Ole Miss is a kitchen grease fire and there’s no extinguisher

After a horrid 4-8 season last year, the Rebels under Houston Nutt are 1-3 overall and 0-2 in the SEC this season. Ole Miss hasn’t won an SEC game since this week last year and if it wasn’t for the absolute grease fire that this program has become, Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen might be completely winless against SEC West teams. On Saturday, they travel to Fresno State where they hope to pull off an upset against a WAC team.

Following a lopsided 30-7 loss against perennial conference doormat Vanderbilt, Ole Miss fans organized an anonymous group called Forward Rebels and began taking out pricey full page ads in regional newspapers, calling for whole cloth changes to the administration in Oxford. The Vandy loss (and probably the appearance of the ads) prompted Ole Miss Athletic Director Pete Boone to issue an 11:35 PM “hold the rope” email on the Sunday after the game, and then Boone commandeered Nutt’s Monday morning press conference.

Last Saturday’s drubbing by Georgia in the “Hot Seat Bowl” only further infuriated the Rebel Faithful, resulting in reports of threats made against Chancellor Dan Jones and an open letter to the fans, excerpted below. 

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Many are aware of anonymous, malicious and public attacks on athletics director Pete Boone. The Ole Miss family may not be aware, however, that as a part of this orchestrated campaign, I have received threats, promising that if I do not remove Pete Boone, "It is going to get real ugly," and threatening to expand the attacks to other athletics employees.

Friends, supporters and the media have asked how I will react to this anonymous and vicious pressure. The short answer is that I will not react.

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Ok. We’re not going to respond to anonymous and vicious pressure, but here’s a letter in response to anonymous and vicious pressure. But can’t we just get along?

Things haven’t been this bad in The Grove since the last coaching staff was run out of town.

I am tempted to buy a set of tickets for the October 15 game with Alabama, but I don’t think there will be enough Grove eye candy to make the trip worthwhile this time.

There’s probably not a winnable game left on Ole Miss’ schedule, unless either Auburn or Kentucky have epic seasonal meltdowns and somehow find a way to lose to a program that should finish the season 1-11.

Ole Miss is a fine old institution with an immense cultural and academic tradition. It’s had moments of gridiron glory too. But with other schools toying with the idea of joining the SEC, wouldn’t it be great if Ole Miss kept Houston Nutt and Pete Boone? After all, a Missouri or a West Virginia would like to look down a proposed 2013 or 2014 schedule and count at least a couple of guaranteed wins, right?

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Ole Miss problems go way beyond Houston Nutt

Can we all stipulate that the Ole Miss football program is in season two of a slow motion train wreck?

When your Athletics Director is sending a “hold the rope” email at 11:34 CDT on the Sunday night after your football program was pillaged, ransacked and burned by the studly Vanderbilt Commodores, you’ve got a full-scale meltdown in progress. It’s a core breach of biblical proportions and it’s a disaster brought upon the program by none other that Pete Boone, the author of the desperate email dispatch late last night.

Pete Boone hired Houston Nutt. Pete Boone fired David Cutcliffe after his first losing season, a season one year removed from a 10-win season, and replaced him with the biggest buffoon in SEC coaching history. It took Orgeron three years to get 10 wins total, all under the “leadership” of Pete Boone. And can we all agree that, under Andy Kennedy, the Ole Miss men’s basketball program is mediocre at best and sliding into obscurity? Pete Boone hired Andy Kennedy. Colonel Reb is crying.

But Colonel Reb is crying in an Ole Miss administration exile. The mustachioed southern gentleman in the old south garb has been dismissed from the Grove and replaced with a Black Bear, or something. Not only is Ole Miss struggling to gain some identity in its football and basketball programs, the entire athletics department seems to be in a massive identity crisis. They don’t even know who, or what they are any more.

This is not the Ole Miss that produced Charlie Conerly, Archie Manning, Deuce McAllister and Eli Manning. This is the program that instead produced the 2007 bunch who were suspended for stealing pillows and clock radios from hotels in which the team had stayed. This is the program that won the 2009 Oversigning National Championship by inking letters of intent from 37 players but still fielded only about 75 scholarship players for the 2011 season.

This is also a men’s basketball program that has famously flamed out in every season coached by Kennedy. Ole Miss hasn’t made the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament once under Kennedy. Attendance at Ole Miss home games is so bad that any SEC West school can generate homecourt atmosphere just by getting tickets, showing up and rooting their team on to a win.

If Chancellor Dan Jones has any sense left in him, he’ll start cleaning house. Find something else for Pete Boone to do. Buy him a bank. He’s got to be better at that than he is running an athletics program—it’s what he did after his first stint as Ole Miss AD (yes, this is his second bite at the apple, sports fans). Get rid of Houston Nutt, Andy Kennedy and that stupid black bear. Let Ole Miss fans return to the Grove with pride and reestablish their identity.

Some fans, alumni and boosters are already pounding the drum. Here’s wondering if Dr. Jones hears the beat.

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