Daily briefing: On the Egg Bowl, Cincinnati and leaving a legacy
Ivan Maisel’s “Daily Briefing” for On3:
This Egg Bowl is one to watch
There is buzz this season about the Egg Bowl for a number of reasons, all good. Ole Miss and Mississippi State are hot teams with charismatic coaches who love to throw the ball around the yard. More important, the winning team clinches at least second place in the SEC West. An Ole Miss win, coupled with an Iron Bowl upset, would give the Rebels a share of the SEC West title for the first time since 2003, Eli Manning’s senior season. And most important, this rivalry is as heated as any in the country. If you’re looking for a good college football game to end Thanksgiving and begin the weekend, welcome to Davis Wade Stadium. Bring your cowbell.
Focus now becomes key for Cincinnati
No. 4 Cincinnati has won at Notre Dame, and steamrolled a very good SMU team, and the College Football Playoff selection committee responded by making the Bearcats the first Group of 5 team to reach the top four. Now comes Cincinnati’s toughest task this season. The Bearcats have to refrain from thinking they’ve arrived. They must remain focused enough to go to East Carolina (7-4), one of the toughest places to play in the AAC, and beat a team that has won four consecutive games. Cincinnati has shown an inclination to take a lead and coast. The Bearcats better not do that against the Pirates. Their past two visits to Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium: In 2019, Cincinnati, a 24-point favorite, won with a walk-off field goal; in 2017, Cincinnati, favored by three, lost by four touchdowns.
Nick Saban on Cecil Hurt’s legacy
Nick Saban spent the first several minutes of his Hey Coach! Show Wednesday night discussing Cecil Hurt, the longtime columnist of The Tuscaloosa News who died Tuesday at age 62. “Sometimes we talk about legacy,” Saban said. “What’s your legacy going to be? We always want to be a good ancestor. We want to plant trees that we never see grow. Something like this happens to somebody that’s close to all of us, regardless of how well we knew him, makes you realize how fragile life really is, and how we’re all just a caretaker of our own legacy by the choices and decisions we make. I always tell the team this: You honor those who came before you, and also those who come after. It’s our responsibility to leave the jersey better because of how we represent it, how we played, how we did things, how we went about what we did. I think that Cecil really leaves a legacy for his profession, that everybody thinks he made it better. He made it better. He left the jersey better because of the things he did for so many years.”