Instant Analysis: Ole Miss-Wake Forest

The great dramas in sports possess a rare ability to inspire sharply contrasting feelings at the same time within the same teams. By that standard, Saturday afternoon’s wild Winston-Salem white-knuckler proved to be a superior spectacle.

On a picture-perfect afternoon in the Carolinas, the winning team managed to walk off the field with humility and quiet relief, while the losing team managed to leave the stadium with an emboldened mindset and a prouder gait. It was that kind of a day: Wake Forest might have prevailed on the next to last play of the game, an ice-veins 41-yard field goal by stud kicker Sam Swank, but the Rebels from Oxford gained a lion’s share of respect in the college football world.

Swank, quarterback Riley Skinner, and coach Jim Grobe are all proven performers in their sport, tested titans of the Saturday afternoon wars that are staged every Autumn. There was no disputing Wake Forest’s credentials entering this contest, and the work of the Demon Deacons’ tremendous trio—on placekicks, under center, and between the headsets—is precisely what carried them to an exhilarating, last-moment victory in one of week two’s few enticing matchups. But while the home team deserves the laurels of victory, the team that stole the show was the visiting outfit from the Magnolia State.

Unlike Wake Forest, Ole Miss had a lot to prove coming into this inter-conference collision between the ACC and SEC. As the one SEC West program to never win so much as a division title (forget a conference crown) since the institution of divisional play in the SEC in 1992, the Rebels—eternally in search of a better, brighter future—brought a new coach and a new quarterback to the 2008 season, intent on making a new name for themselves. After the failed tenure of previous coach Ed Orgeron, the guys from the Grove wanted to avoid “same ol’, same ol’,” otherwise known as the same Ole Missed opportunities that have dogged this program in the past. This duel with the Deacons represented the first big test of the Houston Nutt/Jevan Snead era, and as a result, it loomed large for the program made famous by Johnny Vaught, in an era when none of the current UM players had been born.

As this game progressed and then careened toward its cluttered and clamorous climax, the Deacons were tested at every step by the Rebels, who displayed the guts and grit of a worthy player on the college football landscape. Snead had the moxie and magic needed to pull fourth-down conversions out of the fire. Nutt didn’t overcoach the game, realizing that keeping the ball in his signal caller’s hands represented the surest path to success. Everyone in a white shirt played hard, determined ball, standing strong in a number of red-zone situations and generally forcing Wake Forest to earn everything it received. Aside of fumbled punts by each team, both squads earned everything they claimed. And when Snead bought several extra seconds on a 4th and 2 from the Wake 5 with under 90 seconds remaining, the unyielding quarterback found running back Cordera Eason for the go-ahead score. The Rebels found themselves just a minute and change away from a significant road upset.

Yes, Skinner coolly led his mates downfield to set up Swank for the winning field goal, and yes, Wake Forest deserves a tremendous amount of credit for remaining free of panic in an early-season pressure cooker, but all in all, an account of this game isn’t complete without an emphasis on the emergence of Ole Miss football for the first time since the end of the David Cutcliffe era. Even in defeat, the seeds of promise have been sown for the outfit from Oxford. Such is the storyline in the aftermath of a rousing and rip-roaring affair won by Wake Forest.