Cecil Hurt
TideSports.com Columnist
Southern Mississippi was never a football rival for the University of Alabama, not in the way Auburn or Tennessee or LSU are rivals. For one thing, Alabama has more rivals within the SEC than it knows what to do with. But for years, the Golden Eagles were a fairly regular fixture on the Alabama schedule.
For one thing, given the economics of college football, it was always played in Alabama, and it was a budget-maker for USM. That at least hasn't changed, as Southern Miss will get a cool million dollars for showing up at Bryant-Denny Stadium this Saturday.
But despite the economic inequality and the understandable prevalence of SEC opponents as "rivals," you rarely heard Alabama fans dismiss USM out of hand. As early as 1953, UA learned that you ignored Southern Miss at your peril. The Golden Eagles won that game, and would bite Alabama at inopportune times over the next half-century.
Reggie Collier's success against the final Paul "Bear" Bryant team in 1982 was perhaps the most memorable, but USM also knocked off Gene Stallings in his first game at Alabama - Brett Favre was the Golden Eagle quarterback on that blistering day in Legion Field, although he didn't have a great day statistically.
In 2000, the Eagles drubbed Alabama 17-0 (despite not scoring an offensive touchdown) in a game that was a clear signal that Mike DuBose's days as head coach were named. The two teams haven't played since 2005, but all the games against the Jeff Bower-coached teams at USM were tough and competitive.
So what happened? How did a hard-nosed sparring partner, one that enjoyed solid results for many years, turn into a 47-point underdog? And how did it happen so quickly?
The short answer that a lot of people give is "Ellis Johnson," now the defensive coordinator at Auburn, but a one-year head coach in Hattiesburg in 2012. He took a team that had gone 12-2 and won the Conference USA championship in 2011 under Larry Fedora and promptly went 0-12 the next season.
The collapse was so complete that it is hard to believe that a single coach could wreak so much havoc in a year, especially one who is a well-regarded defensive coordinator.
Johnson had coached at Alabama earlier in his career, was coming off a good run leading the South Carolina defense and has gone on to an SEC championship in that role at Auburn. Maybe he wasn't running the right schemes in his year at USM. Maybe he let recruiting lapse, but it's hard to believe a single fallow recruiting season could decimate a program so thoroughly.
Johnson has said he regrets not running the defense himself in his one year in Hattiesburg, and says his team was "hit by an injury buzz saw." Without knowing all sides of the story, it wasn't a good fit for either Johnson or USM. Todd Monken took over in 2013, went 1-11 but seems to be making a bit of progress on a large rebuilding project. But there will be no Reggie Collier or Brett Favre, or anything close, in Black and Gold on Saturday. And, as the economic disparity between the Power Five conference schools and everyone else in college football widens, rebuilding gets that much tougher. The days when USM had a legitimate claim to being the best team in Mississippi are not that far in the distant past, but are hard to see as part of the future.
Nothing says that USM can't pull another upset of Alabama. It has happened before. But it would be by far the most shocking result in the history of the series, by a wide margin.
https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1679739
TideSports.com Columnist
Southern Mississippi was never a football rival for the University of Alabama, not in the way Auburn or Tennessee or LSU are rivals. For one thing, Alabama has more rivals within the SEC than it knows what to do with. But for years, the Golden Eagles were a fairly regular fixture on the Alabama schedule.
For one thing, given the economics of college football, it was always played in Alabama, and it was a budget-maker for USM. That at least hasn't changed, as Southern Miss will get a cool million dollars for showing up at Bryant-Denny Stadium this Saturday.
But despite the economic inequality and the understandable prevalence of SEC opponents as "rivals," you rarely heard Alabama fans dismiss USM out of hand. As early as 1953, UA learned that you ignored Southern Miss at your peril. The Golden Eagles won that game, and would bite Alabama at inopportune times over the next half-century.
Reggie Collier's success against the final Paul "Bear" Bryant team in 1982 was perhaps the most memorable, but USM also knocked off Gene Stallings in his first game at Alabama - Brett Favre was the Golden Eagle quarterback on that blistering day in Legion Field, although he didn't have a great day statistically.
In 2000, the Eagles drubbed Alabama 17-0 (despite not scoring an offensive touchdown) in a game that was a clear signal that Mike DuBose's days as head coach were named. The two teams haven't played since 2005, but all the games against the Jeff Bower-coached teams at USM were tough and competitive.
So what happened? How did a hard-nosed sparring partner, one that enjoyed solid results for many years, turn into a 47-point underdog? And how did it happen so quickly?
The short answer that a lot of people give is "Ellis Johnson," now the defensive coordinator at Auburn, but a one-year head coach in Hattiesburg in 2012. He took a team that had gone 12-2 and won the Conference USA championship in 2011 under Larry Fedora and promptly went 0-12 the next season.
The collapse was so complete that it is hard to believe that a single coach could wreak so much havoc in a year, especially one who is a well-regarded defensive coordinator.
Johnson had coached at Alabama earlier in his career, was coming off a good run leading the South Carolina defense and has gone on to an SEC championship in that role at Auburn. Maybe he wasn't running the right schemes in his year at USM. Maybe he let recruiting lapse, but it's hard to believe a single fallow recruiting season could decimate a program so thoroughly.
Johnson has said he regrets not running the defense himself in his one year in Hattiesburg, and says his team was "hit by an injury buzz saw." Without knowing all sides of the story, it wasn't a good fit for either Johnson or USM. Todd Monken took over in 2013, went 1-11 but seems to be making a bit of progress on a large rebuilding project. But there will be no Reggie Collier or Brett Favre, or anything close, in Black and Gold on Saturday. And, as the economic disparity between the Power Five conference schools and everyone else in college football widens, rebuilding gets that much tougher. The days when USM had a legitimate claim to being the best team in Mississippi are not that far in the distant past, but are hard to see as part of the future.
Nothing says that USM can't pull another upset of Alabama. It has happened before. But it would be by far the most shocking result in the history of the series, by a wide margin.
https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1679739
