Octavious Cooley never knew the defender was behind him. The Ole Miss tight end, sprinting downfield after a 31-yard catch and run, was so busy stiff-arming an Arkansas cornerback on his left that he didn’t realize the safety was closing in on his right until the ball’d been punched out. It tumbled to the ground and just trembled there, as if tied to a string keeping it from rolling out of bounds, until a Razorback defender hurtled himself on top of it.
“Fuck,” I muttered over a half-empty Miller Lite. “We’re gonna lose this game.”
My friends, a group of Mississippi ex-pats sprawled around a TV in the northern suburbs of Washington, D.