[12/22/05]

The New Orleans Bowl at Lafayette will not go down as an instant classic. Attendance records were not set and TV ratings were likely somewhere between &#8220What’s Happenin’” reruns and Lifetime’s &#8220Holiday Affair.”

Don’t think about the game being played in a sporadic drizzle with temperatures in the 30s in a city that will never be confused with a vacation destination.

The bottom line is that it was a postseason game and any of Mississippi’s other football-playing institutions would have loved to be in.

In a way, they were.

On the lighted marquis outside of the Southern Miss team hotel, it welcomed &#8220Southern Mississippi State University.”

Many saw it as a slight, but since it’s Christmas, look at the glass as half full. In reality, Southern Miss played Tuesday’s game for every school in Mississippi. The only representative to be playing in a bowl game had the hardest road getting there.

Less than a week before their season was set to begin, Hurricane Katrina ripped through South Mississippi and Louisiana. The team fled to Memphis, worked and prepared by using the University of Memphis’ facilities. Officials pushed the opener against Tulane to the end of the season.

Then the girl named Rita slammed into South Texas and Louisiana forcing another postponement, this time with a game against Houston.

The Golden Eagles played on a Tuesday, Sunday and Friday, including a stretch of three games in 11 days. They never shut down. Never packed the bags for a season. They just played football – with varying success.

After the 31-19 win over Arkansas State on Tuesday, Bower was asked if he could possibly sum up this season, now that it was over.

He paused … collected himself … and tried in vain to come up with an answer.

Maybe it was too early to try to put this year in perspective. This season threw obstacles at the Golden Eagles no one could have ever imagined.

Finally, Bower found an answer, &#8220I don’t know,” he said, before adding, &#8220it’s been a very different year, a tough year. I’ve used it a million times, how resilient these guys are. They have been so good pushing through it and keeping a positive attitude and they certainly did it again tonight.”

This Southern Miss team is not the most talented in school history and even the fact that they made a bowl game should be seen as a feather in this state’s football cap.

Bower has turned Southern Miss into the most consistent team in this state – 12 straight winning seasons, eight bowls – and no one should expect any letup in the future.

Like this entire state has done after Katrina, it fights, scrapes and claws to put things back together and find a winning way.

Much like the football team most affected by such a tragedy.

See Southern Mississippi State University as a positive. See it as bringing all schools in this state together. After the final buzzer sounded on the final football game of Mississippi’s college season, we join again together, putting our school colors aside, and working toward a better Mississippi.

Arguments about which team is better can wait for a little while, don’t you think?