November 29, 2007

How many of us watched the Egg Bowl? How many of us watched in horror, or delight, when Ed Orgeron opted to go for a fourth-and-1 instead of punting the ball away.

A Rhesus monkey says punt the ball away. Cali the Dog, sleeping for most of the game, jumped to her feet and barked mercilessly at the television. “How can they go for it,” she said, “Is he trying to get….”

Yes, it appears, he was. You wonder if Orgeron had a functioning brain cell when he made that call. You wonder why his special teams coach didn’t dump ice water over his head to make sure he was still alive. Anyone on earth would have punted the ball, made Mississippi State drive the length of the field — something it hadn’t done all day — and score a touchdown.

But he didn’t and now he is unemployed.

Orgeron’s gruff Cajun accent and propensity to mumble during interviews made him a difficult fit for Ole Miss, the land of Hemingway and Tennessee Williams and John Grisham. Orgeron seemed to have trouble dealing with alumni, wasn’t engaging enough for major college football.

His Egg Bowl disaster sped up his departure. If Ole Miss had won he would have had another year, but likely wouldn’t have made it out of 2008.

He had off-the-field troubles as well, trying to qualify great athletes of questionable academic standards. He had to discipline 20 players for stealing clock radios from hotel rooms.

The master recruiter turned into a mighty blunder in the history of Ole Miss coaching searches.

If Orgeron’s firing seemed imminent, what happened Monday in Hattiesburg was shocking.

Southern Miss’ coach Jeff Bower “resigned” after 17 seasons with the Golden Eagles. Resigned is the word higher-ups give to the following: resign or you’re fired. Resigned sounds so much better, but Bower didn’t resign; he was fired.

And what did he do to get fired? He put together 14 straight winning seasons. He guided the team to 10 bowl games in 11 years. He is the fourth-longest serving head coach in the country at the same school. He has one of the highest graduation rates in college football.

But the team has hit neutral the past couple years. Attendance dwindled to an announced crowd of about 17,000 for Friday’s home finale. Announced is like resigned: how many tickets sold far exceeded the number of fannies in the seats.

Stadium expansion for a team that draws about 24,000 a game seems ludicrous, but the Golden Eagles have dreams of one day being a big-time program. They play on the road against bigger conference teams and usually lose. Each game the Eagles played on TV this year was a disaster, but what can Southern Miss expect?

You have a coach who played there, was an assistant coach, married a cheerleader, called Hattiesburg his home for the past 17 years. During the Eagles’ rise in the late 1990s, he had myriad opportunities to leave Southern Miss only to return to continue to build the Eagles’ program.

Bower made Southern Miss his university, but will anyone else? Can one see a coach coming in to replace Bower who will not use Hattiesburg as a stepping-stone to greater things at bigger schools?

Hardly.

Program stability is a key component in attracting top-notch recruits. Now neither school can boast of it.

Ole Miss brass screwed up hiring Orgeron in the first place, but compared to what happened in Hattiesburg on Monday, it doesn’t even register.

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

smurphy@vicksburgpost.com