Pondering Corral's legacy and some Kiffin rumors
Matt Corral's winding journey at Ole Miss, a look at Vanderbilt and a TV guy Kiffin rumor
Hope everyone is having a good week. We’ve got a new podcast out with former Ole Miss recruiting specialist Weldon Rotenberg discussing Saturday’s win over Texas A&M, the program’s rise, how to sustain it, potential staff and roster turnover in the offseason and more. Check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We’ll be back to our normal Friday show tomorrow with a Vanderbilt guest mixed in with it. We’ve got some football, basketball, coaching carousel and golf to get to today.
Ole Miss hosts Vanderbilt in Corral’s final game in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium
It’s senior night for the Rebels. It’s Matt Corral’s senior night, too, for all intents and purposes, whether he decides to go through the ceremony or not. I can’t help but think about Corral’s path at Ole Miss as it nears its end. When he committed in December of 2017, Corral was a talented prospect that had been dropped by two schools, USC and Florida, for various reasons. Part of it was due to immaturity and off-field concerns. Part of it was the nature of recruiting when a new coaching staff takes over a program. Matt Luke needed Corral. He’d just been awarded his dream job after what we will call a questionable coaching search and needed a recruiting win to spark some momentum and prove he was worthy of the position he held. It made sense. Corral needed Ole Miss and Ole Miss needed Corral.
But what’s most remarkable about how Corral’s story has played out is that he was loyal to Ole Miss when Ole Miss didn’t always deserve it. He spent the entire 2018-19 offseason being dubbed as the face of the program. Luke took him to SEC Media Days as a freshman. Four games into that season, he was benched (it was injury-induced to be fair) in favor of a guy he now throws passes to in the slot. Luke and Rodriguez felt Plumlee’s feet gave them the best chance to win football games immediately, which essentially translated to them saying they were trying to save their jobs and he was their life raft. The greatest irony in all of this is that the 2021 has proved Corral is actually a better, smarter and more productive runner. But that’s a conversation for a different day. Maybe that day is when Corral is invited to New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony and we can reflect back on Rodriguez and Luke opting against having an eventual finalist for the the most prestigious award in the sport quarterback their fledgling football team.
The point is that 2019 sucked for Corral. After he was benched, he was used sporadically, brought in for a handful of plays each game in obvious passing downs, usually after a pair of aimless quarterback runs. The entire thing was predictable yet somehow made no sense at the same time. But, and you have to give credit to Luke and Rodriguez here, it only took them until the third quarter of the final game of the season to realize their plan was moronic. That’s some quick thinking right there. Seven-figure salary thinking. Finally, once they reached this conclusion they threw Corral into a clown show of an Egg Bowl and asked him to try to lead a comeback — which he did while brushing off play calls from the sideline (who could blame him? his coaches were idiots) and going with his own school yard bullshit. I am not joking. He admitted on radio after that game that on the 4th and long conversion to Braylon Sanders on that final drive, he told Sanders not to run the play Rodriguez called and to run a different route instead. I suppose it’s sort of poetic. Raise your hand if you think whatever Rodriguez had drawn up for the game’s most important play would’ve worked? That’s what I thought.
You know the rest. The Piss and Miss happened and Corral’s efforts were spoiled. In this current day and age of the transfer portal, it’s sort of remarkable that he stuck around long enough to suit up for the Egg Bowl that night. It felt like a done deal that Corral would seek a fresh start and go elsewhere that appreciated his talent. Instead, he stayed. Part of that credit goes to Kiffin and Lebby, but if you’re Corral in that moment, how do you know they aren’t selling you a complete crock of shit? He didn’t know any different at the time. But still, he stayed.
Corral quickly won the starting job, and over the course of the last 18 months you’ve seen him grow up both on and off the field, from kid with a big arm and a habit of making poor decisions to a Heisman finalist and the undisputed heart and soul of a top-10 football team. Think about it like this: less than two years after that clown show of an Egg Bowl, the guy that had every excuse to leave, sat in the visiting locker room of Jordan-Hare Stadium and declared to the medical staff “if nothing’s broken, I am going back into this game,” after his already bum ankle popped early on in the game and required an MRI. He walked back out of the tunnel and onto the field and gave his short-handed team a shot. To me, that moment epitomizes Corral’s time at Ole Miss. Not always perfect, but tougher than hell. I don’t have much doubt he will be appreciated as such long after he departs the program.
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Get to know Vanderbilt
This space is more useful some weeks and it is others. Vanderbilt is terrible. Ole Miss will win this game in a snoozer. But, since we’re already here, let’s take a look at a few more details about the Commodores.
Vanderbilt has 17 offensive touchdowns on the season. That’s last in the SEC and 11 fewer than South Carolina, who is second to last.
Vanderbilt is the only team in the SEC to not average 300 yards of offense per game. The Commodores are right at 297 per contest.
If Vanderbilt doubled their total rushing yards on the season, it would still be 96 yards short of Ole Miss’s total.
They’ll start either Mike Wright or Ken Seals at quarterback. Seals started last year as a true freshman and was actually decent. But injuries have plagued him this season.
The Dores have been hit pretty hard by injuries and don’t have near enough depth to cope with it. They will have linebacker De’Rickey Wright back, who missed two games with a disciplinary issue.
If I go any further looking for notes, I may lose sanity. Ole Miss needs to put this away early and try to rest as many guys as possible.
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Ole Miss Hoops is in Charleston
The Rebels are in the Charleston for the Charleston Classic this week. They play Marquette on Thursday night at 6 p.m. CT. Boise State, Clemson, Elon, No. 22 St. Bonaventure, Temple and West Virginia are the other teams in the field.
If Ole Miss wins, it’ll play the winner of Elon-West Virginia and will play the loser of that game if it loses to Marquette. They’ll play a third game on Sunday but I have no clue who it will be against yet. The first two games will determine that.
Marquette is 3-0 under first year head coach Shaka Smart, who darted from Texas in the offseason. Marquette was predicted to finish third to last in a super competitive Big East in front of only Georgetown and DePaul, but knocked off No. 10 Illinois in the season opener. Like many rosters in college basketball these days, the Golden Eagles is essentially entirely new from a season ago. Darryl Mosell is a grad transfer from Maryland who scored 21 points in the win over the Illini and has led them offensively so far. Justin Lewis is a pretty good scoring forward who was having a nice freshman season in 2020 until an ankle injury in January cost him the rest of the year.
I don’t know much else about Marquette. It is a November college hoops game. Shaka Smart will get after Ole Miss’s ass defensively and the Rebels’ perimeter ball handling will be tested in this one. This could potentially be a decent win at the end of the year, or it could mean nothing. A win would likely set up a match up with West Virginia which will definitely be an opportunity for a signature win. I am interested to see what Ole Miss looks like tonight against its first real opponent.
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Silly season has begun and Lane Kiffin’s name is name is predictably at the center of it.
Coaches are being fired. This year might be the earliest the silly season has ever started with the USC and LSU jobs opening before the second week in October. Rumors are abundant. I find this stuff stress-inducing to cover, entertaining to follow at a distance, and nauseating when I consume too much of it. Example No. 1:
I had this sent to me at least five times before lunch today. I guess I will break this down by numbered points.
This is from a TV guy in Miami. What I am about to say is a sweeping generalization with some exceptions, and I mean no disrespect to TV reporters and the job they do. I couldn’t do it. That’s why I am typing a newsletter right now. But, with that said, TV people generally don’t break news and aren’t well-sourced. They ask vanilla, generalized questions at press conferences to get the sound bite they need to put together their reels for the night. “Hey Coach, uhh what did ya think of the offense today?” There is nothing wrong this at all and it isn’t meant to be insulting, but I would take any sort of hard “reporting” from a TV person with a grain of salt.
If I ever refer to any information I report as a “Rippee Scoop” please kick me in-between the legs. That in and of itself should tell you how much weight to put into this.
That’s not how any of this works. This guy read a message board at worst and was used as a pawn by an agent (hello, Jimmy Sexton) at best. That’s how this game is played. Remember all of that smoke about Mel Tucker being the favorite at LSU? He just signed a gigantic extension to remain in East Lansing. Congrats to Tucker and his agent on playing the game perfectly. If Kiffin wanted this job that badly, it wouldn’t leak like this to a man who refers to the information he gets as Slater Scoops.
I believe Lane Kiffin would be interested in the Miami job if it comes open, and it certainly sounds like it will. I do not think he would ultimately end up taking the job, but I think the lifestyle piece of it would entice him, but this is all just a guess.
Ole Miss is winning. Lane Kiffin moves the content needle. He’s also an attractive candidate for any job that needs to be filled. His name will be mentioned a lot. You will drive yourselves nuts getting worked up each time you see his name associated with another opening. There are jobs he’d leave for. Hell, Miami might be one of them. I have my doubts, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. The LSU search is getting weirder by the day and might come a point in which he moves up to the top of Scott Woodward’s list by default, though I have my doubts about that too. But these things rarely turn out like we think they will and there are sure to be more twists and turns. It also sounds like Ole Miss is prepared to make a sizable extension offer at the end of the season. Let it all play out and enjoy the ride.
Magnolia state golf update
The PGA Tour is in Sea Island, Georgia this week for the RSM Classic. All three Mississippians on Tour are in the field. I didn’t do an update last week because I didn’t think any of these three guys got into the field in Houston, but it turns out Chad Ramey and Davis Riley did and I somehow missed it. Oh well. Anyway, onto this week.
Tupelo native and Mizzou alum Hayden Buckley went off this morning and fired a 3-under 69. Unfortunately, this course is being torn up and that is good for 83rd place as of this writing. Buckley goes off at 10:30 tomorrow (this tournament plays two golf courses over the first two days so tee times aren’t the usual morning and afternoon wave.) Buckley did not play the Houston Open last week.
Hattiesburg native and Alabama alum Davis Riley also shot 69 this morning. He goes off right in front of Buckley tomorrow morning at 10:20. Riley finished T-29 last week at the Houston Open.
Fulton native and Mississippi State alum Chad Ramey shot 1-over 73 this morning. He tees off at 9:10 tomorrow morning. He missed the cut last week at the Houston Open.
On the horizon
Loaded Friday podcast with some Vanderbilt stuff, basketball thoughts and Friday Picks with LBs Greg.
Friday newsletter with a lot of football and reaction to the basketball game.
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join in on the fun by smashing the subscribe button below. It is free.