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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 653587, member: 289"] There has been a lot of outrage on this board that the University of Mississippi is claiming the 1959 national championship. We were certainly the deserving national champions that season. We were the only undefeated team, led the country in yards gained and fewest yards surrendered, (and set an all-time record for the ratio), rushing yards gained and surrenders, (ditto), points scored, first downs and touchdown passes. We finished #1 in both polls and 16 of the 19 national championship selectors the NCAA regards as “major” selectors. Mississippi won the other three. They lost to defending national LSU on Halloween, 3-7 on Billy cannons legendary 89 yard punt return but came back to smash the Tiger s, 21-0 in the Sugar Bowl in a game that must have been very much like Alabama’s victory by the same score 52 years later. The Rebels out-gained the Tigers 363-74, holding Cannon to 8 yards rushing. His team got -15. It’s not the same thing as being unbeaten but dominating the one team that did beat you is surely the next best thing. One wonders what a poll after the bowls might have looked like. But they didn’t have one in those days. Mississippi gave up the fewest points in the country, out-scoring 11 teams 350-22, (we were 413-73). They out-gained their opposition 368-141 compared to 439-110 for Syracuse, (I’m including the bowl games). We out-rushed the opposition 297-31 and out-passed them 142-79. The Rebels out-rushed their opposition 230-84 and out-passed them, 138-57. Some posters have responded as if Mississippi was a paper tiger, (or rebel) in 1959. One said that we would have beaten them by 20-30 points. A big reason for this is that Mississippi, like all southern teams in 1959, were segregated and like many of them, refused to play any team that even used blacks. But it should be noted that this didn’t prevent the writers and coaches from voting Oklahoma, Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Alabama and Texas #1 in that era. Another big reason, I believe is that it’s been decades since Mississippi was a real power. They occasionally have good teams these days but they are basically and SEC also-ran these days. That was not the case in the 1950 and 1960’s. In fact, look at this list of the winningest major college football teams from 1950-69: [url]http://football.stassen.com/cgi-bin/records/calc-wp.pl?start=1950&end=1969&rpct=30&min=5&se=on&by=Win+Pct[/url] We have strong reasons to disagree with their claiming the 1959 title and to have contempt for their refusal to use or play blacks but we shouldn’t under-estimate how good they were or assume we would have blown them out if we’d played them. [/QUOTE]

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