The Art of Being an Ole Miss Football Fan
My roommate Tripp spent his childhood in Houston, Texas, 612 miles away from the sacred Grove in Oxford and just outside of Southeastern Conference territory. His parents graduated from Ole Miss, but they lived so far away that Tripp didn’t get many opportunities to see the Rebel football team in person. Consequently, he was only a casual fan. In addition to lectures about remembering to go to class and tips on how to stay out of too much trouble in college, Tripp’s father Ron gave his son one serious bit of relationship advice the day he moved into his dorm room at the University of Mississippi: “If you fall head over heels in love with this football team, like I did… just know that the Rebels are probably going to break your heart.”
Unlike my friend Tripp, I had the privilege of essentially growing up in the Grove. I made my first appearance there only months after my birth and spent countless Saturdays in the following years walking from Grove tent to Grove tent in search of Abner’s chicken. Ultimately, I decided to attend Ole Miss. Needless to say, I was born a Rebel.
It took a few years, however, for me to comprehend what being an Ole Miss football fan really meant. One of my earliest football memories is from the Ole Miss vs. Alabama game on October 23, 1993, in Oxford. The Rebels won 19-14 and people all around me, including my father and grandfather, started jumping around and screaming for joy like I had never seen before. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Up to that point in my life I had been brainwashed to believe that the Rebels never lost a game, so beating Alabama didn’t seem like such a big deal. Later that day, my Dad sat me down, and we had a serious talk much like Tripp and his father. He explained to me that the Rebs had only beaten the Crimson Tide four other times in his lifetime and only two other times before that. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So you’re telling me the Rebels aren’t the best football team in the world?”
That bittersweet day was a turning point in my life. It was the day I became a true Ole Miss football fan, accepting of the team’s shortcomings but determined to do everything in my power to will the Rebels to victory every time they took the field. I was 5 years old at the time.
As the years went by I became more and more engrossed in Rebel fandom. I’ve experienced the triumphant joys of watching a big SEC win from the student section and felt the searing pain that comes with watching time expire as my Rebels are defeated. My roommate, Tripp, is now a diehard like me, so together we keep tabs on recruits and spend countless hours talking about how next year is the year we could win The National Title, or at the very least an SEC Championship.
At Ole Miss, football wasn’t always a sport that so many people like me cared so much about. In fact, in the early days of the program there was a head coach who is on record saying, “I’ve got an idea what hell is like; I coached at Ole Miss for a few years.”
Twenty-seven frustrated coaches came and went during the first fifty-three years of the program’s existence, but that all changed when Coach John Howard Vaught came along in 1947. Vaught shattered the opinions of those that thought a bunch of farm boys from Mississippi would never be able to compete with the other premiere programs of the Southeastern Conference by winning the SEC championship in his first year. His no nonsense attitude and his approach to winning put Ole Miss Football on the map and set the bar for all future Rebel squads. In a 1956 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, Vaught explained, “I never go into a game without thinking we can win it.”
Even though his twenty-four year tenure brought an unbelievable amount of success to the Ole Miss program, Vaught was not perfect. He went on a two season stretch where the Rebs only won three conference games and he failed to win an outright National Championship at any point during his career. (The three National Title banners currently hanging in the Ole Miss Stadium all refer to shares of disputed National Championships). Vaught’s legendary career did, however, create generations of Ole Miss football fans all over the state with an insatiable desire for winning.
Since Vaught’s retirement in 1973, those fans have been left, more often than not, wanting more out of their Rebel squads. Sure there have been times for celebration, big wins over rival schools, great season records, and bowl wins over the years, but every true Ole Miss fan can remember the seasons where well warranted championship hopes seemed to dissolve into thick, humid air beneath bright stadium lights when the pressure was on. Our most recent season in 2009 was exactly the kind of tragic, heartbreaking saga I am referring to.
Before the 2009 season even started hopes for glory were the highest they had been since the days of Johnny Vaught. The Rebels were riding a wave of momentum created by the previous year’s midseason victory over the eventual national champion Florida Gators, a five game win streak, and a miraculous Cotton Bowl win over the 8th ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders. Most of the preseason excitement was centered on returning quarterback Jevan Snead. Snead showed fans glimpses of greatness in his final games of the 2008 year and was projected to be in the running for the 2009 Heisman Trophy. Countless newspapers, magazines, and television shows couldn’t stop talking about the Ole Miss Rebels, and Rebel fans everywhere loved every minute of it.
When the 2009 preseason rankings came out in June, the Rebels were listed as number 10 in the USA Today Coaches' Poll and number 8 in the Associated Press News Media Poll. “Everyone wants to see if this is hype or if we're actually good," defensive end Kentrell Lockett said in a preseason interview with USA Today. "We have to make sure we're not a fluke. We're ranked high and want to stay there, get a better ranking, and shoot for a national championship, an SEC championship, something that hasn't happened here in a long time."
The season started off as planned. The Rebs outscored their first two opponents, Memphis and Southeastern Louisiana, by 77 points. My inner mixture of nervousness, excitement, and apprehension seemed to rise in direct correlation to our national ranking, so by the time we reached number 4 in the country I could barely sleep at night. I knew deep in my soul that there was a possibility that all of the hype was too good to be true. I knew (from much experience) that I shouldn’t get my hopes up so early in the season, but number 4 in the country was just too damn exciting to ignore.
Sadly, in the third game of the season, the Ole Miss Rebels were defeated by unranked South Carolina. Words cannot express the disappointment I felt that night. The season wasn’t completely ruined by any means, but I knew that this loss verified my suspicions that we might not have a shot to win the national championship after all. The Rebels went on to finish the season 9-4 which is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, however, the lofty preseason expectations were far from met, and Rebel football fans were left unsatisfied once again. I eventually got over my personal disappointment in the team and moved on to worry about the upcoming 2010 season.
A lot of the time that is what being an Ole Miss football fan is all about: moving on. A true Ole Miss fan understands that he will experience his fair share of heartbreak and frustration, but he knows there is always next season. With that new season comes an opportunity to capitalize on the talent of new recruits, pretty girls to take to football games, and plenty of bourbon to drink in the Grove while patiently waiting on the Rebels to win the big one. Upcoming senior tight end Reggie Hicks is optimistic about the future. “We’re just ready to get out there and show everybody that we’ve still got a ton of talent,” he says. “The Rebels are going to surprise a lot of people this season.” Hotty Toddy! I sure hope that he’s right.
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