NEW ORLEANS -- C.J. Johnson quickly found the proper adjective to describe how he and his Ole Miss teammates felt upon returning to campus after last year’s bowl game.
It wasn’t just that the Rebels lost the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl against TCU, Johnson said, it was that they were not even competitive in the embarrassing 42-3 defeat.
“It was awful,” Johnson said Tuesday. “It’s just something you’ll never forget. We used it all summer to motivate us to get back to this point.”
“This point” is a New Year’s Six bowl game, where Ole Miss is one of only two SEC teams -- College Football Playoff participant Alabama is the other -- to have reached a top-tier bowl for a second straight year.