Another former Ole Miss Rebels football coach is stirring the pot on Oxford’s reputation with recruits
Former Ole Miss Rebels and LSU Tigers football coach Ed Orgeron was the latest to weigh in on the troubling reputation Oxford, Mississippi, has with some recruits.
Another former Ole Miss Rebels football coach is stirring the pot on Oxford’s reputation with recruits originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . Former Ole Miss Rebels football coach Ed Orgeron has added more fuel to the fire about Oxford, Mississippi’s problematic reputation among some recruits this week, not long after Lane Kiffin’s bombshell accusations in a now-infamous Vanity Fair article were published.
Orgeron, who, like Kiffin, was at Ole Miss before landing with the LSU Tigers later in his career, talked about the “stigma” surrounding The Grove during a conversation with WWL's Mike Detillier. "I mean, they had a history there of, you know, racism and Colonel Reb, but you know what, when we got there, the kids that we had were treated good and they had success, but we did face it in recruiting and they still have that stigma, but look, they overcame it. They got some great players.
They’ve had success, graduated, went on to the NFL,” Orgeron said . Ed Orgeron’s comments pile on a bad week for Ole Miss’ PR While nowhere near as biting as the comments Kiffin made, Orgeron’s statements come off as a pile-on. Kiffin’s comments were quickly followed by an attack on the University of Mississippi’s academics by Texas Longhorns football coach Steve Sarkisian.
It’s been a bad week for the Rebels. Hell, it’s the kind of week that feels like it could be followed up with momentum towards a removal of the “Rebels” name altogether. Ole Miss has been moving away from confederate-era symbols like Colonel Reb, in 2003, Rebel the Black Bear, in 2018, and even the team’s official flag, which was changed in 2015.