December 20, 2007

Southern Miss heads into Saturday’s Papajohns.com Bowl with a lame-duck coach and a huge challenge.

Seventeen-year veteran Jeff Bower will coach his final game against Cincinnati even though the Golden Eagles have already hired his replacement.

Nearly a month ago, after completing a 7-5 regular season, Bower was either forced to resign or resigned on his own accord, depending on who one talks to. A stagnant offense, a once-dominating defense looking quite average and miserable home-game attendance led to Bower’s departure from the program.

Eight days ago, Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Larry Fedora took the reigns of the program with Bower and his staff still intact for the pizza bowl. In effect, the Eagles have two head coaches — one the administration dosn’t want coaching, but still is, and the one they want coaching who is not.

Confused?

It is common around the country now that a fired coach is still allowed to coach a bowl game. It’s happening at big programs like Michigan and mid-majors like Southern Miss.

It also has to make for a surreal atmosphere around the football offices.

That will all end on Saturday when Bower will coach his last game in the same stadium he coached his first — ancient Legion Field in Birmingham.

Players say they will rally around their coach, send him out a winner. But in this game, the Golden Eagles will be playing a much more talented team than they have in previous bowl wins — North Texas, Arkansas State and Ohio. The Bearcats historically play Southern Miss tough, having beaten the Eagles 52-24 in their last season in Conference USA.

Cincinnati was a couple plays shy of battling for a Big East championship and enter the game with a 9-3 record. Their coach, Brian Kelly, just signed a five-year extension with the school, giving it the stability Southern Miss has had for so many years. Bower had been with the team for the last 17 years plus one bowl game. He will lead his team into its 10th bowl game in the past 11 years.

And it most certainly will be the most difficult.

The gamblers say Cincinnati will win by at least 11 points and they may be generous. Some “experts” are calling this game potentially the biggest blowout of the bowl season.

It would be hard to argue.

A team with stability, more talent, coming from the powerful Big East Conference playing against a team in turmoil, which finished in the middle of a weak Conference USA has mismatch written all over it.

Would be a shame for Bower to bookend a 119-win career with bowl losses in the same stadium, don’t you think?

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Sean P. Murphy is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. E-mail him at

smurphy@vicksburgpost.com