. You can toss out the Shows numbers in the BAD era as everyone kicked our ass in the “hold the ball for 30 seconds and jack up a 3” offense that we ran. It’s the dismal numbers now compared to the ATR era that strike me as interesting.

In the late Evans era and the early Barnes years, Shows was a beautiful sight on the court. We won 90% of the SEC games he officiated, including the 73-69 win over eventual National Champion Kentucky in January 1997, Pitino's final year in Lexington. Home or away, it didn't matter. If Shows was there, we won.

We're winning again, modestly sure, but with a program with as dismal a history as we have, you take it where you can get it. And while Andy Kennedy’s 23-25 SEC record is nothing spectacular, it’s certainly a major improvement from the aforementioned BAD era. What’s puzzling is that AK is winning only 20% of the SEC games Shows officiates, while Barnes won 30.8% in the BAD era, not to mention the 90% clip from earlier. Under AK, the Rebels have won 55.2% of SEC not officiated by Shows.

And it's not that we just lose when Shows shows up. We lose badly. In AK’s 3 years, his Rebels have lost 13 SEC games by 10+ points, and Shows has been on the floor for 7 of them. He also was the lead official in the 32-point drubbing we took in The Pit against New Mexico this year.

So what this all mean? While I can't really put my finger on anything in particular, I have a theory. He's certainly no Curtis Shaw who would call a foul over a shunning face. Nor is he Teddy Valentine who practices the "No Blood, No Foul" mantra on the court. That leaves one conclusion and one conclusion only: Doug Shows is pure, unadulterated evil that must be banished forever from any gym the Rebels are going to play in.

It is my belief that Doug Shows is directly responsible for the knee injuries to Trevor Gaskins, Eneil Polynice, and Chris Warren, the Cincy cabbie incident, Malcolm White transferring, David Huertas jumping ship to play pro ball next year, and possibly the daytime fireworks show.

Even with our departures, the Rebels have a chance to be very good next year. Next year's season ticket packages should offer the chance to donate funds to purchase garlic, holy water, crucifixes, and sharpened stakes to help fortify Tad Smith from any more Shows appearances. While I can't imagine the Rebels will face the same amount of adversity they did this past season, as long as Shows in on the prowl, nobody is safe.

As always, a big tip o' the hat to StatSheet for the ridiculous researchability.