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Despite the injuries, and despite the gut-wrenching close losses to LSU and Auburn, it’s been a spectacular season for Ole Miss. A loss to TCU in the Peach Bowl on Dec. 31, however, would send the Rebels back to Oxford with a rotten taste in its mouth.
No. 9 Ole Miss arrived in Atlanta on Christmas Day aiming for its first 10-win season since 2003, when the Rebels take on the sixth-ranked Horned Frogs on New Year’s Eve.
It has been a historic season for Hugh Freeze and the Rebels. Ole Miss started the season 7-0 for the first time in program history. It soared up the rankings following an early October win over then-No. 3 Alabama, landing as high as No. 3. The Rebels even found themselves squarely in the playoff picture for a number of weeks.
However, a Peach Bowl loss — which would be Ole Miss’ fourth of the season — would make all of it, on some level, for naught.
A win would give Freeze’s Rebels its 10th win of the season, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished in Oxford in more than a decade, and it would almost certainly secure a preseason top-10 ranking in 2015.
A loss would make 2014 another good, but not great, season in Oxford.
It doesn’t seem like it, because we remember what Ole Miss was at full health during that impressive seven-game win streak to open the season, but the Rebels dropped three of their final five regular season games. An impressive 31-17 drubbing of Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl that dropped the then-No. 4 Bulldogs out of the playoff picture mitigated some of the damage and reminded those around college football just how good Ole Miss is when it plays well.
The Rebels want to prove they’re a great team against TCU. A win over the sixth-ranked team in the country and Co-Big 12 champions would do that.
A loss would be Ole Miss’ fourth in six games, and great teams don’t go 2-6 down the stretch with as much as Freeze’s team had on the line. It’s not an understatement to say the Rebels need a bowl win. To cap one of the best seasons in school history, certainly in the last decade, anything short of a win is a disappointment.
The Rebels last 10-win team won the SEC West and the Cotton Bowl. Bo Wallace and company have a chance to match — or perhaps exceed — that 2003 campaign with a win on New Year’s Eve.
A loss leaves Ole Miss and its fans looking back at its four losses and wondering how close they were to a truly magical season.
After living in Birmingham, Ala., Jordan left the ground zero of SEC Nation to head south to Florida to tell the unique stories of the renowned tradition of SEC football. In his free time, his mission is to find the best locales around.
