Rebel Rewind: Ole Miss Fails to Meet High Expectations in 2009 Season

The Ole Miss Rebels had a ton of offseason hype entering the 2009 campaign. Could they shoulder the load?

Feeling nostalgic? You've come to the right place.

Over the next three weeks, The Grove Report is taking a look back at the Ole Miss Rebels' football seasons from 2003 to the present day. Why begin with 2003? I'm glad you asked.

For one, it provides a nice 20-year baseline (give or take) from the 2023 season that just concluded. It also happened to be the senior year of Eli Manning, providing a nice look at multiple eras of Ole Miss football in the process.

Yesterday, we took a look at the 2008 season, and today, we turn the page to 2009.

© Don McPeak-USA TODAY Sports

Early-Season Hype

Ole Miss finished the 2008 season on a high note, and they would enter 2009 with a ridiculous amount of hype, including being featured on a preseason cover of Sports Illustrated.

Jevan Snead was returning at quarterback, and stars like Dexter McCluster and Brandon Bolden were also making a return in the ground and receiving game. In short, the hype surrounding Ole Miss had not been this high in a long, long time.

The Rebels were ranked No. 8 in the Preseason AP Top 25, and they rose to No. 4 in the country following wins over Memphis (45-14) and Southeastern Louisiana (52-6). Those two wins set up the first taste of adversity for Ole Miss, coming on the road on a Thursday night against the South Carolina Gamecocks.

The Rebels fell to unranked SC by a final score of 16-10, and that's when some cracks were revealed in the hype-filled foundation for the 2009 squad. After that loss, Ole Miss fell from No. 4 to No. 21 in the rankings.

South Carolina would go on to finish the year with a 7-6 record.

Middle of the Year = Mixed Returns

After bouncing back from the South Carolina loss with a 23-7 win over Vanderbilt, the Rebels dropped two of their next four games. The results were as follows:

vs. No. 3 Alabama (L 22-3)

vs. UAB (W 48-13)

vs. Arkansas (W 30-17)

at Auburn (L 33-20)

Ole Miss came in and out of the AP Top 25 within this span, but the loss to unranked Auburn proved to be costly to its ranking hopes. The Rebels were still in really strong shape to make a bowl game, but the top-four ranking following Week 2 seemed like a distant memory as October came to a close.

An Impressive Rebound Followed by a Massive Letdown

November began rather well for Ole Miss as it earned a 38-14 win over Northern Arizona and blew out Tennessee (led by head coach Lane Kiffin) 42-17 prior to a Magnolia Bowl meeting against LSU.

The No. 10 Tigers came to Oxford on Nov. 21, and LSU was down by two points with nine seconds remaining, completing a pass to the Ole Miss six-yard line in a last-ditch effort to capture a win. With one second left after the completion, the Tigers were unable to spike the ball to stop the clock, sealing the 25-23 Rebels win, their first over LSU at home since 1998.

After those heroics, however, Ole Miss traveled to Starkville to take on the Bulldogs who were led by first-year head coach Dan Mullen. Despite only having four wins on the season, Mississippi State's Chris Relf (QB) and Anthony Dixon (RB) could not be contained on the ground, fueling the 41-27 win over the No. 25 Rebels.

After entering the season as one of the top teams in the country, Ole Miss finished the regular season at 8-4. The year prior, that same record was seen as a raging success, but with the high expectations of 2009, that was far from the truth in Houston Nutt's second year on the job.

Rebel Rewind: Ole Miss Reaches National Relevance in 2008

Return to the Cotton Bowl

Ole Miss earned another bid to the AT&T Cotton Bowl to conclude the 2009 season, meaning that its last three bowl trips (2003, 2008, 2009) had all been in this classic game.

It wasn't a pristine performance in the first Cotton Bowl to take place at Cowboys Stadium, but Dexter McCluster found the end zone on the ground twice to help seal a 21-7 win over the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Year In Review

As mentioned above, even a final record of 9-4 can only be viewed as a failure for this 2009 Ole Miss team. The expectations surrounding this group were massive entering the year, but head-scratching losses began to doom this campaign by Week 3.

Still, it did mark a return to a strong bowl game for the Rebels, but it also showed the first signs of a collapse in the Houston Nutt regime, one that would persist into 2010.

Final Record: 9-4 (4-4 SEC)

Final AP Poll Ranking: No. 20

Biggest Win: vs. No. 10 LSU

Worst Loss: vs. South Carolina / at Mississippi State

Key Stat: Dexter McCluster -- 1,689 scrimmage yards