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The University of Mississippi Athletics
FRIDAY FLASHBACK: Ole Miss - Vanderbilt 1979
9/25/2015 | Football
FRIDAY FLASHBACK rewinds to some of the memorable Ole Miss games from this week's all-time series. This week features a 1979 win over Vanderbilt.
Ole Miss vs. Vandy isn't Tracy & Hepburn
By Orley Hood, Jackson Daily News Sports Director
September 29, 1979
OXFORD - The matchup, if you could call it that, held but a sliver of promise. When Tracy and Hepburn are playing the Palace, one can be forgiven a certain apathy when sitting through Abbott and Costello.
Ole Miss and Vanderbilt entered Hemingway Stadium Saturday afternoon burdened with the pain of a combined 1-11 record. Willie Sutton and Baby Face Nelson had better records. The experienced football fan could only expect a fairly crude rendition of the game that was developed years ago by Stagg and Rockne and Warner and refined immeasurably by Neyland, Vaught, Royal and Bryant.
By the time shadows mercifully began to cover the bright green artificial turf, the scoreboard lights had nearly burned out form exhaustion. So had the patience of fans who half-expected to see an occasional tackle. There's more hitting in Celebrity Battle of the Sexes.
Sometime around dusk the shooting finally stopped at 63-28 in favor of Ole Miss. I t was the closest and most poorly played 35-point victory since the Kaiser ran out of gasoline in the forests of France.
"Sixty-three points? I had visions of them scoring 63 points," Ole Miss Coach Steve Sloan said.
Sloan stood casually in the field house, shifting his weight from foot to foot, hands thrust into his pockets. The last few years have been tough. He's been a 35-year-old-going on 55.
"Maybe I can sleep for one night this week," he said.
Sloan laughed and smiled and shook his head and pulled out self-deprecating one-liners from more innocent days, before he learned how tough coaching really can be.
His ole buddy, Vandy Coach George MacIntyre, defensive coordinator at Ole Miss last year, was the man wearing the wrinkles by 4 p.m. Saturday.
"Coach Mac learned our offense well," Sloan said. " I taught him all the god plays. He's responsible for the fumbles."
Ole Miss shoved the football at Vandy for 543 total yards and the Commodores pushed it right back for 436 yards. Only eight turnovers stopped Vanderbilt form scoring 63 points of its own.
"I've been in the middle of a lot of these (kinds of games)," Sloan said. "And they ain't no fun."
Only when he spoke of the defense did exasperation color the tone of his voice.
Vanderbilt, 0-7 and climbing, an almost sure bet to finish again at the bottom of the Southeastern Conference, ran with disdain around and through and over Ole Miss' defense.
Yet the Commodores still lost their 22nd straight SEC game.
While Sloan felt half good, his ole pal MacIntyre was running on empty in the other locker room. He sat shirtless on a stool at the back of the room, wearing a vacant expression. He hardly had enough energy to make himself be heard.
"The way we played, I don't think we could have beaten anybody," he said in a near whisper. "It's very embarrassing, the fourth quarter.
"Yes, we did some things well. But we haven't done anything well for very long this season." MacIntyre is the latest in a number of volunteers who have stepped into Nashville singing about new ways and new desire and new possibilities in the SEC's foremost coach's graveyard. He was running low on hope Saturday.
"We don't tackle anybody. That's the way we've played all year. We had a chance at the fourth quarter change when we got the wind."
But the Commodores came apart like a tissue paper doll. Fumble followed fumble and Ole Miss scored 21 gift points before the gun sounded.
Sloan, meanwhile, can look toward LSU next week in Jackson with cautious optimism, the burden of five weeks of losses pushed aside for the moment by victory-at-last.
The key word is cautious. Ole Miss fans must remember that the Rebels - 63 points not withstanding - have beaten two awful teams (Memphis State and Vandy) in seven tries. They must remember the Rebels' congenital defensive inabilities - such as being unable to tackle anybody at anytime.
And they must take these matters as a natural maturation process in renewing a program that has been down since Archie Manning moved to New Orleans
They must remember that Eagle Day's hair is graying and Jake Gibbs has let a couple of notches out of his belt and that the glory days passed a long time ago. Most 20-year-old kids never heard of Glynn Griffing and Charlie Flowers, or Louis Guy and Cowboy Woodruff.
The kids today think of Ole Miss as a second-division football team. It'll take time to overcome the blunders of the recent past.
And this was just another Saturday.
