Charting and Graphing the Hogs

by KevinHog on Dec 2, 2009 6:54 PM CST

With all indications pointing towards a Liberty Bowl appearance on January the 2nd, it can be said that the Hogs are arriving a year early on their normal up and down win totals for a season. I thought this big picture look at the Hogs for about the last twenty years would be of interest.

The Hogs BN (Before Nutt)

3-8 Down

6-6 Up

3-7-1 Down

6-4-1 Up

4-7 Down

8-5 Up (SEC Championship Game Appearance)

4-7 Down

4-7 Down (Danny Ford fired) - It is worth noting that in these years the Hogs never got very high on the up and couldn't sustain the up beyond one year.

The Hogs in the Nutt Years

9-3 Up ( A certain fumble took place this year, or it could have been REALLY UP!)

8-4 Up (2000 Cotton Bowl win)

6-6 Down

7-5 Down

9-5 Up (SEC Championship Game Appearance)

9-4 Up (2003 Independence Bowl win)

5-6 Down

4-7 Down

10-4 Up (SEC Championship Game Appearance)

8-4 Up - The Nutt years were rather consistent in being up two years and then down two years. Ole Miss fans, I think, are going to see something of the same pattern over there in Oxford.

The Petrino Era Begins

5-7 Down

7-5 (possible 8-5, possible 7-6) Up either way. This season has become an Up when it was on schedule based upon the Nutt trend to be another down year in wins. That has me feeling confident that the Hogs are heading in the right direction under Petrino. All programs have their ups and downs, but the Hogs need to get where it is more than one or two years of success at a time if we want to see them attracting the top notch talent. That means developing players as freshmen and sophmores, so that they are ready to take over when their time comes and thus avoiding the dip. I hope this year is the start of a good run of sustained success. Starting the new year off with an actual win in a bowl game would certainly be a "hut, hut," in the right direction.

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I don't consider...

Nutt’s last season to be an “Up”. I was still a student at Fayetteville at that time, and remember just how disappointing that season was. I was heart broken after the Alabama loss (especially after the way we had fought back in the second half), dumb struck after the Kentucky loss (I had gone home that weekend to watch the game, because my parents had ESPNU, and couldn’t believe the epic choke), frustrated by the Auburn loss (we all saw how one dimensional the offense actually was), and just plain embarrassed by the Tennessee loss (we were actually having an engineering recruitment even on campus that weekend, and showed part of the game to the prospects during lunch; it was hardly an effective recruiting tool).
The wins weren’t necessarily all that great either. 4 non-conference scrubs (3 Sunbelt, and I-AA Chattanooga), the worst Mississippi team ever, South Carolina with their typical Chicken Curse, and MSU during a season that got Croom, well, “Croomed”.
Of course, the win over LSU was awesome and still a fond memory, but it alone can’t justify that being a “good season”, especially considering that we didn’t lose too much to the draft the season before (Jamaal Anderson and Chris Houston were missed, of course).
Top it off with a pathetic showing in the Cotton Bowl (although, HDN was long gone at this point), and I just can’t see how that season qualifies as an “up”, especially in comparison to 2006.

by dxf04 on Dec 2, 2009 7:39 PM CST reply actions

Up in terms of numbers

Dxf04, I know what you mean. We all had higher expectations for that season. I was just trying to make a point about wins. We were over .500. We did make a New Year’s day bowl. But, yeah, it should have been a better season with DMac and Felix there.

by KevinHog on Dec 3, 2009 7:55 AM CST up reply actions