The “good Bo, bad Bo” narrative, stemming from the ups and downs of his career, seemed to surround senior quarterback Bo Wallace no matter how he performed on the field or how he carried himself off the field throughout his three years at the helm of the Ole Miss offense. As many times as Wallace has heard this depiction, it doesn’t have an effect on him.
He’s just Bo Wallace, quarterback for The University of Mississippi.
“It doesn’t get to you. It’s just that the people that are really watching and studying the game, they’re like, ‘This is really a lazy narrative,’” Wallace said. “It didn’t really bother me in games, or it wasn’t ‘Man, I hope bad Bo doesn’t show up’ because to me it wasn’t anything. It was just Bo. It’s just how I play.”
GROWING UP
To be a quarterback in the Southeastern Conference, you have to have thick skin when it comes to scrutiny from the media, fans and your opponents and a strong mind to block all of it out. That thick skin and strength of mind did not come naturally for Wallace.
“I wasn’t like that growing up. I don’t think so,” Wallace said. “I think, even my first year here, I had trouble with staying in the game and staying focused the whole time. It was something I definitely learned as each year and each game went on.”
Wallace was a three-sport athlete, playing football, basketball and baseball until high school, when he decided to shift all of his focus to football. A strong relationship with his parents and siblings, according to Wallace, is what helped him become a great athlete.
“We’re a close family and still are. We had ball games every weekend,” Wallace said. “My little brother would be playing, or I would be playing. It was either we were at a football, basketball or baseball game. We’re just a competitive sports family. That helped me out a lot.”
His sophomore year of high school, when he was flooded with letters of commitment to play college football, was the point Wallace realized his dream of playing quarterback at the Division I level could become a reality.
Growing up in Pulaski, Tennessee, everybody around Wallace was either an Alabama or Tennessee fan. Wallace grew up surrounded by “Volunteer” orange since his family were Tennessee fans and went to plenty of games in Knoxville. As a sophomore, Wallace visited The University of Mississippi for the first time and fell in love with the football program and the campus, but he was never offered a scholarship. In the end, Wallace would end up going to a Division I football program like he dreamed, but not one in the SEC.
WALLACE AND FREEZE: A BUMP IN THE ROAD
Wallace attended Arkansas State his freshman year, where he was redshirted. Wallace and offense coordinator Hugh Freeze clashed immediately, leading Freeze to call Wallace a “knucklehead” in a story done by ESPN this season before the LSU game in Baton Rogue. In the story, Freeze talked about how he tired of Wallace’s antics — like running late for one of their away games — and would make him run stairs at the stadium every Sunday, hoping it would make Wallace throw in the towel and leave.
“I would know that every Sunday, as soon as we watched the film, coach Freeze would make me go to the stadium and run the heck out of me,” Wallace said. “I don’t want to say it made me dislike him, but he wasn’t somebody I wanted to be around. That’s when I knew that it would probably be best if I left Arkansas State and try to start all over.”
Wallace then transferred to East Mississippi Community College, where he holds multiple National Junior College Athletic Association records. His lone year there in 2011, Wallace passed for 4,604 yards and 53 touchdowns on the season, setting single season records, and led the school to a NJCAA national championship, causing Freeze to call Wallace and offer him a chance to play quarterback at Ole Miss.
Wallace’s relationship with Freeze at Ole Miss is so drastically different from their time together at Arkansas State that he reflects on it often.
“Everything is different. I enjoy being around him. I enjoy that he can look at me as a leader of the team,” Wallace said. “It’s really special to me that I’ve been able to develop into somebody that he can now say, ‘Bo was definitely a great leader.’”
The First Two Seasons: 2012 and 2013
Wallace would take over as the starter to begin the 2012 season, just one year after the Rebels finished 2-10 in Houston Nutt’s final year as head coach. Wallace led the Rebels to a 7-6 record, capped with a win over Mississippi State at home 41-24, to secure a bowl game appearance. The Rebels would finish the season with a 38-17 win over Pittsburgh in the BBVA Compass Bowl.
The 2013 regular season would end on a low note in the Egg Bowl down in Starkville. Down 17-10 in overtime, Wallace and the offense would have to score a touchdown to tie and send the game into double overtime. Wallace had a clear path to the end zone, but on his run in, he fumbled the ball, and Mississippi State would recover to win the game, resulting in the lowest point of Wallace’s career.
“The weird thing is that I appreciate that game, now, looking back on it, because I think I’ve had the best offseason I’ve ever had because of that game,” Wallace said. “It drove me to become better, so I think that’s why I was able to put together a pretty good year because of what happened.”
THE FINAL SEASON
Oct. 4, the third ranked Alabama Crimson Tide came into Oxford looking to take down an unproven Ole Miss team, which stood at 4-0 and was ranked 11th in the polls. The impossible happened when Wallace and the Rebels engineered possibly the greatest win in a generation for Ole Miss and the most satisfying win of Wallace’s career.
“That’s the pinnacle of college football. You want to take down Alabama; they’re the gold standard that everybody looks to,” Wallace said. “To take them down, rush the field and tear down the goalposts is something that when you watch as a kid, you think it’s just wild and crazy.
“To be a part of that is special and something I’ll never let go of.”
Starting the season 7-0 for the first time since 1962 and winning three straight conference games against Alabama, Texas A&M and Tennessee helped boost the football program to No. 3 in the country and caused talks of going to the national championship.
“That was the goal, and that was still the goal all the way through,” Wallace said. “Even after we got beat by Auburn, we felt like ‘If we take care of business, we’ve got a chance to make the playoff.’”
The loss to Auburn would be a devastating blow for the playoff and national championship hopes, as the Rebels suffered their second loss and put them on the outside looking in on the playoff race.
After a shutout win over Presbyterian at home, the Rebels experienced their own shutout loss at Arkansas. In the 30-0 loss, Wallace sprained his right ankle in the beginning of the second quarter. He was able to come back at the end of the quarter, but the injury slowed him down, causing Wallace to turn the ball over four times.
“If it would’ve been a tie game, I wouldn’t have been able to finish it,” Wallace said.
Wallace has battled injuries throughout his time at Ole Miss. An injury to his throwing shoulder in the 2012 season caused him to lose zip on his throws toward the end of the 2013 season.
Injuries have never stopped Wallace, and even with the ankle injury, Wallace said the 2014 season has been the best and healthiest of his career.
THE LEGACY
Wallace and 20 other seniors strapped on their pads and put on their Ole Miss jerseys for the final time in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium before the 2014 Egg Bowl. The pregame ceremonies were an emotional time for everyone involved. Head coach Hugh Freeze shook the hands of all the seniors by the Chucky Mullins statue in the right corner of the stadium as they walked out to family members holding commemorative plaques in honor of their Ole Miss careers.
What started as a rocky relationship ended as a tight bond between coach and quarterback as Freeze hugged Wallace before No. 14 ran on to the field for the final time along with his senior teammates.
The icing on the cake was delivered as the 19th-ranked Rebels defeated 4th-ranked rival Mississippi State 31-17 and brought the Golden Egg back to Oxford to cap off a year the senior quarterback and his teammates would never forget.
“I love my teammates so much. Just seeing all these guys and thinking about where we were when we were sophomores, as kids that really didn’t know what we were doing, is amazing,” Wallace said. “It was just cool to see us go out and really send everyone off the right way.”
Wallace finished the regular season with the most passing and total yards in Ole Miss history, surpassing Rebel greats such as Eli Manning.
When asked what defines his legacy, however, Wallace said it’s for everyone else to decide.
“If I wanted to be remembered for something, it’s somebody that no matter if I’m hurt, sick, no matter what, I was going to go out and give everything that I had,” Wallace said. “I played a thousand miles per hour and gave everything I had for my teammates.”
The bowl game destination for the Rebels remains a mystery until Sunday, but when the bowl game ends, Wallace will take off his Ole Miss jersey for the last time and, possibly, go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever put on an Ole Miss uniform.
“I just appreciate everything that everyone has done through the tough times and through the heartbreaking losses that we’ve had,” Wallace said. “I just appreciate us always staying together no matter how hard the times looked.
“Coming to Ole Miss was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
