Is 2017 "Next Year" for the 'Dogs?

THE CARDSLAYER BOWL What a finish ... both to the game and to the season!  Like all but the State fans with Coke bottle-thickness maroon lenses, I gave us little chance to win the TaxSlayer nee' Gator Bowl, especially when it became apparent that those hopeful rumors that Lamar Jackson might skip the game and declare for the NFL Draft proved to be mere wishful fantasies.  I mean ... just think about it: We had lost our last game to a mediocre opponent ... our archrival to boot.  The loss not only hurt our pride; it cost us a bid to the Citrus Bowl and returned us to the Gator Bowl for the 3rd time in 8 years.  We had to be down.  Right?? Our head coach and many of our assistants had jilted us and would neither help prepare the team for the game nor coach them during the game. We had basically "Kelly boy" temp coaches, most of whom knew they were coaching their last game at MSU.  Why would they care?  The head coach had never been a head coac...

Silly Season Special:  Goodbye, Dan. Hello, Joe, Me Oh My Oh! Well, that was quick!  Didn't take Dan long to leave, and it darn sure didn't take Cohen long to find us a new coach ... and a damn good one it appears.  As I've said, before, State went from Darrell Royal in 1955 to Dan in 2017 between coaches leaving because they wanted to.  That's a really good record ... or perhaps a really bad one, considering that we ran off or fired all of the others during that 62 year span.  But Dan's leaving was a gut punch.  It always hurts to be the one who gets left, even if it's one of those "it's not you; it's me" deals, as in this case.  Let's think about Dan, his leaving, and what happens now. To minimally paraphrase ( i.e ., damn near quote verbatim) the words of Daryl Hall,  He's gone, oh I, oh I'd Better learn how to face it He's gone, oh I, oh I'd Pay the devil to replace him. He's gone, what went wr...

ROTTEN EGG, SPOILED CITRUS, AND A BLACK FRIDAY Sounds like a good title and/or first line to a country "cryin' in my beer" song; right?  I struggled to try to find something clever to say that would take the sting away, but my experience is that often it's better to just embrace misery and deal with it.  I can only imagine the myriad excuses for State's falling flat in the Battle for the Golden Egg, but the game reminded me a lot of the Egg Bowl in Dan's first year, when an inferior team just played harder and better and won a game that that it had no business winning ... except the shoe was on the other foot.  And it ain't a comfortable fit. In another respect, it reminds me of a game the 'Dogs lost to Florida in Jackson in 1975, when despite rushing for well over 500 yards, State lost something like 7 fumbles, 5 of them inside their 20 or inside our 20.  It's hard to win when you keep giving the ball to the bad guys. At the risk of sounding ...

GHOSTS OF GOLDEN EGGS PAST During my lifetime, as regards the Battle of the Golden Egg, to quote Mick and Keith from long ago, There've been good times.   There've seen bad times.   I have my share of hard times too. When I found Bully and began to follow him, it was a time that ole Pharoah Johnny Vaught had the Children of Maroon wandering in the wilderness of a 17 game winless streak.  The streak was finally broken, but State could never quite achieve dominance in the series.  Paul Davis won one.  Jackie won a bunch.  Even Charlie Shira and Sly Croom won some.  But Dan, taking a page from Jackie Wayne's playbook of tweaking the nose of "Mississippi," came in assuming the role of the uppity Yankee in The Colonel's Court, whipped them, and rubbed their faces in it.  It was akin to some Yankee bully boy wandering over to The Grove, grabbing someone's fine whiskey from under their chandlier, chugging it down, belching, then w...

WEEK 11 - KISSING A PIG "The gods are too fond of a joke." - Aristotle I know that it sounds bogus to say in retrospect that all week this game scared me.  Actually, as I watched it, it scared me up through the touchdown pass that Nick threw to Deddrick with 17 seconds remaining.  Arkansas is not talented ... they are not the team with a stable of running backs and a big, strong offensive line that Bielema has developed in past years at Wisconsin and then at Arkansas.  Their defense has been porous for the past few years, and this year has been worse.  They began with some notable weaknesses, and injuries made them weaker yet.  However, they had somehow rallied from 24 down at Oxford against a team with an explosive offense.  And they were catching State at a time when they had to be flat -- after a heart-breaking loss that added to the list of injured.   But as it turned out it was generally not the lack of effort or of players that ...

Week 10 - Paradise Lost There's no other way to say this:  I still feel like throwing up.  Normally I try to watch at least some of the replay before writing in the blog.  But I really don't want to see this one again.  Yes, it's respectable to play UAT tough and to be in it until the last play, but damn, it hurts to lose one you had won.  To sum it up, the a snippet of the lyrics to Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath" kept flashing through my mind last night ... "And the all time winner Has got him by the balls." The 'Dogs had Alabama by the balls ... and failed to do what one what a winner must do in a street fight with a badass, i.e ., when you've got ahold of them, squeeeeeeeze!!! One like this sticks in one's craw.  Despite the late night, I awakened a little before 6:00 a.m. and kept asking myself, "Did we really lose that game, or am I just having a nightmare?!?"  According to the highlights, it appears that we ...