Miller hopes to avoid early-season mistakes

CLAY CHANDLER
DM Senior Staff Writer

Traffic is worse than usual. Recreational vehicles the size of small buildings are popping up on campus. Your copy of The Daily Mississippian featured an insert with a large picture of Deuce McAllister on the front. And, perhaps most telling, everybody is talking about the same thing: football.

Yes, starting tomorrow at 11:30 a.m., the months of waiting and hype will end as Ole Miss kicks off its 2000 season with Tulane.

A handful of teams have already started their campaigns, save for Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, for whom Mother Nature had other plans. And Romaro Miller has been watching and paying close attention.

"From watching other games, you can see a lot of mistakes, as far as false starts and turnovers and things like that," Miller said. "That's been some of the reasons a lot of teams have been getting beaten. They've been beating themselves."

After going through spring and fall drills, hitting the same people everyday, most football players will say that having someone across the line with a different color jersey on is a welcome sight. But playing in front of a crowd for the first time in several months brings extra adrenaline and jumpiness, which accounts for a large part of the miscues Miller mentioned.

"We feel like if we stop ourselves from doing that, we'll be all right," Miller said.

Season openers provide the biggest measuring stick for the months of preparation, and playing well, Miller said, validates the off-season sacrifice.

"I think it's very important(to get a fast start to the season)," Miller said. "We have high goals for this year. We look at the second game in SEC play, and you want to get something going into the first SEC game. If we start off sluggish, it might be bad for us. We've got a lot of experience coming back, so we're real confident in what we're going to do."

The Rebels follow up Tulane with Auburn on September 9, a game that many Ole Miss faithfuls view as the ultimate grudge match. But Tulane evoked hard feelings in 1999, when it came into Oxford on Homecoming and gave Ole Miss a scare, before the Rebels won 20-13.

"I don't consider it a grudge match," Miller said. "It's our first game; it's their first game, so it'll be a challenge for both teams. I'm sure they want to knock off an SEC team. Out there in the 100 degree heat, it's going to be a battle."