Convenient Myth of Pre-Destination, Egg Bowls and Thanksgiving

I wasn't born into this. As much as I play up my Ole Miss fandom as being some inevitable hereditary curse like Sickle Cell Anemia or clubbed feet, it's not the truth. Yes, both my parents and a considerable portion of various other wings of my family went to Ole Miss, but there are plenty more that attended college elsewhere (or not at all).

Joe Lee Dunn, Pregnant since 1994.

And yes, I lived with Ole Miss sports for 18 years of my life when I came to the point where it was time to make a decision about whether to re-buy in. Maybe my earliest Ole Miss memory was huddled around a Liberty Bowl bathroom heater with the rest of the frostbitten masses on New Years Eve 1992 listening to Billy Brewer, then-defensive genius Joe Lee Dunn (barely into his first trimester of a still-continuing male pregnancy) and Cassius Ware stumble through a 13-0 victory over Air Force. I made a "Cassius B-Ware" sign to hold that was discarded because it meant removing the shivering hands from my jacket.

In the previous year, Ole Miss had jumped to its first New Years Day bowl since 1970...and gotten absolutely destroyed by Michigan. The recruiting spree that brought in much of the talent responsible for that modest-by-national-standards success (including Cassius Ware) would, just two years later, land Ole Miss the harshest NCAA penalties since SMU got the chair. Chucky Mullins died and Brewer was fired. The next generation of the Manning legacy was derailed when Cooper's career ended with a spinal chord condition and Peyton decided national success on Rocky Top was more appealing than toiling away in non-televised obscurity.

I knew all this when it came time to decide whether to continue riding this roller coaster with Ole Miss as a choice for college, or take the one last legitimate road toward true fandom by throwing in with another alma mater with a higher ceiling and a lower trough. Or even choosing not to care at all. But, in the end, I doubled down on my home state and previous experience with four years in Oxford.

It's been a long season. There's only so many different ways to say losing sucks, so let's get all semi-seasonal and talk about the good things; the moments and people that, when remembered, reaffirm my commitment to the Rebels and move along from sport-to-sport, season-to-season.

Deuce McAllister running. People who only know him from his time as a Saint, sadly only think of Deuce as a bruising, hunched workhorse. But before he got beefed up and worn down in the NFL, Deuce was much less workhorse and more work-of-art. He returned kicks, lined up as a WR and ran with an extra gear that was astonishing. When he broke free, he strode...defiantly upright. A sailboat with a strong wind in a bay full of chugging tramp steamers. When Deuce got loose, it was beautiful. The only thing more beautiful was when Ole Miss got within 4 yards of the goal line. Everybody knew what the call was. There was no need for a secret hand signal or play name. Just scream from the sideline, "Deuce over the top." The only thing more beautiful than when Deuce ran was when he flew.

Against Auburn in 2000 in my first season as a full-fledged SEC student-fan, Ole Miss was struggling. The offense had sputtered and everyone was waiting for some kind of spark. The Rebels got a stop and Deuce stood at the 10 yard line awaiting the punt. He pointed at the student section, then pointed to the end zone. There are those who were there who say this didn't happen. Who say I, a perhaps over-served Freshman, simply imagined this. I say it happened. And after Deuce found a seam and sliced through the coverage, it rained whiskey and coke for a solid three minutes. We still lost the game (Rudi Johnson was a bad man and our defensive line averaged about 210 lbs.), but Deuce called his shot. It happened, and when I finally passed on my car six years later, the "Deuce For Heisman" bumper sticker was still proudly affixed.

The Tad Pad, 1997-2001. There was no basketball tradition. There was that thing with Sean Tuhoy in 1981, but that was a fluke. I vaguely remember seeing Gerald Glass play, but that was in the Jackson Coliseum. I love college basketball, and in need of a team to grab onto, I fell in with the Nolan Richardson 40-Minutes of Hell Razorbacks. Shortly after the 94 championship, I took the scariest flight of my life into Fayetteville in the middle of an ice storm to watch top notch college basketball in, what was then, a brand new, state-of-the-art arena filled to the rafters with 20,000 frenzied fans fresh off the red meat of back-to-back national championship appearances. It was comfortable and shiny and huge.

Then, something happened. Because while Arkansas and Nolan Richardson were playing on a national stage and recruiting players from across the country, Arkansas talent got overlooked and slipped downstream into the waiting arms of a relentless coach named Rob Evans. Keith Carter, Anthony Boone, Jason Flanigan, Jason Smith, Jason Harrison (later) joined North Carolinian Ansu Sesay and Michael White and pounded life into Ole Miss basketball. Through the back-to-back Western Division titles, NCAA appearances and into the beginning of the Rod Barnes era, the Rebels entered for the first time into true basketball fandom.

Where Bud Walton was leather, padding and video boards, Tad Smith was concrete, metal and a faded analogue Dr. Pepper scoreboard. The shoddy ventilation system was no match for the Mississippi humidity late in the season, and the court would sweat in the heat-- turning any attempt at a basketball game into a demolition derby. It had a chimney. And water fountains on the corners of the court.  It felt amateur, but also hands-on. A game at Bud Walton was like watching a professional fireworks display. Tad Smith was lighting a bottle rocket, holding it in your hand until the last second and then tossing it into the dark. It felt personal. A rowdy Tad Smith felt dangerous.

Yes, a chimney. You know, for the Christmas stockings.

That was the brilliance of it. It's the firecracker in a closed fist. You don't need nearly as much force if you can confine it into a tight space. The student section was right on top of the court. The "seats" were just numbers on a metal bench clearly not meant to accommodate the backsides of grown adults (much less the vast ass expanses of the deep South). It was only 8,000 people, but it was 8,000 people piled on top of each other and piled on top of you. It was a high school house party while the parents were out of town were 10 were invited, but 200 showed up.

After beating Ole Miss in the first round of the 1997 NCAA tournament, Temple made the trip to Oxford. From the moment they stepped onto the floor, they looked like a girl scout troop who'd taken a wrong turn on a dark road. The same team that had taken apart the Rebels just a few months previous got routed. Temple guard Pepe Sanchez still curls into the fetal position and pisses down his leg every time he passes a hub cap on the street. By the end, they just wanted to get the Hell out of that concrete asylum and back to Philly. And that's how it was, game after game, for the next 5 years. Nobody wanted to come play in the Tad Pad.

The thing about the high school house parties is that they're made to get broken up. Similarly, the atmosphere at the Tad Pad had to either adjust or die. It was born in 1996. It came to maturity in 1997. Started its decline with the embarrassing performance against UCLA in the 2002 NCAAs and then died at the hands of Mario Fucking Austin and Derrick Zimmerman in 2003 when a bullshit traveling call on Trey Pearson in the final seconds gave Mississippi State the win. Bottles where thrown and the only thing that stopped the student section from rushing the court and tearing a strutting Zimmerman apart like a zombie hoard was the recently-graduated Rahim Lockhart standing in front, holding them back with his 74" python arms. What's left is an empty shell, apathetic fans and a student section with all the danger and menace of a used party popper. But for one brief golden age, Ole Miss basketball at the Tad Pad was all that is right with college sports.

The Tuberville Reconstruction. It was a miracle. Anybody who says otherwise didn't see it. Before the infamous "pine box." Before he made his name on the national scene at Auburn, Tommy Tuberville took his first college head coaching job and pulled an Anne Sullivan-style miracle on an absolutely broken, betrayed football program. Ole Miss got popped with a four-year probation of 24 lost scholarships, a two-year bowl ban and a one-year television ban (Which was a service to everyone, really. The Joe Lee Dunn head coaching era is something that should never have been put to video tape-- like the video in The Ring, only with Lawrence Adams quarterbacking. I'm pretty sure Joe Lee was barefoot in a maternity gown on the sidelines. That's not a joke).

Just three years later, Tommy scraped together a program of misfits and rejects: walk-ons, over-looked small school stars, community college transfers, players generally seen as defective in some way by every other division one school. They were some of my favorite players. John Avery is still the gold standard for Ole Miss speed to the point where his name has become a unit of measurement.

"What does he run?"

"Oh, it's about a third-quarter Avery."

"That's not bad."

Meego sees you.

Linebacker Meego Spearman is an Oxford folk legend just short of Faulkner and Willie Morris. Nate Wayne was Patrick Willis if P-Willy shrunk in the dryer. A young Dulymus McAllister was starting to get some attention. Ken Lucas, a converted WR, became a shut-down CB. The Heard brothers. Rufus French was the unrealized prodigy. Matt Luke with the Jake Taylor knees at center. Tutan (pronounced "Two Ton") Reyes. Comone (pronounced Come On) Fisher. Boyd T. Kitchens at tackle. Walker Jones would have been considered the whitest player on the 1959 squad.

And of course, the legendary connection of 5'0 QB Stewart Patridge and Cory Peterson when Tuberville the Riverboat Gambler rolled the dice and went for 2 to beat Mississippi State in 1997. Taking home the golden egg and taking Ole Miss, still in their last year of probation, to a bowl game. It was pure joy and there was the feeling that this was only the beginning of something truly epic.

Tuberville and the foundation he laid was so strong it propped up even David Cutcliffe's droopy-eyed incompetence for four years. If Tuberville stays, Ole Miss wins its first modern SEC championship. He didn't. And so we wait. But still, he oversaw the rebirth of the program and everything good that has happened since has at least partial root in the Tuberville reconstruction.

There's more to this list, and maybe I'll come back and supplement if the darkness continues. But it's good to look back. It reminds you why you keep believing and why you bought in the first place. It's not that I don't have any where else to go. There's just no where else that feels quite so much like home.