Rebel Rewind: Ole Miss Hits Rock Bottom in 2011 Season
Feeling nostalgic? You've come to the right place.
Over the next few 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.
We last took a look at the 2010 season, and today, we turn the page to 2011.
© Spruce Derden-USA TODAY Sports
Setting the Stage
Spoiler alert: this wasn't a pretty year.
For starters, the Rebels were once again turning to a new quarterback after the departure of Jeremiah Masoli and Nathan Stanley, an issue that would have an attempted resolution in the forms of Zach Stoudt, Randall Mackey and Barry Brunetti. Coming off a 4-8 campaign the year prior, there was plenty of room for improvement in 2011, but there was also plenty of work to be done in the process.
Could Ole Miss return to success under Houston Nutt? In the not-so-distant past, this program had reached back-to-back Cotton Bowls, but the momentum had now shifted the other direction.
Early Trends
The good news: Ole Miss did have a couple of wins between the season opener on Sept. 3 and the beginning of October.
The bad news: those were the only wins in the entire season. The Rebels opened against the BYU Cougars (the first and only meeting between the two programs all-time), and they fell 14-13 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. That BYU team would go on to win 10 games, so maybe all hope wasn't lost.
Ole Miss bounced back the next week against an FCS opponent in Southern Illinois (42-24) followed by back-to-back losses at Vanderbilt (30-7) and at home against Georgia (27-13) to close out the month of September.
On Oct. 1, the Rebels traveled for a late game on the West Coast against Fresno State, claiming a 38-28 win over a team that finished 4-9 in the WAC. Still, Ole Miss now held a 2-3 record through five games, and while that's far from ideal, there was still hope for a turnaround.
There Was, However, No Turnaround
From that point on, Ole Miss lost its final seven games in the following fashion:
vs. No. 2 Alabama (52-7)
vs. No. 10 Arkansas (29-24)
at Auburn (41-23)
at Kentucky (30-13)
vs. Louisiana Tech (27-7)
vs. No. 1 LSU (52-3)
at Mississippi State (31-3)
On Nov. 7 (following the loss to Kentucky and prior to the Rebels' homecoming game against La Tech), news broke that Houston Nutt would not be retained into the following season as the head coach in Oxford, but he would finish out the year in his current post.
In today's world of college football, that seems like a foreign idea, but this year was full of head-scratching phenomena, so just add that to the list. That game against La Tech at the Vaught (a stadium with a capacity of over 60,000) brought a reported attendance of 44,123...and it was probably worse than that, in all honesty.
Year In Review
To put it lightly, this was one of the worst seasons in Ole Miss history, from an objective standpoint. The last time the Rebels had won fewer than three games came in 1946, so in the modern era, this campaign was a bit of a history-maker.
Oh, and the only two wins of this season were later vacated by the NCAA, so that's fun. Through 12 games, Ole Miss was outscored by a combined 385-193, and it also averaged an abysmal 16.1 PPG, good for 116th out of 120 FBS teams.
The Houston Nutt era (along with the one led by athletic director Pete Boone) had come to a close, and there was (literally) nowhere to go but up in Oxford.
Final Record: 2-10 (0-8 SEC) wins later vacated by NCAA
Final AP Poll Ranking: N/A
Biggest Win: at Fresno State
Worst Loss: vs. Louisiana Tech
Key Stat: Team passing touchdowns: Nine
