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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
Note that any opinions expressed in legacy Jackson Free Press stories do not reflect a position of the Mississippi Free Press or necessarily of its staff and board members.

How big is Saturday’s California-Southern Miss game in Hattiesburg? It could decide whether Cal goes to a BCS game. If the Bears don’t win decisively, Texas might move ahead of them in the BCS standings. If just eight voters who have Cal ranked ahead Texas changed their minds, then the Longhorns will earn the BCS spot. Cal coach Jeff Tedford knows that TCU came to Hattiesburg in 2003 harboring BCS hopes, only to have them dashed. Doctor S thought USM was primed to beat Cal in September. Then Hurricane Ivan forced the game to be rescheduled to December. USM hasn’t been the same team since quarterback Dustin Almond was injured in the Houston game. Cal is a 24-point favorite going into Saturday. That sounds about right.

Previous Comments

It’ll be the third time in four years that a late-season USM football game has BCS implications. If USM had defeated TCU in 2001, Colorado would have played Miami in the Rose Bowl instead of Nebraska.

Mississippi native Donna Ladd and partner Todd Stauffer founded the Jackson Free Press in 2002 in the capital city. The heavily awarded local newspaper did many investigations heralded across the state and nation and served as a paper of record due to its diversity, inclusion, in-depth reporting and deep connection to readers and dedication to narrative change in and about Mississippi. In 2022, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, founded by Ladd and JFP Associate Publisher Kimberly Griffin in 2020, purchased the journalism assets and archives of the Jackson Free Press. A Google grant through AAN Publishers enabled Newspack's integration of the JFP archives into the Mississippi Free Press website to become part of a more searchable archive of recent Mississippi history and essential journalism.