Once upon a time there was a football team in Oxford, Miss., coached by a man named Johnny Vaught and quarterbacked by another man named Glynn Griffing, and together they went undefeated and claimed a piece of the national title.
That was in 1962.
Now it's 2014 and October and the state of Mississippi is at the epicenter of college football again, and while we can pinpoint the last time that happened specific to Ole Miss, you'll search forever trying to find the last time it also involved Mississippi State.
Yes, that's right. If the new playoff system began today (aka, the "OK, OK, Here's Your Damn" Playoff), half the four-team field would be from one state. And not even a state you really think about, football-wise, outside of Johnny Vaught and Glynn Griffing and Archie Manning, and maybe Eli Manning, too.
Ole Miss is fourth in the power rankings and Mississippi State third after the former upset No. 1 Alabama in Oxford Saturday, and the latter performed a beatdown on Texas A&M. It was the kind of Saturday that still makes college football infinitely superior to the pro version, because no one tore down any goalposts and paraded them through the streets of Foxborough, Mass., after the Patriots whipped the Bengals last night.
Ole Miss students did that in Oxford, and it was the absolute essence of the college football experience. It's a Saturday night in October, the Rebels have just beaten the (bleeping) Crimson Tide behind a quarterback with the quintessential southern quarterback name of Bo Wallace, and no one in an official capacity even minds that students have vandalized school property and are carting it through the Grove.
The athletic director, in fact, even tweeted to make sure the kids saved him and head coach Hugh Freeze a piece of the thing.
That's college football, people. No matter how often greedy people try to wreck it, it shines on.
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