Monday kicks off a big week in Oxford for Ole Miss. Fall camp is done. Game week is here.
Sunday night’s opener against Louisville is closing in fast and there will be a lot riding on it. Pete Golding knows all this heading into his first full season.
It’s doubtful, though, any first-time coach is starting his tenure with the Rebs having expectations as high as what Golding is facing.
Nobody wants to face a Monday morning after the opener asking questions about what happens next and are they doomed after facing Louisville.
Ole Miss fans have every right to dream big.
The Rebels went 13-2 last fall and reached the College Football Playoff semifinals, a single win away from a shot at the national title in the last game of the year.
That kind of season doesn’t happen every year in Oxford. It left fans hungry for more.
Chambliss and Lacy carry the hype
A lot of that success rode on the arms and legs of two players.
Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss threw for 3,937 yards and 22 touchdowns while running for another 527 yards and eight scores. Running back Kewan Lacy piled up 1,567 rushing yards and 24 touchdowns of his own.
Both guys are back and Ole Miss isn’t hiding how much it believes in them.
The school has plastered Chambliss and Lacy on billboards in Times Square and now on the massive Sphere in Las Vegas as part of a marketing push called H6I5MEN.
Athletics boss Keith Carter said the Sphere moment matters for more than just pictures.
“Featuring our student-athletes on Sphere is a tremendous brand growth opportunity,” Carter said in a press release.
Both players are already drawing Heisman buzz nationally and this campaign puts them in front of a crowd way outside the Grove.
The schedule offers little room to breathe
All that hype runs straight into a schedule that could give anybody a migraine.
Ole Miss plays nine SEC games for the first time ever and the slate includes LSU (with Lane Kiffin back in town), road trips to Florida, Vanderbilt, Texas and Oklahoma, plus home dates against Auburn and Georgia.
That’s before anyone even mentions Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl to close it out. Most that’s because nobody knows a lot about the other teams, what injuries will happen, how officials throw flags or even the weather.
There are a lot of variables we can’t account for to make preseason guesses anything beyond by-guess and by-golly.
There’s no easing into this one. After the opener, Ole Miss gets Charlotte at home and then dives right into LSU on Sept. 19.
A road trip to Florida follows, then Vanderbilt after a bye. Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma all show up somewhere in the back half too. It’s a brutal stretch by anyone’s measure and it means the margin for error shrinks fast.
Somehow nobody’s talking much about Sunday night. The Rebels open the year against Louisville in Nashville’s Music City Kickoff, a nationally televised game on ABC at Nissan Stadium.
Golding turns the page to game week
It’s the second all-time meeting between these two programs and the Cardinals aren’t just a name on the schedule to get through.
Louisville athletic director Josh Heird made that clear when the game got announced, pointing to coach Jeff Brohm’s approach to scheduling.
Brohm has “never shied away from playing a challenging non-conference schedule,” Heird said. The Cardinals bring their own aspirations into Nashville and a roster built to make noise in the ACC.
Golding is done talking about installation and evaluation. Now it’s about one opponent.
“It feels awesome,” Golding said last week about finally shifting into game-week mode after fall camp wrapped. His focus this week is on turning flashes of good football into something consistent.
There’s not really a lot different from that he could say. He’s got his own expectations and he knows what the fans are expecting to see this year. Get ready for the ride because it’s going to be chaotic at times.
Golding has spent camp trying to manufacture pressure before the real thing shows up.
Countdown to Nashville is underway
He’s been trying to put players “in as many game-like situations as possible,” he said, since spring reps and summer workouts can only simulate so much adversity.
This week we’ll hear plenty from Golding and his players as the countdown to Nashville gets serious.
The hype train has already left the station for Ole Miss.
Now it’s time to see if the product on the field can match the marketing on the Sphere.
