Game Four, Billboard Slogan of the Week: "Won't Back Down"

BY TIM SCANDURRO

"WON’T BACK DOWN"

In November 1987, Tulane was 6-4 with one game remaining against LSU in the Superdome.  There were far fewer bowl games back then, and 6-5 was a borderline record at best to expect one.  But we had a chance because three of our six wins were against SEC opponents (Virginia Tech and Iowa State were two of the others), and we had an exciting quarterback in Terrence Jones.  We learned a few days before we played the finale that the Independence Bowl would take us “with a win or a respectable loss” against LSU.  We came up just short in a wild shootout to our old rivals, 41-36.  A “respectable loss,” so we got the bowl bid.

There are some who believe that Tulane is playing with house money this Saturday.  By beating Duke, the thought process goes, we now control our own playoff destiny even with a loss to the Ole Miss Rebels. Some add the caveat that we just can’t get blown out. Just make sure it’s a respectable loss and we’ll be fine, I’ve heard.

Yet upsets happen every week all across the country in college football.  This Saturday’s let’s-shock-the-world opportunity gives us our Tom Petty-inspired Billboard Slogan of the Week: Won’t Back Down.

Jon Sumrall knows Ole Miss. He has stood on both sidelines on game day as a coach. He understands the environment and the Ole Miss staff and program well.  He won’t say it out loud but it’s a fair bet that like most coaches in America, beating Lane Kiffin holds a special appeal.  The brash, swaggering Kiffin, who Nick Saban reportedly called “a narcissistic pr!ck” when both were at Alabama, often butts heads with the traditional college football establishment that tends to value loyalty, discipline and paying your dues.  Kiffin in contrast is known as an envelope pusher.  He became a head coach in the National Football League at the age of only 31, and was later the head man at Tennessee, USC and current AAC conference mate Florida Atlantic (where he took over a downtrodden program and won two league titles in three years) before landing the job at Ole Miss.  An undeniable master of offensive football and an elite recruiter, he still seems perpetually shrouded in controversy on and off the field.

One reason is that he is going to try and score as many points on you as he can.  On our last trip to Oxford in 2021 his Rebels scored 40 on us in the first half, and after a two hour weather delay went on to a 61-21 win.  It was the most points scored against a Willie Fritz Tulane team in his eight years here.  By the way one of Curtis Johnson’s teams gave up 63 to Louisiana-Monroe,  just to remind you how far we’ve come.

Under this coach Ole Miss is always extremely talented and dangerously explosive on offense, and extremely talented but not as buttoned up on defense.  Pretty much the way they were two years ago, when we led them by seven at halftime with our backup quarterback and couldn’t hold on.  That game showed that we had begun closing the gap, and this Tulane team is deeper and more talented than that one was.  Ole Miss is also a better program than they were two years ago.  We still can’t match the superior athletes, depth and money studded across their roster. This will be the strongest, fastest, most talented team on the regular season schedule and we are on the road.

There was a time and a place in our history where the object of a game like this was to collect a big check and hopefully not get anyone hurt, to simply survive so we could get to league play and achieve the Rick Dickson-articulated goal of being “stable and competitive.” That’s not the standard anymore.  As fans we need to lose the mindset of just hoping for respectable.  Let’s keep the ‘one loss we can afford’ in our pocket for later, if we need it.   Let’s win one we’re not supposed to, one that will raise eyebrows and be remembered later in a conference room in December.  I promise you that’s how Lane Kiffin is looking at this game.  He knows Tulane is a potential playoff participant, and he knows (especially after last season, when he publicly railed against being excluded from the Playoff) that he needs all the style points and arguments he can muster.  He wants to beat us as badly as he can.  This year and in this era, the game means a lot to each of these two teams because it’s a statement opportunity for both. 

We all know we are walking into a cauldron Saturday afternoon, a loud hostile environment where the whole nation will be watching on ESPN.  That network probably benefits from having the top “Group of Five/Six” playoff aspirant butchered Saturday, so that the ‘unfairness’ of reserving a coveted playoff spot that could have gone to a third or fourth or fifth SEC team can be blasted across the airwaves.  Did I mention the officials will be from the SEC, again?

So outside of the Tulane family and maybe the town of Starkville, MS, this is an "Us Against Everybody" game Saturday afternoon against a team that fully expects to be in the Playoff.  Good.  Because for the only time this season until perhaps mid-December, we get to be the hunter and not the hunted.  There’s way more pressure on them, and if we are in this ball game in the fourth quarter, watch out.   This doesn’t have to be a bridge too far.  Not if we play our best football and get some bounces to go our way. 

Our goal Saturday isn’t to keep the score close.  It’s to break a lot of hearts, and in doing so honor the lyrics of the most famous Heartbreaker of them all:

“You can stand me up at the gates of Hell, but I won’t back down.  No, I’ll stand my ground.”—Tom Petty