Southern Mississippi.
Brett Favre aside, has anything worth substance ever come out of USM besides arrogance and despair? There are many reasons that USM sucks, but here are three you can take to the bank.
1. The arrogance of their 10 “fans”
The old saying is that USM only has 10 fans. When one dies or becomes an LSU fan, Nugget lays an egg and another one hatches. But have you ever met one of USM’s 10 fans? They are as arrogant as Bama and LSU fans when it comes to State and Ole Miss.
The line on this game is 30 points, yet USM fans think they have a shot because they won a few games against us in the 70s and 80s. The few that aren’t confident about this game are (a) really confident about the 2015 game in Hattiesburg and/or (b) Still playing the “Y’all were scared of us when we were good” card. News flash, Nugget Nation, this game was scheduled when you were coming off an 11-2 season where you thought you should have been in a BCS game.
“We’re going to be the Boise State of the South and bust the BCS,” one USM (now LSU) fan said. Teams that bust the BCS don’t lose to UAB in front of 14,103 fans. Yep. Look it up. The greatest team in USM history lost to UAB.
2. Bower Power
Remember those glory days you like to talk about? You know the ones where you went to bowl games 10 out of 11 seasons, won conference championships and had 14 consecutive winning seasons?
That was orchestrated by Jeff Bower, who most people thought was a pretty good coach. Guy was loyal as well. I’m almost positive in 17 seasons at USM he was not at least flirted with by a low level BCS team. His name was thrown around for Ole Miss and State openings during his tenure on Hardy Street.
After the 2006 season when you won Conference USA’s vaunted East division, USM slipped from the GMAC Bowl to the Papa Johns Bowl and USM’s fans thought they deserved better, so they ran Bower off and hired Larry Fedora.
Fedora, a decent coach, did well at USM - with Bower’s recruits. He parlayed that magical 11-2 season into a job at North Carolina and USM hired Ellis Johnson, who went from 11-2 to 0-12. A -11 in wins. It will never happen again. I didn’t even think it was possible to go from 11-2 and a win over UAB from being in a BCS game to a winless team in a conference that rated worse.
Todd Monken, who USM fans were trying to make better than Fedora. carried that losing streak to 23 games before a magical win at pesky UAB.
3. USM just sucks.
Hattiesburg is a decent town, its a shame that they have to be home to Southern Miss and the largest continent of LSU fans outside of Louisiana. There is absolutely zero support for USM.
For example, remember their 14 straight winning seasons? Still could not sell out big games. They hired a good basketball coach and turned that program around. Couldn’t beg students to come to games. Their baseball team recently went to the College World Series, and when State plays at Pete Taylor Park its all maroon.
They had a home football game scheduled with Nebraska that they had to give back because it was more beneficial to them financially to play in Lincoln than it was Hattiesburg. They even lost the rights to their logo because it was copied from Iowa, or at least a trademark judge thought it was close enough.
The result, USM is in the red by 7 figures athletically. Financially, it makes since to kill their athletic program because it is a disaster. They have a little political clout now that an alum is governor, but they don’t know how to use it. Hell, a recent opinion piece in a Coastal paper begged the legislature to give USM’s Gulf Coast campus to MSU.
And when State and Ole Miss were having down years, USM attempted to get the state legislature to mandate State and Ole Miss play them. Now that State and Ole Miss are on the upswing, they are regretting it.
Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime, they used to say. Now they get their chance.
