C'mon, C'mon listen to the money talk

You have to wonder how many other letters there are like this one (Page 1, Page 2). You certainly have to listen when one of your biggest, highest-profile donors has something to say, particularly when it involves the loss of $500k in donations to the athletic department. Some of the most telling statements include:

Numerous occasions of disagreement between Pete Boone and the coaches are well known across a majority of the fan base. Many of the items I view as petty and designed to harass.

and

The Chancellor (Khayat) has heard rampant criticism of Pete Boone from every corner of the State. In the face of all the known turmoil, the Chancellor gave Pete a four (4) year extension!

and

I cannot continue to support this mismanagement. I respectfully suggest you remove (my) pledge from your budgeting process.

Let me preface the rest of this post with this… I’m not a big Pete Boone fan. In all the dealings I had with him when I was in school, he came across as a smug jackass. His banker-engrained penny pinching ways have rubbed many a person the wrong way over the years. He’s made some questionable decisions (and non-decisions) throughout the years that have brought about a firestorm of message board threads and blogger posts.

But right now, in mid-2009, the Ole Miss athletic department is doing just fine, thanks. Outside of Florida and potentially LSU, there’s not a school in the entire SEC with as strong a money-sport coaching trio as Houston Nutt, Mike Bianco, and Andy Kennedy. The IPF is gorgeous and the new basketball facility will be top-notch as well. The new scoreboard at VHS looks great. The list goes on.

That said, it’ll be interesting to see how long Boone sticks around after Chancellor Jones takes over. Boone is a product of the Good Ol’ Boy Network so prevalent at Ole Miss at times... but then again Jones appears to be as well. While I feel Boone doesn’t get enough credit for the good he’s done recently, I don’t feel he’s the man to lead the athletic department where it is capable of going in the upcoming years.

Hopefully, the Chancellor Jones will – as Millette so eloquently put it – “possess the fortitude to correct this problem.” It remains to be seen whether Jones views Boone as a "problem" or he'll just settle for the status quo already in place.

Tuesday Tidbits

* It’s as though we’ve landed in some kind of bizarro world: College Football News offers the following Sugar Bowl projection: West Virginia vs Ole Miss. I’m just waiting for Kevin, Gene, Feldman, and Vargas to show up.

Assuming the SEC champion is No. 1 and off to the national championship, the Sugar Bowl will get the first choice of teams and it'll most certainly take the second best SEC team. Ole Miss, Alabama, LSU, Georgia or even Florida; throw a dart and you might have the right SEC representative. Boise State might be the call if the Fiesta doesn't have an interest, but geographically is makes more sense for the Broncos to go to Glendale and the Big East champion, possibly West Virginia, to go to New Orleans. The Mountaineers stunned Georgia the last time they were in the Sugar, played in Atlanta in 2006.

* Shiny-headed blowhard Paul Finebaum has high praise for Gene Chizik’s "Tiger Prowl". While Finebaum admits it was a gimmick, it seems he’s putting way too much stock in it.

There was another important aspect to Tiger Prowl as well -- stoking the home fires. In politics, you garner votes by exciting your base. You toss them red meat and hear them roar. The Auburn fan base was spitting fire last week. However, I think the most important message of the week was that Auburn is going to make Alabama fight for every acre of real estate in the state.

To me, this is exactly like John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate last year. Sure it got the fan base rowdy for a while, but once the novelty wore off, it was a gimmick with little to no substance. I somehow doubt Nick Saban is overly concerned about Chizik and his limo rides.

* Chris Low has his SEC Spring Wrap up on his blog and the Rebels are featured prominently. His Ole Miss wrap up is pretty good too.

* Jermey Parnell has signed a free agent deal with the Saints. Yes, that Jermey Parnell. While there's very little chance he makes the team, you can't teach the size, strength, and athleticism that JP's got. Who knows? Maybe he'll be the next Antonio Gates, just as a DL. I certainly wish him the best. If he doesn't go down against UT in the SEC opener last year, we probably win that game and a handful more of games we lost in the early conference season last year.

* The Quad, the New York Times college sports blog, has started its annual countdown of the best teams in America #120 - #1. Western Kentucky brings up the rear for a 2nd straight year. While it’ll be early July before any of our SEC brethren show up, it’ll be fairly quickly when UAB and Memphis show up. And then there’s the other half of the non-conference schedule – Northern Arizona and SELA – which won’t show up at all, as they’re both 1AA. So we’ve got that going for us.

On your mark... Get set... Spin!

Days after announcing our embarrassing non conference schedule, it would have been refreshing to see Pete Boone come out and admit that he and other university officials screwed the pooch on the whole process. Instead, you get explanations like this one.

"It was just sort of a perfect storm," Boone said. "Money was part of it. Timing was part of it. It wasn't much fun while it was happening, but we got it done, and we learned some valuable lessons that should help us in the future."

Valuable lessons? Like what? Have your schedule finished before 6 months prior to kickoff? Shouldn't our banker AD have known that before now?

They can bitch and whine about this all they want, but the simple fact is that this debacle is squarely on their shoulders. Had the time and energy been dedicated to finishing our schedule in a timely fashion instead of scrambling at the last minute, none of this would have happened. To try and place the blame elsewhere is a joke.

***Update***
More spin here on David Brandt's blog.

The Lumberjacks?

He looks like a bad guy from Scooby Doo
So the schedule is finally announced... I wonder if the powers that will be able to keep a straight face when they send out the season ticket renewal forms this year. While the home conference slate is fantastic – LSU, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas – the non-conference slate is embarrassing. It’s not all Pete Boone’s fault, as he certainly receives input from the coaching staff and others about potential opponents, but they need to drop this charade about the South Carolina game moving is the reason for the tardiness. The university seems to be wearing it like a crown of thorns and it’s a joke. ESPN airs Thursday night football every week and no other university bemoans it as much as we have. Pete Boone et al dropped the ball on this one, but no one will just admit it.

The 2010 schedule is already out – all 12 games. Even if one conference game is moved to a Thursday night, everything is in place. That begs the question why a 12th opponent wasn’t lined up before yesterday for the season that starts in 5 ½ months.

So, for those of you keeping score at home: We'll be playing a live scrimmage in early November against a team called the Lumberjacks. It will be towards the end of an 11-week stretch where we play every Saturday. Our one off week all season is the 2nd weekend of the season so we have extra time to prepare for SELA. But hey, at least we'll get to finally see Michael Herrick play at Vaught-Hemingway. Can I get a high five? Anyone? No seriously, anyone?

Just another day in the maddeningly frustrating life of a Rebel fan.