The calendar moved to the year 2000 moments before the final play of the 1999 Independence Bowl.
ESPN’s Rich Waltz and Gino Torretta mentioned the New Year’s Eve climax as Ole Miss kicker Les Binkley walked on to the field for the 39-yarder that gave Ole Miss a 27-25 walk-off win over Oklahoma in the final game of the 1900s.
That game, 25 years ago, was the only time the two schools have met in football, but that changes on Saturday at 11 a.m. when Oklahoma faces the Rebels in Oxford as first-year members of the SEC.
Binkley drilled the field goal, his second of the day, and Ole Miss piled on to the field just inside the Sanford Sharpie logo on the turf in Shreveport, Lousiana.
“I went out there and jumped around and celebrated, but I know better than to be on the bottom of one of those dog piles,” said Romaro Miller, who quarterbacked the Rebels from 1998-2000. “We celebrated New Year’s on the bus. That’s not where you want to do the Y2K New Year - on the bus with Deuce (McAllister) and Ken (Lucas) in Shreveport.”
It was a positive way to cap what was a somewhat frustrating year for the Rebels in David Cutcliffe’s first season. Ole Miss finished 8-4 following the bowl win, losing the four games by a combined 15 points. That included back-to-back three-point losses to Georgia and Mississippi State to end the regular season.
Ole Miss started 5-1 with an overtime loss to Vanderbilt and a win over Auburn at Jordan-Hare, besting Tommy Tuberville’s Tigers. Tuberville left Ole Miss the year before for AU, and Miller hasn’t talked to Tuberville since 1998.
“That Auburn game was built up so much that we could lose any game on that schedule but to lose to the guys that left u, we had to get that one,” Miller said. I’ve talked to some of the assistants but not Tommy.”
Ole Miss had been in the Independence Bowl the year before, when the Rebels beat Texas Tech in Cutcliffe’s first game. Oklahoma, led by quarterback and now Tennessee coach Josh Heupel, hadn’t been to a bowl since 1994 but would win the national championship the next season.
The Sooners’ lack of a recent bowl and Ole Miss’ return to the same site two years in a row caused the crowd to heavily lean toward Oklahoma, Miller remembers.
“Ole Miss had 90 percent of the crowd down there the year before, but Oklahoma had more people in that game. I remember momentum changing, and they fed off the crowd.
“We were shooting for a bigger bowl game but playing Oklahoma helped us with energy. You dream about playing certain teams in the backyard as a kid, and OU was one of those teams. That increased the energy.”
The Rebels jumped out to a 21-3 lead at halftime by way of two Miller touchdown passes and a McAllister touchdown run. Oklahoma took a 25-24 lead with 2:17 remaining; Ole Miss got a hand on the extra point, but it still inched over the crossbar.
McAllister returned the kickoff 42 yards and had two nice runs to put Ole Miss in Oklahoma territory. On third down from the OU 22-yard line, Cutlcliffe let the clock run down to three seconds left before using his final timeout.
Binkley, who was an All-America at Northwest (Miss.) Community College before transferring to Ole Miss, hit 14-of-16 field goals and all 36 extra points that season. He had a 40-yarder that was the only score of a 3-0 win over Memphis in the opener and a field goal to force overtime at Auburn.
Oklahoma called timeout to ice him, and then the kick was right down the middle to end the game and Ole Miss football for the 1900s.
“We heard about (Binkley) when he came in, that he was one of the top kickers in the country,” Miller said. “Any time game was on the line and you needed a kick, there was complete trust in him.
“I hope now 25 years later we gave the fans a great memory with that game. I talk to teammates about the what-could-have-beens with that season, especially with being the last team to beat them before their title, but to finish it like that against that program was special.”
