Friday Question: Tainted Expectations

we would be much happier with a 2-1 record than a 1-2 record at this point. That said I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d still be pretty mad with a loss to Vandy. Clearly not as mad, but we have to stop losing to teams like that and stop playing down to the level of our competition. Almost any loss other than Tulane would have been more bearable than the Jacksonville St. loss. So in summation I’d be less frustrated at this point with just a Vandy loss, but who wouldn’t?

Ole Miss’ struggles with Vanderbilt are implicit in your very username, Ghost. We have come to accept (albeit begrudgingly) that the Vanderbilt game is one we will probably have to wipe from our collective memory. Except that in previous seasons, other successes have allowed us to do so more easily.

It does not seem to be the case this year that key wins down the stretch will afford us that same luxury we have enjoyed before. Perhaps bourbon will ausage our grief, instead?

Had we won the first 2, I would have been expecting to beat Vandy, even with our historically shitty record against them and in SEC openers. We have a much more talented team (or I thought so anyway) and this year’s version of Vandy is, theoretically, infinitely beatable. I would have been much more surprised and angry about losing to Vandy had we not shit the bed in such a horrifying fashion against Jax State. As it is, after losing to Jax State and demonstrating the same deficiencies in the Tulane game, I was not at all surprised that we lost to Vandy, and was in fact sort of numb to it and pretty much over it as soon as the game ended. That Jax State game so thoroughly lowered my expectations for the season that even before the Vandy game I was expecting us to win a maximum of 5 games. Now I’m guessing a max of 3 (4 if we get super-motivated to pee in State’s cheerios), and will not be at all surprised if the only team we manage to beat is the Ragin’ Cajuns.

In my opinion, a better question may be “Would you rather lose to Vandy and take the conference loss or lose to a WAC squad?”

I’m thinking about all of the great points some of the previous readers have made, and agree with most of them. If Ferbia or Brandon catches the damn ball (“JUSTCATCHTHADAMNBALLLLL” I’ve muttered to myself all week), then maybe our Rebs don’t have the sense of urgency against Fresno after being just as exposed against Vandy. Yeah, JSU was embarrassing. But how embarrassing would it be, nationally, for a SEC school to lose to a WAC (Weak-Ass-Conference) school? The ESPN talking heads would never let that one die in the whole “which conference is most well-endowed” debates. I can hear Herbstreit now after the SEC wins another BCS Championship: “Sure they’ve won the last five national titles, but you can’t make an argument for the SEC as the dominant conference when Fresno State can go into Oxford and beat an Ole Miss.” Jeez.

So, I’d rather lose to Vandy, have Hoot’nDale refocus, and get our basic shit together than let a team that the PAC 10 doesn’t want come into our house and win.

me that we have two seasons every year, the one that runs up to the Alabama game and then everything after the Alabama game. If we’re going to have success, it usually seems to come in the everything-after-the-Alabama-game part of the season.

For years, Rebel football teams have muddled through the early games and then suddenly come to life in October, usually after taking our almost annual whipping at the hands of the Crimson Tide. Maybe it’s the pressure of doing something great (beating Alabama) and then having the pressure removed when it doesn’t happen. Of course, back when we opened up the season with Auburn it was, well, sort of expected that we would open 0-1. Tulane has never been a cakewalk (anyone remember the great Buford Magee season?)

When I was a freshman, we lost back to back against Baylor and Texas A&M on the road, before er’ a snap was taken in old Hemmingway, then finsihed 6-5. We’ve fought for our life against Central Florida, nearly given it up to Arkansas State and had the ultimate humiliation of losing to Mississippi Southern when we were some 20 points ahead at halftime (Sound familiar). Then there is the after Alabama season, where it is not unusual to rip off 5 or 6 big wins in seasons when we have decent teams.

I don’t know, but we may not have an after Alabama season this year. It’s still hard to tell. Losing to vandy is tough any time, but this season, it may more of a look at things to come than just an early season fluke.

Seriously. This doesn’t have anything to do with Vanderbilt getting really psyched to play us, and only us, for some odd reason. The 2010-2011 Ole Miss Rebels are a bad football team. Really bad. Regardless of whether or not we beat JSU, if we looked as shitty as we did against Tulane, honestly if Tulane hadn’t choked away that game in NOLA, we’d be 0-3, and deserve it, and then lost to Vandy, I think people would be reaching for the panic button, albeit maybe with somewhat less urgency than they are now. Assuming everything else being the same, but we beat JSU (either in regulation or OT), then look like shit in a win against Tulane, then lose to Vandy, and then get throttled by Fresno State, people would be screaming for blood just as they are now.

Yes, I’m assuming, regardless of how we did against JSU, this football team loses to Fresno. 2-2, with losses against Vandy and Fresno, and wins against a 1-AA team and Tulane would still lead to gut-check time and some serious panicking.

There would have been excitement and confidence going into the next couple of games; instead there was despair and worry. Fans don’t care now; they still would have if we went into the Vandy game 2-0 regardless of how we did it. And the loss to Vandy, as you clearly show above, would have been status quo. People would have been excited, even at 2-1 with a shitty loss to Vandy, to see what happens this weekend. Instead, we are all hoping that there is actually something to this football team and trying to trick ourselves into not caring about football anymore.

The JSU loss mattered.