Mississippi's Mistake

The Magnolia State also known as The Hospitality State is known for what? According to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit healthcare foundation, Mississippi is ranked last among all states for health care. With that said, Mississippi does rank first in obesity with 35.2% of its citizens able to make that claim. If you aren’t sold on Mississippi after those two little factoids, here are two more – it has the second highest unemployment rate (5.6%) and the lowest per capita personal income ($35,444). What else does Mississippi have? Well, it has this little college football rivalry called, The Egg Bowl.

The Egg Bowl, or its more formal name, “The Battle for the Golden Egg”, is a college football rivalry between the Mississippi State Bulldogs and Ole Miss (The University of Mississippi) Rebels (yes, Ole Miss’ team is named after the traitorous, racist, and losing, side of the American Civil War). The game is the tenth longest uninterrupted college football rivalry, dating back to their first meeting in 1901. Although neither team has ever been anything close to remarkable, the third world country that is Mississippi has provided America with entertainment.

In just the last three meetings there has been either a full out brawl or some sort of unsportsmanlike conduct penalty due to a player finding his inner “Old Yeller” and acting as though he is pissing on the field. The most recent meeting, 2019, has been given the beautiful title of “The Piss, the Miss and the Double Dismiss.” Ole Miss was behind Mississippi State 21-14 and only nine seconds remained in the game. Ole Miss receiver, Elijah Moore, caught a touchdown pass, but after the score he was assessed a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for pretending to act like a dog urinating in the endzone. In turn, the Ole Miss kicker was forced to kick a 35-yard extra point, rather than a typical 20-yard extra point. The kicker missed the extra point and Mississippi State won 21-20. The “double dismiss” part comes into play because both head coaches would be fired at the end of the season. Ole Miss’ head coach was fired due to his lack of a heartfelt apology about his player inexplicitly pretending to urinate on the field and also the fact that he went 15-21 in three seasons with the Rebels. Mississippi State fired its coach after they lost their bowl game because of “off-field issues.” Ironically the Old Yeller urinating reenactment was not the first time that either Ole Miss’ head coach or the Egg Bowl had witnessed.

 In 2017 Ole Miss’ wide receiver and now Seattle Seahawk wide receiver, D.J. Metcalf, mimicked the Mississippi’s State’s mascot, a bulldog, by pretending to urinate like a dog on the field. In that latter case, the Ole Miss head coach didn’t give a lackluster apology because he didn’t give any apology. Finally, though the 2018 Egg Bowl lacked canine urinations, it made up with the fact that there was an entire bench clearing brawl between the two teams. The referees ejected three Mississippi State players and one Ole Miss player and were so confused that every other player was given an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty (if a player receives two in one game, that player is ejected from the contest). This brawl would go down as “The Egg Brawl.”

The vacancies at these two wilting Magnolian institutions of higher learning and dubious historic pride should’ve been a moment in which each university could hire a head coach who would instill discipline, a sense of respect, and ingrain the  ideals of good sportsmanship. However, the two biggest schools in Mississippi continued their state’s trend and made the wrong choices.

Ole Miss elected to hire the ever elusive and highly scandalous, Lane Kiffin, as its newest head coach. Kiffin has the unenviable knack for picking fights with the people who have hired him. Kiffin’s first head coaching job, one year with the Oakland Raiders, ended disastrously. Not only was his team uninspiring on the field with a record of 4-12, but when Oakland’s owner asked Kiffin to resign, Kiffin refused. Raiders owner, Al Davis, would then fire Kiffin over the phone for cause.  After an ugly arbitration it was discovered that Kiffin could be fired for cause (i.e. Kiffin would not receive the $2.6 million left on his Oakland contract) due to making excuses and outright lies while with the Raiders. Ironically, being fired over the phone would be Kiffin’s least embarrassing method of dischargement. In Kiffin’s last year as the head coach of USC (2010-2013) he was fired basically on the tarmac of LAX, after his team returned from a dismal loss at the hands of the sclerotic Arizona State Sun Devils. The level of audacity required for a university’s athletic director and president to ask their head football coach, in front of his entire team, to exit the team bus at 3am and go to a remote office at the airport where he was told he was no longer employed, is afforded to only the lowest of the low scumbags. It appears Kiffin is the lowest of the low. It’s not too far removed to argue that a coach who was fired over the phone and then, in a separate coaching job, in front of his entire team, must have an arsenal of repugnant personality traits.

Another unique “Kiffin trait” is his talent at jumping ship. Kiffin abruptly left after one year coaching the University of Tennessee (2009) to take the job at USC (most likely because of money but he did coach as an assistant when USC was in their prime in the early to mid-2000’s). Although Kiffin’s tenure at Tennessee was uninspiring, going 7-6, he created such an uproar due to his sudden abandonment that students started setting fire to the campus. Two attributes should be discerned from this event. The first is that Lane resembles “The Titanic” movie’s Cal Hockley, Rose’s fiancé and complete douche, when Cal quickly finds a lost child in order to get himself on board one of the few remaining lifeboats. The other is the realization of how low Tennessee Volunteers’ football has tumbled to be willing to burn the campus because an average coach left. Arson is only viable in certain situations (1) executing the Russian’s scorched earth policy in their war against Napoleon and (2) if a college’s hall of fame head coach takes the head coaching job of said universities’ arch rival. Neither of those events happened here and, with all due respect, Tennessee dodged a bullet by losing Lane.

Kiffin’s last, but not least, irreputable talent is his knack for running his mouth. His “talented” rhetoric came in his short time with the Volunteers. In the first instance, Kiffin made a statement in which he claimed that then Florida head coach, Urban Meyer, was breaking NCAA recruiting rules by calling a recruit while that recruit was visiting another campus. Kiffin went even further and stated the recruit’s name – Nu’Keese Richardson. Kiffin, by naming the recruit, broke SEC recruiting rules by which recruits could not be mentioned by name by coaches. Further, the SEC publicly reprimanded Kiffin, and Kiffin was forced to give a public apology to the Florida athletic director and Urban Meyer. Later Kiffin would put his foot in his mouth when, in an attempt to cause wide receiver recruit Alshon Jeffrey not to choose to play for the University of South Carolina, he stated that all the players who go to the University of South Carolina end up pumping gas the rest of their lives. Alshon Jeffreys would go on to be an NFL Pro Bowl wide receiver and a Super Bowl champion.

 

Mike Leach, Mississippi State’s new head coach, doesn’t have the brash controversies or senseless departures like Kiffin, but what he doesn’t lack is the need to be noticed. Leach should be credited with inventing the “air-raid” offense which spawned popularity of the “spread offense” throughout college football. As head coach he was also able to turnaround two lackluster programs – Texas Tech and Washington State.

For all Leach’s wizardry regarding offensive efficiency and scoring ability, he seems to go braindead when it comes to defense.  His Washington State teams (2012 thru 2018) only twice finished in the top half of the PAC-12 conference in terms of overall defense. In 2019, Leach’s last year as WSU’s head coach, the team finished third to last in overall defense. It is no surprise that Leach was unable to ever win the PAC-12.

In some respects, it appears Leach’s offensive ingenuity and being one of the few college football coaches to possess a JD, gives Leach a warrant to be outspoken. Some of these comments are quite funny, like when Leach was asked by a reporter for wedding advice. On the other hand, and in the climate of fake-news, led by President Trump himself, the media’s relishing of Leach’s outspokenness has inspired him to believe whatever he says is holy. For instance, upon President Trump’s acquittal, Leach tweeted at 3a.m. (similar to the typical time that Trump goes on Twitter rants), “As an a American, does ANYONE, REALLY want Mitt Romney on their side?!” Leach is referencing to how Romney was the sole Republican senator to vote for Trump’s removal.  Leach would continue a litany of grammatically incorrect tweets about his dislike for Romney. In a December interview Leach stated, “I haven’t followed it [Trump’s impeachment] too closely, but it’s clearly political. That doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.” Leach should also understand that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to question whether his 3 a.m. incoherent political twitter rant was alcohol fueled.

It is no secret that Leach is a friend and fan of Donald Trump. It is also no secret that Leach has only coached in conservative portions of the United States – Lubbock (TX), Spokane (WA), and now, Starksville (MS) – so Leach may be trying to drum up support from the local population (a “when in Rome” mentality).

The Cornercube is excited for the 2020 Egg Bowl. Not because it will be meaningful to the nation, but because it will be filled with idiotic, unspeakable, and seamlessly reckless football.  Both schools needed coaches who would instill discipline, but instead chose coaches who love themselves more than the schools that they coach. Both coaches, Kiffin and Leach, have made themselves famous not because of their college dynasties (they don’t have any), nor their inspiring conference championships (they have not won any Power 5 conference championships) but because they know how to make headlines, albeit the wrong way. At best they will coach their teams from being the dumpster fires of the SEC to becoming the mediocre, unpredictable, teams both coaches tend to inspire. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and LSU will continue to reign the SEC. Mississippi State and Ole Miss will be like the state they represent – out of shape, underperforming, misguided and purposelessly existing.