Making public predictions on a Mississippi college football season is a capricious business. Trust me, I know. Depth at our schools is often thin. An injury or three at a key position can turn a potential 8-4 season into 4-8 quicker than you can say anterior cruciate ligament.
Take 2021 for example. Southern Miss, in Will Hall’s debut season, began the season with five quarterbacks on the roster. Before the 12-game season was over, 11 different players took snaps, including a student assistant coach, who un-retired because no quarterback on the roster was healthy enough to play. Hall’s Golden Eagles finished the season with running backs playing quarterback.
Now I don’t know if that team would have won six games, as I predicted in August of 2021. But I know they would have won more than the three they eventually won had it not been for all the sprains, strains and tears.
And that wasn’t the worst case – or the most embarrassing prediction – this predictor has experienced. In 1988, I boldly predicted that Mississippi State would win seven games. The Bulldogs defeated Louisiana Tech in their season opener and then proceeded to lose the next 10 games. It was brutal. At first the defeats were nail-biters, by four points to Vanderbilt and by seven to nationally ranked Georgia. But as the season continued, injuries mounted and morale suffered, the margins of defeat became significantly larger. It mercifully ended with a 33-6 Egg Bowl defeat.
That season forever will be remembered, simply, as “Tech and 10.”
What I will remember most is the wise guy who called my office every Monday morning, usually laughing hysterically while reminding me of my 7-4 prediction. “Hey Cleveland,” he’d say, “I see where your Bullies lost to Memphis by three touchdowns. I just want to know. Was that one of the seven or one of the four?”
And so it went…
With all that in mind, here’s how the 2024 Mississippi football season will go:
We will start with the best team in the state and potentially one of the best teams in the nation: Ole Miss. Don’t take it from me. Both the Associated Press and the Coaches polls have the Rebels ranked No. 6 in the nation. Las Vegas oddsmakers have set the Ole Miss over-under victory total at 9.5. Virtually every respected college football prognosticator has the Rebels in the expanded 12-team college football playoffs. Most have the Rebels hosting a first round playoff game. Lane Kiffin has emerged as the unquestioned king of the transfer portal.
The Rebels have not been ranked this high in the preseason since 1970, when Johnny Vaught was still coaching and now-75-year-old Archie Manning was the quarterback. That year, the Rebs ranked fifth in the AP preseason poll and rose to as high as No. 4 before a stunning loss to Southern Miss and Manning’s broken forearm suffered against Houston.
Quarterback Jaxson Dart, for good reason a high-ranking Heisman Trophy candidate, leads an Ole Miss roster that has been bolstered, especially across the offensive and defensive lines, through the portal. I don’t know that the Rebels are as deep across the the lines as traditional SEC powers such as Georgia and Alabama, but the Rebels appear to possess more depth than any Mississippi football team in recent memory.
The schedule works in the Rebels’ favor as well – at least as well as an SEC schedule can. Ole Miss definitely will be favored, heavily in most cases, to win its first six games. Then comes an Oct. 12 date with LSU at Baton Rouge. Circle that game. Should the Rebs win it, they likely will be 7-0 with an open date before a home game with Oklahoma. Can you imagine what Oxford will be like should that happen? I can’t.
You won’t find Alabama, Texas or Auburn on this Ole Miss schedule, and Georgia, the preseason No. 1, must visit Oxford on Nov. 9. If both teams were to enter that game undefeated, Oxford lacks the infrastructure to contend with all the folks who would converge on the campus and the Square that day.
If I was a gambler, I would bet the over. I think the Rebels will win 10 regular season games, losing only to Georgia and either LSU or Oklahoma. And, yes, that would put Ole Miss in the playoffs.
Mississippi State? To say the Bulldogs are a new-look team is probably the understatement of the decade. The Bulldogs will feature a new head coach, new coordinators, a new quarterback and only four returning starters, the least in the SEC. This rebuilding job may take a while.
That said, I’ve always put a lot of stock in what coaching peers say about a new head coach, and I’ve never heard any coach, friend or foe, say anything negative about Jeff Lebby. He has produced explosive offenses everywhere he has coached, including Ole Miss and Oklahoma.
Lebby’s first task as a head coach will be challenging to say the least. Not only must he replace 18 starters, he must do it against a schedule that might best be described as frightening.
Like Ole Miss, State doesn’t play Alabama or Auburn, but the Bulldogs do play Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and Ole Miss, all ranked in the AP top 15 and all on the road. What’s more, the Bulldogs’ home schedule includes Missouri and Texas A&M, both ranked in the AP’s preseason Top 20. Sports Illustrated ranks State’s schedule the sixth most difficult in the nation, and it is difficult to imagine that five teams exist that face harder schedules.
Little wonder, Las Vegas oddsmakers placed the over-under on State victories at 4.5. I’ve got the Bulldogs winning four – five if they can win that first road game at Arizona State. It surely helps Lebby that he was able to bring in through the portal quarterback Blake Shapen, who was well above average and often outstanding in two seasons as Baylor’s starter.
Vegas oddsmakers set the over-under victory total on Southern Miss also at 4.5. My take: Barring another rash of quarterback injuries, the Golden Eagles will beat those odds. Hall has recruited well and also has increased the overall talent level through the portal. An admission: I thought the transfer portal would negatively affect Sun Belt teams such as Southern Miss. So far, at least, the portal has helped the Eagles.
Start with quarterback Tate Rodemaker, who comes to Hattiesburg from Florida State, where he was the back-up before a late-season injury sidelined the Seminoles’ starter. In his first start, Rodemaker quarterbacked FSU to a 24-15 victory over Florida in The Swamp at Gainesville. Rodemaker had portal offers from South Carolina, Tulane, Washington State and Utah State among others, including FSU, which did not want him to leave.
As this is written, Hall has not named Rodemaker as the definite starter but he will be. Expect to see talented sophomore Ethan Crawford play as well, and Hall loves true freshman John White, the Madison-Ridgeland Academy product (and son of Mississippi Speaker of the House Jason White).
Other reasons for optimism: a huge and talented front seven on defense and what Hall believes will be a much improved offensive line. Expect true freshmen tight end-fullback Reed Jesiolowski and linebacker Chris Jones, both out of Hartfield Academy in Flowood, to make early contributions.
Hall is due some good fortune when it comes to avoiding injuries. If he gets it, his fourth USM team could win six or seven games and go to a bowl. What the heck, I’ll go with seven and hope I don’t hear from the same guy who kept calling and ridiculing me mercilessly back in 1988. I can hear it now: “Hey, Cleveland, I just want to know, was that one of the seven or one of the five…”
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