Sugar Bowl uniforms and a struggling hoops team
Ole Miss navigates COVID in Sugar Bowl prep and SEC play begins for basketball.
Hope everyone is having a good week and gearing up for a relaxing Christmas. We have a new podcast out. On Monday, I talked to Suffolk University hockey player Kyle Valiquette and had him explain the sport to me as if I was four years old, his journey as a kid in the South playing hockey, the path to playing professional and more. Check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We will also have a podcast out tomorrow with Bracken Ray checking in on a struggling Ole Miss basketball team and what their outlook is as SEC play arrives in six days, and SkyBox’s post-Christmas bowl picks after that with LBs Greg and I tagging along with our own picks. So be on the lookout for that.
We’ve got a little football, some hoops and other random stuff to discuss today.
Ole Miss releases new helmet for Sugar Bowl
Ole Miss will wear a new helmet for the Sugar Bowl. The team released the design earlier this week. It’ll be worn with the powder blue uniform and white pants.
Just like any other time the football program (really any sport, but particularly football) changes uniforms, there is much debate about ruining tradition versus being innovative. I find most of it silly. It’s just a uniform. Ole Miss isn’t going to win or lose this game because of the color of the uniform. But I also understand both sides. I grew up going to Ole Miss games, and until the Hugh Freeze era, Ole Miss never made major changes to its uniform concept aside from some small tweaks to the striping and Ed Orgeron thinking it was a sissy move to have the names back of the uniforms. I always loved that logic. “Names are for wussies.” So are shirts, I guess? He seemed to hate those, too. I remained stunned that hire never worked out.
Anyway, I understand the tradition aspect of it. The Rebels’ traditional red, blue and white uniforms with the stripes on the sides are a great look and something they’ve kept for a long time. I would contend it is the among the better uniform sets in college football. But I am half colorblind and spend very little time thinking about these things, so I am also not exactly a voice of expertise on this subject. I understand not loving the powder blue uniforms and the two different helmet colors introduced over the last ten years. The powder blue helmet is also the most Ole Miss thing of all time given that it started as a equipment manufacturer’s mistake and Ole Miss just rocked it anyway for all of those years. Hell, there is a navy and red stripe on the side of the grey pants the team wears with the powder blue helmet. I am not fashionista, but that always seemed stupid.
If the new uniforms aren’t your thing, then fine. But I think some people are just anti-change, no matter what the new version looks like. It’s human nature to generally loathe change. We all do in various forms or another and I think a change in your favorite football team’s uniforms underscores the silliest part of that human nature to despise change. Either that, or I am overanalyzing the hell out of this and should stop reading the garbage that populates my Twitter feed.
As for me, I think the new helmet looks cool. I am not the biggest fan of the powder blue uniform. To me, it’s like the baseball uniforms: just too much color. But I think the white helmet and pants balance it out. I really have no strong opinions though. All of this talk reminded me of a conversation I had with Matt Luke in 2018. It wasn’t in an interview setting. I think we were all at the practice facility waiting around on something else and he happened to walk by. I asked him about the white helmets Ole Miss had just introduced that year prior to its season opener against Texas Tech in 2018. Luke played at Ole Miss and presumably understood the tradition aspect of the uniforms. The crux of the conversation basically went like this.
Me: “Do you like them?”
Luke: “Players and recruits like them, so, sure, I like them.”
Case closed. Recruits love putting on gear at visits. New gear is cooler than old gear. Welcome to the mind of a teenager. Anyone else’s opinion on the subject matters very little, unless you’d like to start having message board subscribers on official visits.
Once the ball is hiked on New Year’s night, everyone will forget their opinion in the uniforms. I, for one, will be thinking about the amount of words I typed about some fabric.
SkyBox had a +18.7 unit weekend in college basketball last week. Guess who didn’t? Probably you, not using SkyBox. College Basketball is just getting cranked up and is BY FAR their best system. They’re up 105 units over the last two years and their max plays have cashed at 65 percent over the time period. They are destroying the NFL and the bowl games too. Why not pay for your Christmas shopping by using SkyBox? It’s the closest thing to automatic that you’ll find in wagering.
They are also giving out DAILY FREE PLAYS in college basketball. All you have to do is hit this link. What are you doing not utilizing them? It’s free money. Go get their picks right now right here. They have a package for your preferred sport that will fit your price range. You’re missing out by not going to pay them your business. It will pay off in your bank account. Use the promo code “rippee” for 20 percent off any purchase. These guys are the real deal
Ole Miss loses to Samford, 75-73
The basketball team closed out the nonconference portion of its season in rather underwhelming fashion with a loss to the Samford Bulldogs. Ole Miss led 42-36 at halftime, fell victim to an 18-4 run that spanned over five minutes to open the second half and never recovered.
Samford entered this game 9-2 coming off a one-point win over 4-7 Kennesaw State and a two-point victory over a 1-8 Alabama A&M team. It’s not a great loss for the Rebels who now boast a NET rating of 134 (as of this writing) entering SEC play. The team is 8-4 and has not looked like an NCAA Tournament team (or NIT, for that matter) for a single minute of game action this season. On top of that, it’s an incredibly difficult product to watch.
Ole Miss struggles to score the basketball. Before Daeshun Ruffin returned to the lineup last week, the Rebels didn’t have a single guard that could consistently beat defenders off the dribble and get to the rim. Jarkel Joiner isn’t doing it at any consistent rate, and as well as he’s shot it in a spot-up situations, he isn’t much of a creator. That’s what Ole Miss is lacking — a shot creator. It’s why you’re seeing them go five and six minute stretches without a field goal and 8-0 spurts turning into game-altering 14-0 runs. There’s no substitute for a bucket-getter stopping the bleeding when the other team is on a run. You can run as many sets as you want, but at the end of the day, you have to have one guy on the floor that can go create and make a shot at a high clip when things break down.
Maybe Ruffin can provide that for them. He’s shown flashes of it. He scored 31 points in 30 combined minutes in his first two games back. He scored 17 on an inefficient 6-18 shooting in this loss but added three steals and five assists. It’s just a lot of ask of a freshman.
It’s also not Ole Miss’s only issue. The Rebels were out-rebounded by Samford and Western Kentucky. For a coach and program that recruits a lot of forwards and puts an emphasis on the front court, that simply can’t happen. Ole Miss misses Robert Allen, who went out for the year with an injury in the win over Memphis. But if one guy alters that much for a team that already lacks dynamic guard play, then it’s a bad team with a poorly-constructed roster. I don’t really know much other way to put it.
One thing Ole Miss has done for most of this year is defend. That has always been Kermit Davis’ calling card. Defense travels and it will give them a chance on some nights against teams that should otherwise beat them without much trouble, but given the depth of the SEC this year, if Ole Miss cannot find a way to consistently score the basketball, it is going to be a rough two months for this team.
Ruffin gives them a glimmer of hope, but they’re already significantly behind the proverbial 8-ball and face a merciless first eight games in their conference slate. These first four contests will go a long way with regard to both fan interest, team moral and program trajectory. The Rebels have six days to figure it out. The good news is that they open SEC play at home with a Florida team that is good but struggles to score at times. That’s a better matchup than say, an Alabama, Arkansas or Kentucky that can put 85 on a good defensive team.
The bottom line is that the Rebels are a bad team that have shown little evidence to suggest anything else but that.
Ole Miss changes travel schedule for the Sugar Bowl
As the next round of winter COVID disrupts sports across the globe, Ole Miss has been hit by it too. The Rebels canceled what would’ve been their final pre-Christmas practice on Wednesday morning due to COVID concerns. It sounds like a mix of a few positive tests and a bunch of players receiving booster shots the day before. It doesn’t sound like the Rebels are in any danger of missing out on the Sugar Bowl like we saw with Texas A&M earlier this week, but Ole Miss has changed its travel schedule as a precaution.
The College Football Playoff Management Committee unveiled altered Covid guidelines that allow for teams to arrive at their bowl destination as late as two days prior to the game. Ole Miss opted to do just that out of an abundance of caution. As of this writing, no further changes have been made or discussed with regard to Ole Miss and the Sugar Bowl, as far as I know.
I imagine a lot of you are like me in that you are tired of discussing Covid and find the new issues sports face in combatting it to be demoralizing. I am not in the Covid opinion giving business, but it seems like this new variant came and spread quicker than sports leagues could update their protocols. There’s now a lag between updating these protocols and handling the slew of new positive cases. You’re beginning to see it catch up with the NFL and other leagues (other than the NHL who decided to shut down for a week and think that will solve the problem??) update the requirements for asymptomatic and vaccinated athletes to return to competition. I think this all eventually gets smoothed out and everything will return to whatever version of normal we had in the fall. I think the Sugar Bowl gets played on New Year’s Day in front of a packed house and two teams at close to 100 percent. After that, I will just be thankful another season is in the books and hope Covid is no longer a discussion as it pertains to college football when the season starts next fall.
Current Deal: For being a loyal subscriber, show him proof of subscription and you’ll get a 16 oz. prime strip for $15 and a pack of sausage for $5. That’s a hell of a dinner on the grill for 20 bucks. Go check him out, it’s the best place in Mississippi to get meat and Oxford is lucky to have it.
To the ‘too many meaningless bowls’ crowd
Bowl season is upon us, which means the annual, nauseating debate on whether there are too many bowl games. After a hellacious 2020 college football season — that we didn’t even know would happen or not — littered with game cancellations, postponements, empty stadiums and depleted rosters, I am a little stunned there are still two sides to this debate.
I generally understand both sides of an argument, but this debate is an exception. I simply do not understand the ‘too many bowl games’ crowd. Why, after everything we have been through, would you want less football? It’s not like you have to watch it. It allows programs to make more money, teams to get more practice time and players one more game at the culmination of a week of events to reward their season. What is the harm in any of that? The ‘no one cares about the games’ argument doesn’t add up by any sort of ratings measure. You can’t watch videos like the one below and tell me these teams don’t care. Are there opt outs? Sure. Are there a handful of Power Five programs that had disappointing seasons that may not be thrilled to be playing in the particular bowl game they landed in? Sure. But that’s a tiny minority and I still have yet to be explained why anyone should make decisions and base opinions on a tiny fraction of the overall college football ecosystem.
The random pre-Christmas bowls are awesome. How can you not enjoy watching a football game on an island that’s closer to Asia than it is America on Christmas Eve like the Hawaii Bowl? I don’t see how you cannot laugh at the absurd place kicking that goes on amid the torrid winds of the Bahamas Bowl that usually features two teams that already have shitty kickers. We have a bowl game in which the winning coach gets a cooler of French fries dumped on him.
The post-Christmas bowls give you something to watch while sitting around with extended family you don’t want to talk to and are a tasty appetizer to the ones of consequence on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
But the players don’t care, right? The ones rejoicing over a French fry spill would like a word to the contrary.
This debate is one I don’t understand. I think the the ‘too many bowls’ crowd are really just anti-fun. Because that is the only logical explanation to taking exception to something that brings joy to other people that is totally optional viewing. Happy bowl season. I can’t wait to watch all of them.
On the horizon
A bowl pick em’ pod and a hoops check in with Bracken Ray.
A week of Sugar Bowl newsletter and dispatches from New Orleans
Sugar Bowl preview pod with Weldon Rotenberg
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join on the fun by hitting the subscribe button below. You can tell them it costs money even though it’s free. Boom. Christmas shopping done. Have a wonderful Christmas and we will chat next week.