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Joined: Sep 2012
There must be a balm in Gilead. I hope so because I still remember the 1964 season vividly and with great pain. As a small child I lived on a farm in Rankin County, Mississippi. (This was before migrating to the West Coast version of rural life in Modesto, California.) We had clouds of every imaginable biting or stinging bug, or so it seemed, two TV stations and for me ONE football team, the Ole Miss Rebels. The band played "Dixie" and there was nothing like an Ole Miss game. We had been SEC champs in 62 and 63, had not lost a regular-season game since LSU in 1961 and started the 1964 season ranked number one. That was for a reason. We had a lot of talent, including consensus All-American end Allen Brown, guard Stan Hindman (who would win AA honors in 65 and go on to play for the 49ers), DB Billy Clay (All-American in 65 also) and a nifty QB in Jim Weatherly, who went on to be a successful pop/country song writer (e.g. "Midnight Train to Georgia"). And our coach, Johnny Vaught, was brilliant.
It started well enough with a 30-0 win over Memphis State, OM's San Jose. But the season crumbled before my horrified eyes on a beautiful September day in Jackson when Kentucky, led by a capable QB named Rick Norton, beat us 27-21 on national TV -- then a big deal because only one game was broadcast each Saturday. It got worse when Steve Spurrier and Florida beat us 30-14 two weeks later. A 16-point loss was unheard of for Ole Miss. The team nearly rallied to turn the season around vs. LSU in Tiger Stadium but lost 11-10 on a fluke 2-point conversion, deflected by OM DB Tommy Luke into the hands of LSU receiver Doug Moreau, who (as I remember it) was sprawled on the ground. If Luke had just let the ball go it would've sailed harmlessly out of the end zone. And it got worse. We lost for the first time since 1946 to -- gasp! -- Mississippi State. The wailing and nashing of teeth! My Rebel flag was (figuratively) tattered and shot-worn. Instead of the usual Sugar or Cotton Bowl invitation OM was invited to something called the Bluebonnet Bowl. The Jackson paper said we should turn down such a lousy invitation and just stay home. But we went -- and lost to Tulsa 14-7. (Tulsa had a black DT from Mississippi named Willie Towns who played a great game and should've been playing for us, but that's another story.) The world seemed to have ended.
Looking back on it, all of our losses except Florida were winnable games lost by a TD or less. The team's weaknesses were pass defense and a tendency to turn the ball over at critical times: a fumble vs. Ky. at about their five costing us a game-winning TD; another fumble of a punt that LSU took in for their winning TD. You probably have to ask Wisconsin about how you lose all those close ones.
Let's hope Stanford gets all the breaks today.
And thanks for the memories (ouch), Yvonne.
