Ole Miss' glorious 31-14 triumph over Maryland, and the subsequent invitation to meet Georgia Tech In the Sugar Bowl on January 1st, really put this old Mississippi Stater on the spot.
For, If State should pull an upset, and beat Ole Miss on the last Saturday of this November, State's win would be just that, an upset, and nothing more. And Ole Miss would be playing later on, in New Orleans, with a cloudy title.
It would distress us to see glamour taken away from this year's great Ole Miss football team. Nor can we picture ourself in a box-seat at Hemingway Stadium, come Saturday week, and pulling against Mississippi State.
Maybe we'll take a walk, or just sit this one out, as a few southern governors were wont to express their resolute souls, in the recent presidential election.
Back in the very early thirties, (and it might have been 1931 or 1932), Ole Miss played the University of Chicago at Stagg Field in Chicago. Ole Miss came out on the short end of a very close score but, afterward, Coach Ed Walker was said to have said, we quote:
"We would have won the Chicago game, hands down, if we had had a quarterback."
It seems that the University of Mississippi gained enough yardage on Stagg Field that afternoon to have won a half-dozen football games. But the pay-off punch, which is a prerequisite of sound quarterbacking, was sadly lacking.
There was no such deterrent to victory in the Maryland game, some twenty years later. And Jimmy Lear's leadership, and choice of plays, in last Saturday's classic, were themselves classics, and we are not kidding.
We were listening to the broadcast of the game when old friend Tim Cannon knocked on the door. He has been living in New England, for going on thirty-three years, and his trips to the old hometown are all too infrequent. Tim is in the cotton business, being associated with Hazard Cotton Co., an old established Rhode Island firm. He and Mother were having a love feast, trying to bridge the years since Tim was a boy next door, and discussing mutual acquaintances (most of whom are long gone) here and in the Fall River-New Bedford country.
This was all very well and would have been nostalgically rich for Old Stuff's taste, if Ole Miss hadn't just made a first down on the Maryland five-yard line. So we left Tim and Mother with their memories while pressing our ear to the radio.
If the situation hadn't been so tense (and it kept on being that way) we would have explained to Tim Cannon just who this boy Lear was. He is Sarah Smith's son, Timmy, and Sarah is a close cousin to Isabel Poitevent (Barksdale) who was once upon a time the cream in your coffee.
Maryland held for downs and kicked out but, presently, Ole Miss was knocking at pay-dirt all over again. Tim picked this unpropitious moment to produce a snapshot of his little grandson. He's in Japan, said Mr. Cannon, and his father is a flight surgeon on duty in the Korean War.
We took a polite but all too perfunctory glance at a broad-faced little boy who was smiling broadly into the camera's eye.
"Dillard is going over from the five, on a quick-opening play," shouted the broadcaster from Hemingway Stadium,” and Lear is getting ready to try for the extra point. It's In the air. IT'S GOOD! The score is all tied up."
Tim returned the picture of his grandboy to his wallet, shook hands all around, and climbed aboard his taxi for the bus station. He would have to hurry, with less than twenty minutes to get there.
Ole Miss was hurrying too, to break that tie, before the whistle blew, and two-thirds of the way around the world the sands were, running out for the father of Cannon's grandson. Comes Sunday morning, with sports pages filled with the great Ole Miss victory over Maryland. Even as we study the picture of Lear's touchdown pass, the telephone rings. It's Jenny Outzen.
"There's a call from, Tim," she said, '"His son-in-law has been killed in a plane crash near Seoul, Tim told me to be sure to call Lulu and you."
So, Flight Surgeon-Captain William Mosckosky gives his life for his country, while Ole Miss is excelling with the old college try.
- B.C.
