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Ole Miss football veterans have experienced the lows, now they are experiencing the highs

11by:Jake Thompson•12/21/21•

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Ole Miss will play the Egg Bowl on Thanksgiving night for a sixth time since 2017. (Photo by Bruce Newman)

For many of the veterans on the Ole Miss football team, there have been some lean years, but this season has been their reward for getting the program back on track.

With a 10-2 season and a trip to the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s night to cap the 2021 campaign, for many of the older Rebels, this is their mountain top.

Braylon Sanders has been with the program since 2017 and is participating in only his second bowl game.

The Rebels were bowl eligible in 2017 with a 6-6 record but missed out due to the self-imposed bowl ban from the NCAA investigation.

Then in the 2018 the program was hit with a second postseason ban by the NCAA, but finished with a 5-7 record anyway that would have left them out of the bowl season regardless.

In 2019 the team went 4-8, signaling the end of the Matt Luke era — which was expedited by the ending of the Egg Bowl that Thanksgiving.

Finally, Sanders and his teammates went to a bowl game in January, playing Indiana in the Outback Bowl. Now, in the same calendar year the Rebels earned a trip to a New Year’s Six bowl.

“Being in the New Year’s Six is a blessing itself,” Sanders said. “But, just over the years how much work we’ve put in, coming in last year going 5-5 then coming in this year and getting a 10-win season is just a great feeling. I’m just happy to see me and my brothers happy at this point.”

Sanders is not the player who has seen the lows of the program before experience the highs.

While having not been in the program as many years, AJ Finley has been a part of the program when it was looking to get out of the doldrums.

Finley was a freshman during the 2019 season and over the last three seasons been a key part in getting the defense turned around. Three seasons ago, the Rebels were nowhere close to a program that would be considered for a New Year’s Six bowl.

“I came here buying into the fact that we would be good in the future,” Finley said. “So, honestly it’s been a great thing to be a part of.

“I honestly never doubted it. The (signing) class I came in was pretty good. I knew with the guys that we had in my class, I was like, ‘This is class is going to do something special here.'”

That 2019 signing class consisted of Finley along with John Rhys Plumlee, Jerrion Ealy, Jonathan Mingo, Dontario Drummond, Nick Broeker and others who have played key roles in the program’s turnaround.

Broeker echoed the sentiments of Sanders and Finley when asked if he had reflected on where the program has come from to where it is today. He also provided a little bit different perspective.

“This regular season alone we’ve won more games than my first two years combined,” Broeker said. “It’s a big credit to coach (Lane) Kiffin and what he’s instilled in us. Not only just his staff but what he’s able to do for us, leadership-wise and kind of bring us together.”

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