Our moniker was bestowed upon us by those who would have you believe that we are Not A Fan Of Ole Miss. Nothing could be further from the truth. We love Ole Miss and want her to succeed in everything that she does. However, unlike the sheep that you will find elsewhere, we want one thing and one thing only: to win. We do not believe in “moral victories,” yearly Super Regional births instead of Omaha, or being satisfied by making it to the semifinals of the NIT. Are all of these signs of progress? Sure. Are they achievements to be praised as highly as an actual victory? No. Most importantly, we believe that “We are Ole Miss” should not be a mantra synonymous with mediocrity, but a war cry of greatness.

So as our beloved Rebels prepare to take on the Commodores of Vanderbilt, we will be watching. Good luck to our players, coaches, and staff. The hopes and dreams of our silent nation rest upon your shoulders. We believe that we will win, and expect nothing less. We will see you in The Grove. Hotty Toddy.

Unfortunately, they happen more often at Oxford than anywhere else among the BCS schools. Gaze across Lafayette county, and you’re looking at a community that is missing more than just cold beer sales. You’re looking at the home of the only BCS program to see neither a bowl game nor an NCAA tournament invite in the last four years. The Lone Ranger of sorrow, under-performance, letdowns, and more.

Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

-Howard Beale, Network (1976)

I can’t blame the coaches, and I wouldn’t dare blame the players. Ed did what he could; it was just that, predictably, he wasn’t a very good game day coach. It’s not like it was on his resume (head coaching experience, that is). Ole Miss was lambasted on sports networks for that hire, and humiliated when they turned out to be right.

Kennedy is building a program. Bianco has built a program, and like I said, the team had a bad year. What’s really dragging our programs down is mismanagement at a higher level.

A while back, I wrote a column in the DM criticizing our administration for anemic fund raising efforts during the expansion of O-U Stadium. Remember delaying the start of construction? Remember how it had something to do with the project being over-budget? If you’ve got the time (and an active internet connection, obviously), mosey on over to www.makeyourpitch.net. That’s the LSU web page that keeps fans up to date on the construction of new Alex Box Stadium, the ballpark where our rivals will play America’s Past-time next year (on schedule, I must note). Almost a year ago, I pointed out that we have nothing comparable. No website, no ads. There is no obvious outlet for donations to the university, not for specific purposes, anyway.

We’re not just failing to keep up with the rest of the SEC financially, it’s like we’re not even trying. Ole Miss will never, ever match LSU’s money if we can’t ever proportionately match their efforts to excite the fanbase (and thus appeal to them for more cash). While their sidewalk alumni, students, and random ‘friends of the university’ can give money to the program they love with the click of a mouse, I have to come up with an extremely clever google search to even start the process of donating to Ole Miss. This is a joke, figuratively. But more literally, it’s a lack of talent at the executive level. I understand why an SEC school might focus its attention upon more wealthy donors, but not even attempting to reach out to its own fans?

Don’t you ever want anything more for yourself? I know this poor hapless son of a bitch does. I look into his sorry doe eyes and I just, I see a man crying out. He’s crying out, “When Lord? When the fuck can your servant ditch this foul-mouthed little chucklehead to whom I am a constant victim of his folly, so much so that it prevents him from ever getting to kiss a girl! Fuck! When, Lord when? WHENS GONNA BE MY TIME?”

-Holden, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

Let’s get on the mascot subject. Our administration is apparently so cowardly, that they won’t even attempt to replace Colonel Reb. After alternatives were proposed that were, frankly, both frustrating and nationally embarrasing, we’ve stopped even trying. It’s Mr Clean, abiguously gay Colonel knock-off, or nothing. Going without one is not some new Ole Miss tradition that we’re all happily embracing. Is it really that hard? Our admin, who we pay to perform these kinds of duties, can’t come up with anything whatsoever for “Rebels” that’s not devoid of creative substance? Hell, I’d settle for letting them blow too much cash on outsourcing the task if it actually meant we got decent results.

To truly feel like Ole Miss is run by morons, though, you can’t forget the zingers from Jeff Alford, Associate Vice-Chancellor of University Relations. You know, the guy who claimed he witnessed defecation in the Grove (never proved). The same guy who was responsible for the (warning: repressed memories may surface before end of sentence) daytime fireworks show that shook the stadium, blew up a transformer, and left us without PA, 2/3’s of our scoreboards (jumbotron included), and all other electricity-powered appliances in the North, South, and East ends of the stadium during a 44-8 loss to Arkansas. The fact that Pete Boone would let this man orchestrate and execute such a travesty is a testament to Pete’s lack of good judgment. Hell, the fact that there’s not a restraining order keeping Jeff from the Grove and Vaught-Hemingway is amazing.

So let’s summarize. As fans, we’ve seen a few questionable coaching hires, limp-wristed fund raising, embarrassingly poor handling of public relations, and a complete disdain for opinions that don’t come from rich donors (plenty besides mine, too). Ready for the punchline? We just gave the idiot in charge of all of this a damn raise. Pete Boone has showed us once again, that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I hope those responsible for giving him a raise love him more than they respect the University, because Ole Miss could certainly do better. Like an athletic directer is rumored to have once told a great coach who then quit, “I was in banking a long time. If I hired a $13,000 teller and she worked for me for 20 years, she’d be making $20,000. But I’d still just have a $13,000 teller.”

Every time Pete Boone pats our wealthiest alumni on the ass, he simultaneously slaps the rest of us in the face. We’re so used to doing things the way we always have, we’re turning a blind eye to mediocrity and cronyism (yes, cronyism) while a once-proud football team continues to struggle just to make forward progress. We’re ignoring the fact that our basketball stadium, embarrasingly reputed as the worst in the conference, leaks during rainstorms. “But, but, it’s ‘intimate’ and ‘intimidating!’” Sooner or later, we gotta realize that it’s not in Ole Miss best interests to hire almost Ole Miss grads exclusively.

It pains me to even think about what our fan base puts up with. It pains me worse to think that we essentially support it. Our AD swims in pay raises while our basketball team swims on its home court. We are. Ole Miss.

Rather than hiring some proven leaders of similar organizations, the company decided to go out on a limb and hire an “up and comer”, someone whose ceiling was high, but whose accomplishments so far were more style and less substance. This person came in and was everything his predecessor was not. He was brash. He made public declarations of forthcoming dominance. He was bold. He had an in your face attitude that was exactly what your senior shareholders were craving. There’s just one problem. The slow growth or no growth that the company experienced has now become a full scale downturn. The supply chain is poorly managed. The marketing message is off target. The new leadership’s own hand-picked executive staff has done little to show they are capable of doing their job. Before this new leadership, this division was performing at the level of their competition with a few exceptions. The competition is now dominating the company whose stock you own and the success the company has in its smaller divisions cannot possibly cover the losses that it’s most important group will no doubt incur. This most important division’s market cap has tumbled, your fellow stockholders are demanding change, and the product’s place in the market is now something that is ridiculed by customers and rivals alike.

So one day, after a particularly dismal quarterly report, your CEO is on an analyst call and publicly declares that the leader of that division is going nowhere. That he’s not ready to change anything and that he’s confident results will change within the next fiscal year.

My question is this? What the hell do you think would happen to that stock when the bell rang the next morning? And knowing the answer to that question, why would the board of that company not knock down the door of the CEO’s office and demand that change occur now?

And it’s not just in-state teams that engage in schadenfreude. A major part of the country took great delight in Appalachian State whipping Michigan. Notre Dame’s 0-3 start, while being outscored 102-13, warms the hearts of many of us who are fans of mere mortal schools. The bottom line is that misery loves company. You know that girl you see in traffic sometimes? The one so hot you miss a light just so you can look at her in the rear-view mirror for a little while longer? There’s that same beauty in a scoreboard showing a hated rival being on the losing end of a game. People use pictures of them for their message board sig pics. Now that’s some serious schadenfreude.

Is schadenfreude nice? Nope. Is it an ugly side of human nature? Yep. Does it feel good? Hell yes. It gives one that warm feeling in the middle of one’s cold little heart. For some of us, it helps us through the football season. “We might suck, but so do ya’ll.” Just be careful with the gloating or somebody might go Mortgage and try to kick your schadenfreude. If not in person, at least on a message board. And that’s where it matters, right?

Dear Ole Miss Fans,

In recent weeks the saga of Jerrell Powe has played out for all fans of college football to see. Debate rages on the Internet and in coffee shops as to who is to blame for Powe’s inability to gain admission to the University of Mississippi and clearance from the NCAA to participate in college athletics.

Much of the blame has been laid at the feet of Chancellor Robert Khayat and Athletic Director Pete Boone. I find it appalling that many fans of Ole Miss would be so short-sighted as to as to blame these two men for this debacle.

As the former publisher of RebelSports.net I’ve been as involved in Ole Miss athletics as one can be without drawing a paycheck from the University. Now that I’m on the outside, I’m so glad I’m no longer there. Watching the event unfold has been sickening and I’m thankful I’m not there to have to cover it as part of my job.

People have completely lost sight of what’s important here.

It’s a game, they are all games…played by young men..almost children.

The sad truth is were the majority of ‘fans’ of Jerrell Powe to see him in a dark alley in Oxford, Waynesboro or Jackson they would put their hand on their wallet and move to the other side of the street.

They likely do not care if he ever earns a degree from Ole Miss or even attends a class. Just so long as he trots out on to the field on Saturday turns to the crowd and says “We who are about to die…” in the style of ancient Rome and plays until he drops. Then they are happy. So what if he tears up his knee, never plays another down, never gets to the NFL, and drops out of school? The only thing people will be then concerned about is whether his back up can at least maintain the level of output and not have that much of a drop off.

It’s a sick game in which the affluent in the South can still be entertained by young men. Those affluent care not about their well-being beyond 60 minutes on Saturdays.

Yet one player, who hasn’t produced a thing on a football field in years, is causing this much of an uproar?

It happens every year, a much-heralded recruit flops out of school or never makes it to fall camp. Most of the time fans chalk it up to a player lax in his academics or a coach who cares not about his players. This has been the case for numerous Ole Miss recruits like Dion Gales, Alton Pettway, and Aubrey McPhadden. All these players were linemen who could’ve helped Ole Miss in the trenches (Powe is a defensive lineman) but no one cares to trumpet their academic dreams as being dashed by a tyrannical Ole Miss Chancellor. Why? Because they weren’t five-star rated players who made such an egotistical fuss during their recruitment.

So Jerrell Powe, in the last three years, has attended Waynesboro High School, Christ Missionary and Industrial College High School, and Hargrave Military Academy all the while taking classes via the Internet through BYU and a school called Penn Foster High School.

Five schools and he can’t gain eligibility.

Why not champion a cause that makes sure it never happens again? Rather than holding Khayat accountable, what about the Mississippi public schools, his parents, his high school coach, or his guidance counselor? They’re the ones who have truly failed Jerrell Powe. He was allowed to float by for 13 years without anyone so much as raising a finger to help his learning disability.

And the only reason we’re aware of it is because of his abilities as a football player. How sad is that?

For every Powe there are 100 unnamed children who aren’t in college now and working some minimum wage job because their education system failed them.

All those that would blame Khayat – and the University – on this are as hypocritical a bunch as I have ever seen. He’s the one who’s trying to uphold academic standards in a state and at a University that is more concerned about cartoon mascots and flags than it is about education and health care.

Think about that this fall as you sit in your chair at Vaught-Hemingway.

Grant Gannon
Ole Miss ‘04
Dallas, TX

As a lifelong Ole Miss fan, I’ve personally witnessed countless wins in the big three sports. Great Egg Bowl wins over Mississippi State, a kick sailing wide from Tiger kicker David Browndyke’s foot that propelled Ole Miss over a top 5 ranked LSU, and the win against Alabama in 2001 that seemed to lift an unimaginable weight off of the collective shoulders of our fans; all these games and others fill my Ole Miss memory bank. But when the chips are down, too often in my experience as an Ole Miss fan, we fall just a little short. I was born and raised in the dog days of Ole Miss football. Despite proudly donning a John Fourcade jersey almost as soon as I could lace my own cleats up, the Rebels went to only two bowl games from the time I learned to walk until the time I learned to drive.

Then, a miracle happened. Whether it was the grit of Tommy Luke or the talent of Randy Baldwin, Ole Miss popped unexpectedly onto the national stage and made a New Year’s Day bowl in 1990 and teed it up against Michigan. They were beaten like a rented mule, and they had to give the Ole Miss MVP award to a kicker. Over the next fifteen years, Ole Miss has had innumerable chances to step up on the national stage and proclaim, albeit temporarily, some degree of football supremacy in the SEC. Yet it seems like all of my memories of the big games, the best games of the Tommy Tubberville era and beyond are gut-wrenching losses. No game better exemplifies this than the 2003 LSU game. Toughest ticket I’ve ever seen for a college football game, great weather, a Manning under center, national television audience, and we lose because our All-American quarterback tripped?

There are other games. The 1999 game against a loaded eventual SEC champion Alabama squad ended up in a coulda, woulda, shoulda loss. Likewise later that fall against the most revered defense in the SEC, Ole Miss pushed Mississippi State all over the field, only to see a collapse of gut wrenching proportions and the Golden Egg stayed South of Oxford for another long year. In 2001, in what at the time was the longest game in college football history, Eli Manning had his national coming out party, only to lose Arkansas in a 7-OT thriller. Even the last few years, it is the losses that stand out over the wins. And while that may have more to do with arithmetic than psychology during Cutcliffe’s last year and the Orgeron era, witness the abhorrent win loss record of the last three years, I’m still haunted by the image of that asinine kicker from Alabama running around waiving a dollar bill after he kicked the Tide to victory in 2005 and the little yellow hanky that signified a phantom holding call that undermined a blocked punt against Georgia last year.

Maybe the old Vaught-era people fucked up and displayed such football hubris that the gods decided to never give us joy again. Maybe the ghost of Byron De La Beckwith is in cahoots with Earl Long and they’ve become fast friends in Hell, pleading with Satan to cause the ball to bounce the exact opposite of our way. Witness the ball meeting the backside of Tremaine Turner’s helmet in 2002. But for the love of Christ, even in those Vaught years, long before my day, our most memorable games, the games that define our best players and our best teams, were losses. Billy Cannon and Jake Gibbs in Tiger Stadium on Halloween in 1959. Scott Hunter and Archie Manning flinging it all over Legion Field in 1969. Both games are considered among the greatest college football games ever played. And do you know what? Ole Miss lost both of them. So what have we done wrong to deserve such punishment?

Memphis State sucks so, so, so bad.

Because if said rumors are ultimately legit, and the Rebels schedule their first non-conference national power in like… a lot of years (ed: Yes, I’m too lazy to look it up. Leave me alone, I’m not paid to do this anymore.), it will only serve to show how truly awful our never ending series with the University of Tennessee-Memphis at Memphis has been for Ole Miss, its athletic revenue, national exposure, the fans, the SEC, God in heaven and basically anyone involved except for the other team and the Rebel contingency outside of Shelby and Desoto Counties.

Surely you could pose positive reasons for the long standing season-opener against Memphis. Market exposure for recruiting, distance for fans to travel on away years (provided you’re willing to spin the wheel-of-violent-offenders-database as you scoot past Orange Mound) and some ill-begotten media creation that the two teams share some kind of “football rivalry.”

A note to Memphschizzle State fans – Rivalry? Seriously? I mean, come on – in lieu of “coaching up” our own depleted roster, we decided to “read up” your area’s learning disabled and then sidestep them into D1 football, and Mississippi State seems more pissed off about it than you guys. If you can’t combine that outrage with a little residual guilt over not figuring out that scheme in your own backyard and sell out the Liberty Bowl when we come calling, what the hell is gonna take? Racial slurs?

The truth is that most of those arguments are exaggerated assumptions, invalid or just plain wrong. Last I checked, Delta State was about as close by for the Rebs, and they would almost certainly abstain from charging $50 a ticket.

Yet I find it hard to sway people away from the idea of playing Memphis. I have no idea why. The only thing more inexorable than the general logic of the Tiger fans are the thought patterns of a small sect of our own fans who deem Memphis worth anything more than flat-out ignoring until basketball.

I won’t waste time with the usual rant about UMemphdawgState’s piss-poor fan base, their lack of any tradition outside of a mens basketball team and coaching staff that could fit seamlessly into the next straight-to-video Master P “Scarface” homage, their shitty, war-torn campus with all the Old South charm of a Cincinnati shopping center, their self-delusion about deserving to belong in southern football pantheon (and not in that cute Southern Miss way either) or the invisible appeal of why someone would actually want to attend their institution, as in actually elect to spend four years there without some sort of major incentive (or hostage situation).

I can get why certain sects of society would go to a LSU or Mississippi State, but the gaping hole where “advantage to students” would be found in UMStizate’s marketing campaign prompts me to think that the average answer as to why some kid decided to go Tiger High would be something along the lines of “Gas money’s a bitch these days” or “This way I can keep my weekend job at Tropical Tans in Nesbit.”

There’s no history at Uni-in-the-hizzy-MState. Nothing at all, save for the zombified dregs of suburban America. You know of whom I speak, the same mediocre culture whores who drift effortlessly into a glorified commuter school on a bumble-fucked path into adulthood, all the while only concerned with which ’22s would look best on their Accord or when Hollister is having a sale, or picking up “bitchez” in the Galleria food court, or needlessly tacking on “z” to words in an effort to toughen up their vanilla existence with some Xeroxed hip-hop culture. Sorry, “cultuaz.” (That one’s for Scoop Jackson.)

Damnit, I just wasted time ranting.

If you’re looking for proof of insurmountable inferiority, look no further than the Commercial Appeal, or in this case, the Desoto Appeal, an offshoot “community publication” designed to make white suburbanites regain interest in a print media company still prioritizing race relations and urban nostalgia over, well, actual news. Alas, that’s another rant for another day, one I’ve been intellectually prairie-dogging for years.

So the gist here is that the Tigaz got their own personalized tags in the state of Mississippi, something I can only assume that their Southaven fan base considers to be either some sort of coup against the SEC regime, a stab at legitimacy, or both, or worse, neither, because I just used words like “coup” and “legitimacy” and they’re currently burning down the door of Dictionary.com in frantic confusion to form a retort (that means comeback, home-dawg).

Just the fact that this dictated a story of such length and perspective – wow, UM got car tags like the big boys! – in what should be the university’s backyard of Desoto County goes to prove how not ready for Saturday afternoon these kids are. To the newspaper we go:

The rear window was plastered with six University of Memphis stickers, and the license plate’s magnolia logo had been replaced by a leaping blue Tiger.

The white SUV pulled off bustling Goodman Road into the parking lot of John Daly’s Bar and Grill on Saturday, and out stepped Fred and Dottie Tucker of Olive Branch, covered head to toe in Memphis blue. Their destination: the distribution point for Mississippi’s first license plates honoring an out-of-state school.

Score one for the Univ. of Memphtabulous, take two away for the state of Mississippi. Why don’t they print out-of-state college tags? It’s tax revenue, stupid! Go to a Tennessee DMV and you can order your own Purdue tag. Then again, the Magnolia State did lock down NASCAR, allowing gang members to affiliate through driver colors (seriously).

Viva bureaucracy!

Twenty minutes later, the Tuckers drove away with his Ford sporting University of Memphis license plate No. 10. “This is just a great way to extend Tiger pride down into Mississippi,” said Bobby Prince, an assistant vice president of development who represented the university at the event. Inside the eatery, Desoto County Tax Collector’s office supervisors Tammie Rhoda and Tracie Riley handed out new plates and collected old ones, including a goodly number with Tiger stickers hiding the state flower.

Ooooh you bitch-slapped the Magnolia! Them’s fighting words.

“Many of us have done that, because that’s all we could do,” said Harold Alexander, a Nesbit resident who led a three-year drive to win state approval of a U of M tag.

And for that, we consider you a beacon of light, standing against oppression for all these years.

The Tuckers bleed Memphis Tiger blue. A 65-year-old retiree from the freight business, he is a native Memphian who has bought season football tickets for 40 years. His wife, a 67-year-old Texas transplant and retired hospital counselor, said Tiger football is the only thing standing between them and retirement in Arizona, near her sister.

Really? Memphis football is keeping you from Arizona? And you didn’t even GO to the SCHOOL? Folks, that’s a level of idiocy you’ll never see again in your life, unless one day you overhear someone saying “Shit, I’d leave the Buffalo winter in a heartbeat and head back home to Florida if the local minor league baseball wasn’t so damn compelling!”

Fred Tucker said they were proud to buy tags, because “It’s the first school that’s not a Mississippi school to have one.” The U of M’s success reportedly has boosters of Alabama, Auburn and other schools salivating over their own Magnolia State tags. UofM supporters had to collect 200 advance payments of a $51 vanity license fee before the plates could be manufactured.

If it only takes a little over 10 grand to earn your own license tag, I’m a few wary investors shy of a “NAFOOM” tag, manatee and all…

The collector’s staff and Alexander’s wife, Mary Frances Alexander, handed out prepaid tags Saturday.
Tags also can be ordered at tax collectors’ offices in Hernando, Olive Branch, Southaven and elsewhere in the state.

Thank God, that way the booming legions of U of Memtastic fans in Biloxi can scoop up their very own way to tell their friends “I’m trashier than Southern Miss fans, and I paid fifty bucks to let you know it.”

While blue-clad men and women congratulated Harold Alexander, the football booster club board member talked excitedly of new ways to give glory to the U of M.

Pave the parking lot of the Liberty Bowl and watch the glory flow. I promise.

He has put out feelers about similar tags in Arkansas.

God knows they’ll approve it. They covet being 49th in everything.

He talked to another booster about an old fire tanker they’re painting Tiger blue and decorating for display at Fan Fest, the Kickoff Banquet and other occasions.

SHIT! So much for the national attention bestowed upon the Grove, Toomer’s Corner, the Hedges, the Vol Navy and the Denny Chimes. They’ve got repainted municipal property, damnit!

Plates Nos. 1 through 10 were reserved for people deserving special recognition. Alexander’s wife got No. 1. The widow of former football player Bobby Russell in Pontotoc County got a low number. Tunica County resident Bill Gidden received No. 24, his number during the Tigers’ undefeated 1963 campaign when the Tigers finished 9-0-1. The tie? Ole Miss.

HA! Eat it! Actually I have no idea that happened. Nor do I care. I’m sure that story annually makes the rounds as Memphis fans simultaneously tailgate and provide cover fire for the guy running the Coleman stove on gameday, but I covered Ole Miss football and that’s not even a footnote. (We prefer to relish losing to LSU to tying anyone.)

Alexander took No. 71, the year he graduated. A tall, burly man making his way across the restaurant’s crowded patio clutched No. 77. Luis Fernandez was a defensive lineman in the late 1960s. Fernandez, 59, who works in a trucking business, moved to Desoto County from Memphis several years ago. “You see more and more (Tigers) down here,” Fernandez said.

I blame the Mexicans.

Tricia Whitley and her daughter, Laura Whitley, both of Hernando, waited in line to receive tags. Laura, 19, will be a sophomore at U of M in the fall. She said her family is full of Tigers. “You see more and more Tigers down here,” added Tricia Whitley, 56. “It used to be Ole Miss and Mississippi State. There are a lot of kids down here who go to the University of Memphis, but you just don’t hear about it.”

Shame, Tricia. You don’t hear about it because of shame. It’s like the subject matter of an after school special.

“Bobby gets abused.”

“Jenny gets herpes.”

“Laura contracts Tigaz Blue.”

Steven Godfrey wouldn’t piss on Elvis to put out a fire. Cash left for Nashville, and so did he. Post hate mail at TheGodfreyShow.com

Don’t worry how I found this

Strong and Powe on the same DL? Sick.

(and I’ll believe it when I see it)