Ole Miss Chancellor Khayat: "Orgeron will be our football coach next year"

Re: Ole Miss Chancellor Khayat: "Orgeron will be our football coach next year"

Couple of different things to address...

1) Take Michigan off your hot seat list. They're 7-2 right now, the Oregon loss may have come against an eventual national champion, and they finish with Michigan State, Wisconsin and Ohio State. They should beat MSU to get to 8-2, beating Wisconsin is very possible and even if they lose to Ohio State this year, people will understand. Lloyd Carr may still be out but it will be by retirement, just as long as the wheels don't fall off. Michigan is playing pretty solid football at the moment. As for the Appalachian State loss, this is what it will be like the first time a No. 16 seed beats a No. 1 seed in the basketball tournament -- which will also happen some day.

2) Would Tuberville listen to Texas A&M? You bet he'll listen. I'm not going to guarantee he'll leave, but he will listen. Tom Dienhart at The Sporting News is adamant that Tuberville is on the verge of leaving and I think Tom is getting believable info.

3) As for Ole Miss, the Rebels need to decide what they're capable of accomplishing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I will never see the Rebs play for a national title in my lifetime, and hopefully, I've got 50 or so good years in me. For that matter, over the next 50 years, I doubt we'll see Ole Miss make Atlanta more than twice. Orgeron is a great recruiter but needs a strong staff to be successful, and then, there are the usual things at Ole Miss he'll have to fight -- the isolation of Oxford, the fact it's in Mississippi to start with (has a bearing not only on attracting out-of-state talent, but it brings into the equation the academic performance of Mississippi high schools), the less-than-stellar facilities, the whole "Old South" stigma that persists there and the fact that he plays in a division with two powerhouses (UA, LSU) and two very solid regional powers (AU, Ark).

I think Orgeron is capable of making Ole Miss a perennial 7-/8-win program, and I also think that 9 times out of 10, that's the best Ole Miss should hope for. Ole Miss is not ever going to supplant UA or LSU at the top of the division. EVER. If that's what Ole Miss thinks it's going to do, I hope their fans have a healthy self-sense of humor.

Even then, Orgeron is two or three years, at least, away from getting up the curve in terms of his own coaching ability. He will enter 2007 clearly as the SEC coach with the hottest seat (provided Arkansas fires Nutt as expected, and Tennessee makes a move, which I rate 50/50 at worst at the moment), and for a guy who has to place such a premium on recruiting, recruiting without a safety net (i.e., contract extension) is often a lost cause.

Re: Ole Miss Chancellor Khayat: "Orgeron will be our football coach next year"

JPT4Bama said:

I feel that there is no reason Ole Miss couldn't field a competitive team year in and year out. They may even occasionally find themselves with a decent chance to win the west.

The worst thing they could do is to keep changing coaches every few years. Coach O might be an easy target for now but he appears to be a tireless recruiter who is attracting the ear of several quality players and given time and a few breaks here and there could very well develop into at least a consistent "bowl game" program.

Click to expand...

There have been 15 SEC Championship Games played, and Ole Miss has yet to make one. Alabama has made five of them, Auburn, LSU and Arkansas three each, and Mississippi State once. That means the top three teams in the West (Alabama, LSU, Auburn) have represented the division 11 times out of 15 (73.3%)

If you look forward the next 50 years and project the same numbers, Alabama, LSU and Auburn will play 37 of those 50 times, leaving 13 for Arkansas, MSU and Ole Miss. Arkansas is by far the most equipped of the three to rise up. Plus, at least one of Arkansas' appearances (and you could argue two of them if you wanted to play what-if) came because Alabama was on probation and didn't have the SECCG to play for. Given Alabama's current up cycle, and LSU's resurgence, I would rate it more likely that UA-LSU-AU will play 40 of those 50 games and leave Arkansas, MSU and OM to fight over 10 of them. Arkansas would surely get at least half those 10, maybe 7 or 8. Then you're talking about the two Mississippi schools fighting over 3 slots in 50 years.

It's one thing to say Ole Miss should do well, but when you look at what actually would have to happen for the Rebels to win the division, it gets a lot tougher.