The Way It Was, The Way It Is

  CALL DR. REDWINE! Today's title is an expression used occasionally in a story in Ferrol Sams's  Run With the Horsemen , a book about Porter Osborne, Jr., the fictional protagonist in a humorous trilogy about a young man growing up in the rural South in the 1930's and 1940's. The expression (the complete version of which is " Call Dr. Redwine! She done it to herself! ") refers to situations in which someone needs help because he/she has unwittingly inflicted harm upon him/herself or others. Miss. State's masochistic loss to Texas last night was just such a painfully vivid display of self-harm. In our 4 game SEC losing streak I've been sad after the OT loss to nationally ranked UT-E (Tennessee) when we had it but lost it. I felt depressed after the loss to nationally ranked aTm in which we fought hard for 3 quarters on the road, but eventually just ran out of gas against a better, deeper team. On the road against a Florida team that was in the midst of...

  NYUK, NYUK, NYUK! After the Tennessee game I was sad because we could've easily had another win over a ranked team. Then after the A&M game I was disappointed because we had been competitive for over 3 quarters, but the D just gave out of gas. But after the loss to Florida, I was and continue to be pissed off because we lost to an inferior team. Okay, let's start with the elephant in the room: Those of you who have been readers for some time know that my practice is typically not to point fingers and name names or to criticize individual players. But dumb is dumb, and Saturday all of us saw it on full display on Steve Spurrier - Florida Field, trailing by 2 with the ball on the Gator 29 yd. line, and 29 seconds left. The culprits -- Stooges, if you will? A second year head coach who has generally been regarded as an offensive wizard and a senior QB playing in his 6th season of D-I college football (3rd as a starter). The coach calls time out and dials up not a running pla...

  THE  "STATE"  OF THE SUNSHINE STATE  Panoramic view of Doak Campbell Stadium at FSU vs. Pitt game 10/11/25 This past weekend we drove to Tallahassee to visit our oldest grandchild, who is a member of the Florida State University Marching Chiefs band. FSU played Pitt at noon Saturday, so it was a chance to experience the gameday atmosphere in the land of the Seminoles as an "us" rather than a "them." (We had only been there once before, to see Bob Tyler's first Miss. State team thrash Fla. State in 1973.) It was a rare experience for me because in addition to being an alumnus of Miss. State, I'm also an alum of the University of Florida. While MSU has no real rivalry with FSU (we've played only 9 times), UF  sorta  has one with FSU -- and FSU  definitely  has one with UF. Their in-state rivalry is much different from ours with TSUN, however (see history below). So I could without any conflicted feelings cheer for our granddaughter's univer...

      MIDTERM REPORT Apparently State handled Open Date comfortably last weekend, and the staff and team are preparing for the first game of the second half of the season. Let's take a few minutes to appraise the 'Dogs' season to date. I'll begin with the obvious: If someone had told us that we'd be 4 - 2 after the first 6 games, I think we would've all taken it. MSU has won twice as many games in the first half of the season as they won the entire season last year. And while I'd really like to have had that win over Tennessee in that  coulda/shoulda/woulda game, I'm sure that AZ State is saying the same thing about their game, when we had it, lost it, and came back on a miracle play to win it.  Before I get into a little detail on what I think the Bulldogs have done well and not so well in the first 6 games, let's look at a few cold, hard facts comparing State at midterm vs. the final results from all of last season: As you see, this year's tea...

 REVERSAL In the sport of wrestling [ or as we who grew up in the Free State in the 50's and 60's called it, " real 'rasslin'" ] an important scoring move, called a reversal , occurs  when the opponent has a wrestler down on the mat and the downed wrestler comes from underneath to gain control of his opponent. That is precisely what happened to Miss. State's offense -- and to the season -- Saturday night at Kyle Field. Up until Saturday evening the MSU offense looked dangerous and the season unexpectedly bright. Those trends seemed set to continue early on against aTM. On an early drive the Bulldogs took a 3 - 0 lead, which only MSU errors kept from having been 7 - 0, and maintained the lead through nearly half the game. The #6 Aggies took the lead with 1:51 to play in the 1st half, but the 'Dogs stayed in the fight for much of the game despite an impotent offense. Unfortunately aTm reversed the flow of the game and outscored State 24 - 6 in the 4th qu...