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Mississippi coach Houston Nutt celebrates with fans after his team defeated No. 4 Florida 31-30 in an NCAA college football game in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday.
GoGamecocks.com
Upset energizes Ole Miss campus
As USC visits, Oxford is still abuzz after last week’s upset of Florida
OXFORD, Miss. — Several of the streets meandering through the Mississippi campus are still lined with the red-and-blue banners touting the presidential debate.
But Barack Obama and John McCain are so last week.
The hot candidates here now are a straw hat-wearing coach from Arkansas and a cover-boy defensive end from Tennessee.
This literary-rich town where writers such as William Faulkner and John Grisham lived hasn’t been this excited about football since Eli Manning left.
Ole Miss is 3-2 and received one lonely vote in the latest USA Today/ESPN coaches poll. But as they prepare to face South Carolina on Saturday, the Rebels are coming off their biggest win in 31 years — a 31-30 upset of then-No. 4 Florida that landed All-SEC defensive end Greg Hardy on the cover of Sports Illustrated and made Colonel Reb cool again.
After a turnover-filled, 23-17 home loss to Vanderbilt dropped the Rebs to 2-2, a few fans wondered whether the Houston Nutt era would look much different than Ed Orgeron’s tenure.
Then came the shot heard ’round Dixie as the Rebs marched into the Swamp and skinned the Gators.
“That was a big one last weekend. That was huge, especially coming off a devastating defeat,” Nutt said Thursday. “To come back from that and work hard and still give us everything, that’s what your proud of most.”
Roy Antrobus, a senior from Marietta, Ga., said the Florida win re-energized students, known as one of the best-dressed crowds in the South.
“Vanderbilt was hard to watch. I thought it was going to be the same old song and dance,” said Antrobus, who was wolfing down a rib dinner Thursday evening before his parks and recreation management course.
But the fourth-down stop of reigning Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow set off a rousing night of celebrating on Oxford’s famous Courthouse square.
“Even if we don’t make it to a bowl game, at least we can say we ruined Florida’s chance of making it to the national championship,” Antrobus said.
Already there are T-shirts for sale here commemorating the Florida win, as well others for Saturday’s homecoming game urging Ole Miss to “grill the Gamecocks in the Grove.”
Though a few tickets remain for the USC game, enthusiasm is growing.
Melanie England, a sophomore from St. Louis, transferred to Ole Miss this year from Rockhurst University in Kansas City because she wanted to be at a football-playing school.
England attended a pep rally outside the student union Thursday featuring Nutt and Hardy, the Rebels’ first player to appear on the SI cover since Archie Manning in 1970.
“This is our first year with coach Nutt, so we were hoping for something big like this,” said England, a business major.
Nutt, who was 74-48 in 10 years at Arkansas, jokes that the best recruiting pitch he made was convincing daughters Hanna and Hailey to transfer from Arkansas to Ole Miss, where both serve as student managers. Danny Nutt serves as the assistant athletics director for player development for his brother.
As he preaches to his team about forgetting about the Florida win, Nutt can’t help but notice the buzz on campus. About 15 alumni stopped by practice Thursday — nearly 48 hours before kickoff.
“They’re already here in town,” Nutt said. “Boy, there’s an excitement.”
And the presidential candidates have been gone for a week.
Reach Person at (803) 771-8496.
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