Aug. 31, 2012

FRIDAY FLASHBACK rewinds to some of the memorable games in Ole Miss football history. This week features the Rebels' improbable 14-7 win over Bear Bryant's Kentucky Wildcats in the 1947 season opener, which also marked legendary Rebel coach John Vaught's first game at the helm.

Champions of the Conference

From the 1948 Ole Miss Yearbook

It took the University of Mississippi fifty-five years to win its first Football Championship, but it was worth waiting for.  The 1947 team will always be known as “the Wonder Team.”  Not only did it win the SEC Championship, but in addition Head Coach Johnny Vaught was chosen as “Coach of the Year” in the Southeastern Conference, and left end Barney Poole and halfback Charlie Conerly made All-American.

With the best coach in the country, two of the greatest players ever to don a football uniform, and endowed with the famous Ole Miss spirit, the Red and Blue waded through a tough schedule, dropping only two heartbreakers, then going on to a victory in the Delta Bowl over Texas Christian University.

As the season opened, the “Rebs” were rated by the sports writers as probably finishing the season in a three-way tie for last place.  A decided underdog against Kentucky, the Red and Blue unleashed the magnificent passing combination of “Conerly to Poole,” whose feats were praised by every southern sports writer, fan, and coach, but pointedly ignored by the North.

Ole Miss 14 - Kentucky 7

From the 1948 Ole Miss Yearbook

Before a homecoming crowd of 18,000 excited fans the Ole Miss Rebels turned back a stubborn Kentucky team to inaugurate the 1947 season with a win that astounded the whole nation.    

Fired to a keen explosive point with a dynamic spirit and an undaunted will to win, the Rebs took the opening kickoff and traveling on the talented right arm of one Mr. Conerly, they were never headed.  Before five minutes had elapsed the “Mighty Men of Mississippi” had racked seven big points up on the scoreboard.

The men in Blue and White, taking advantage of a break or so also of a temporary let down on the part of the Rebs, blared back in the same quarter to tie the score and led some people to believe that they would be a definite threat, though such beliefs were only pipe dreams of the very first magnitude.

Revenge for last year’s black defeat by the Cats, confidence in their ability to field one of the most feared teams in the SEC, the burning desire to win for their new and well liked head man, Johnny Vaught, and a combination known to all the football United States as Conerly to Poole, sent Ole Miss through the entire sixty minutes in the same unequalled form that sent terror to the hearts of their opponents later in the season.

Conerly tossed to All-American and Barney Poole for tally number one, and the bruising left half plunged off tackle for a yard and the final marker in the third period, Bobby Oswalt splitting the uprights with machine-like precision for both extra points.  George Blanda’s flip to end Wah Wah Jones in the end zone produced the only Kentucky touchdown of the afternoon, and Blanda converted.

Rebel fullback Red Jenkins took the initial kickoff deep in his own territory and ploughed out to the 19 with apparent ease.  On the first play from scrimmage the same gentleman uncoiled a violent burst of speed and flashed his hips around end for 23 beautiful yards.  Conerly then went to work chunkin’ and chargin’, and eight plays later the score was Ole Miss 6, Kentucky 0.

Midway in the third stanza, Wilson gobbled in a Blanda heave on the Rebel 36 and danced smoothly down the sidelines for 42 big yards before tripping on the Cat 22 with a first down snuggled nicely in his arms.  Half a dozen plays later Ole Miss had the game sewed up and was ready to go home.