Ole Miss Baseball: This Is How Revolutions Die, On Terraced Outfield Boxes

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - President Josiah Bartlett (maybe Margaret Meade)

Substitute "functional alcoholics" for "citizens" and you've still got a useful maxim without losing much truth. And so it was, on cold, rainy February afternoons that a small band of students hauled sofas to the hillside, covered them with tarps and staked claim for a season in Right Field at Oxford University Stadium, cheering on an Ole Miss baseball team that hadn't won a conference championship since 1977. 

A few cracks in the vinyl just helps you find the groove.

Grills and coolers were brought out for what is the closest many will ever come to owning a luxury box for a sporting event. And when the sun finally arrived, those noble sooners were able to hold court around their hard-fought outfield homestead. 

Now that Ole Miss Baseball has missed out on postseason play for just the third time since Mike Bianco was hired in 2000, it's time for another brief session of fond remembrance; some reaffirmation of why we do this and how far we come. If you were lucky enough to have spent time on the Swayze hilltop between 2000 and 2006, you shouldn't have to look too far.

"Start turning the girl into the ground, roll a new love over." You think you're grown. You think you're a man. I'm 20 years old, for christsakes. I'm a Sophomore. I've seen some shit. There aren't a lot of surprises left. Got a slick fake ID and figured out the places that will take it. There's some cold Beast Light in a rolling ice chest and some meat burning on a grill. A little sun, a little baseball...holy shiiiit. 

Beer drops to the ground, splashing and hissing against the coals below. Mouth slacks and eyes come to a squint. Through the brightness of the solar flare, she walks up the hillside in a jean skirt and a skin-tight black Allman Brothers Band t-shirt, sunlight reverently breaking in front of her; leaving a heat wave wake. There were soft curves and stretched black cotton all joined together into a gentle, rhythmic sway.

With pupils fighting to process through the bright at full dilation, screaming to look away or go blind, in the moments just before permanent optical damage set in, I think I saw Jesus smiling over her left shoulder. 

It was probably on a similar March day in 1969 when two brothers and their wandering collection of major-label musical rejects decided to stay together. "We can't give up guys," I imagine Duane saying. "In 40 years, a kid in Oxford, Mississippi is going to find religion when some girl wears one of our t-shirts to a baseball game. If we break up, that might never happen." 

As with all Ole Miss athletic events...and perhaps life in general, the key is to attract the casual follower into a sport is to create something that is more cocktail than competition. That finally took hold during these formative years. It was the debters, ramblers and second sons of the Grove empire exiled to fight out their own space in the wilderness. Right Field at Swayze was the Australia to the Grove's Great Britain-- a rough penal colony imitation of the establishment.  

Once the dingos were fought off, the Indian attacks died down and some basic supply lines were established, the pioneer women arrive. Without the pretensions and pearls of settled society, frontier women are little more rough and tumble-- and lot more practical. Gone are the cocktail dresses and heels of football weekends. Mom and Dad probably aren't in town, and Sorority initiation is long over. Baseball was all flip-flops, short shorts and the occasional bikini top.

God bless them all, but especially those of the jean skirts and rock shirts. And of course, God bless Duane Allman.

God bless you, Duane.

"In the middle of the day, there's a young man rolling around in the earth and rain." What are now carefully terraced, pea-gravel flats with clearly marked edges were once little more than a slightly flat spot on a hillside. You dug the front legs of your folding chair into the dirt and rocked your weight to your heels to keep upright. 

Of course this wasn't always successful, especially into later innings. And when it rained, the whole slope turned into a rolling avalanche of bodies sliding into the trough at the base of the right field fence. 

Once you find yourself in the puddle, you might as well roll around in it for a second. 

What were earlier seen as embarrassments began to look like good fun. Given time and encouragement, people begin purposefully flinging themselves, belly first, onto the muddy slick, splashing through the catchment at the bottom and occasionally thumping into the backside of the wall. 

There's something amazing about tearing down a really good, winding dirt road. The slip, drift, dust and bare illusion of control is everything that makes fossil fuel consumption emotionally worthwhile. Today, they're being paved over and straightened. Sure, it's a more efficient, safer way to travel, but it's also a bit mindless and cold. Dirt is warm. The old right field was a dirt road paved over-- and that's probably for the best-- but it's just not the same. 

"Keep turning the wool across the wire." Heckles. Heckles, I Say. Baseball fandom was built on the very special relationship between the outfielder and the over-served outfield attendee. But like any relationship, the discourse is helped by taking the time to really get to know the person with whom you're discoursing. And so, a plucky local weekly paper began doing some light internet research and putting together quick profiles of each weekend's visiting Right Fielder. 

Just simple things. His full name, hometown...perhaps the name of a female relative or any interesting bits that might be pulled from a hokey media guide profile-- favorite meal, favorite movie, maybe a quote of inspiration. And unlike a football game where you can only be heard as part of the deafening throng-- either as just noise within noise or part of simple chants-- the small collective of spectators directly overlooking an outfield provides the intimacy for a real, substantive conversation; To really dig deep into the individual's persona, hopes, dreams and shortcomings-- like a Festivus airing of grievances shouted from 10 yards away. 

And sometimes, the baseball gods just toss out a piece of bloody red meat to the Coliseum lions. 

It was a great day when that opposing squad took the field. You didn't need to pull up the profile from the paper. His entire being was printed cleanly across the blades of the Right Fielder's back. His last name was "Glasscock." 

I don't remember if Ole Miss won or loss. I don't even clearly remember what team young Glasscock played for. I just remember that was a good day on the hillside. 

The section was also directly overlooking the opposing team's bullpen. The outfield was the first to know when a pitching change was coming and greeted the incoming hurlers as they readied to take the field. It came to its peak on a cold, rainy afternoon in an early season game against a small school from New Jersey. One of the remaining few fans, driven mad to match the conditions, climbed the walls of the bullpen like a steel cage wrestler, screaming derisive comments to a shaken relief pitcher probably on his first (and likely only) trip to the state of Mississippi. The bullpen has since been moved.

"Get right to the heart of matters, it's the heart that matters more." For the first few years, the only way to sit in the outfield and follow a game was to break out an old-fashioned hand-written scorecard. The only visible part of the scoreboard was the back, and even after a small, rear-facing display was added, it only gave the bare minimum-- score and inning. The official announcer was barely heard and scarcely understood through the struggling lone megaphone spliced to the back of the main scoreboard.

It created discussion-- what's the count? Who's up? Who's that warming up in the bullpen? It was the original crowdsourced, shared experience sporting event. 

The regulars, the keepers of the sofas, the holders of the grill flames, became the community elders-- setting the tone for those in attendance, forming them into a functioning whole with just simple rules of basic decorum. 

When to chant "Dirt." Keep your beer in a cup. When to start a Hotty Toddy. After the between-inning outfield warm-ups, the Ole Miss outfield's warm-up ball was tossed to the right field stands for safe keeping. The elders made sure it was secured and returned when the outfielders returned to the field. Most importantly, they made sure any girls in attendance had a seat and a beer.

Concessions were non-existant. Parking was free and first-come-first-serve. Admission was free. For the first few years, there wasn't even a security guard. The closest thing to an "official" University presence was the Port-O-Johns that were placed, and even occasionally emptied, at the entrance. It was a laissez-fare, free form, student driven experience that has largely disappeared from American universities and college athletics in particular. 

Gradually, it was chipped away. You had to pay for parking. A private security guard was sent to patrol the stands. Later, it was uniformed UPD patrols, complete with cooler searches and admonishments for illicit language. It wasn't a "family environment," but it wasn't supposed to be. Anyone who wandered into Right Field with children was obviously lost and kindly directed elsewhere.

"If you're gonna walk on water, could you drop a line my way?" 2001 was when the dreams of winning more than the party really started to fester. After each victory, fans filed out to the tune of the Counting Crows' "Omaha" struggling through the aged megaphone. 

It was a hopeful thing. The logistics of a road trip to Nebraska became a common topic of conversation among the couches. The team finished 2nd in the West and was invited to an NCAA regional. It stumbled in 2002 with a baffling collapse in conference play, but rebounded for Regionals and Super Regionals from 2003-2010.

But as postseason efforts fell short, often in heartbreaking fashion against superpowers like Texas, Miami and Arizona State, the post game "Omaha" chorus turned from hopeful anthem to a crushing taunt. And in this way, Ole Miss baseball fell into the sad "not ready for primetime" malaise of the rest of the athletic structure. Perhaps it was even more bitter because the team had shown such consistent success. You couldn't ever be justifiably angry or distraught...just disappointed, and that eats at you even more than outright ineptitude.

"Think you better turn your ticket in, get your money back at the door." One day, the hard scrabble homesteader wakes up to the sound of sirens and horns. He looks out his door and the scrap of land nobody wanted is now full of conveniences and costs. The neighboring families that were there at the beginning are long gone, replaced by a thousand strangers with security fences, car alarms and children tethered to leashes. There's no place for old couches and open flames and the "security" for your own good would never allow you to roll down a hill into the mud. It's been whitewashed and institutionalized.

Not that it's not still good. At its core, it's still college kids sitting in the sun and watching baseball, and that's pretty hard to frown on. From 2000 to 2009, overall attendance at Ole Miss baseball went from a season total of 40,130 fans to 273,111, and the resources granted to the previously neglected baseball team have ballooned to set a national standard for facilities, atmosphere and revenue-- no small feat for a school like Ole Miss. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the success of the team itself-- the talent of the players and the work of Bianco. It also had to do with fundraising and leadership from the boosters and administration of the university. 

But somewhere, lost in the shuffle, is the impact of those dedicated few who showed up, game after game, with cheap beer on tattered sofas and pioneered something unique and organic. Institutions pay untold millions to far away consultants in an effort to officially cultivate atmosphere and tradition that ultimately feels like lunch at the Madison Applebees. The Swayze Right Field was something honest and uncontrived. And in college sports, certainly more than pro, talented players are attracted to fan enthusiasm and today's beer swilling outfield bums become tomorrow's high-dollar luxury box donors. 

Modern Ole Miss baseball, a nationally-relevant program that generates revenue for the school, could not have happened if it were not for those who braved the cold February days on the hillside. And for those of us who saw it happen, it'll be hard to ever completely cut yourself off from the school, the sport and the program that were at the heart of it.

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.

Post-Puberty Defeat And The Valor of Polish Calvary

The light of Monday morning broke through the windows of the Tuscaloosa Chuck E. Cheese to find a lone figure asleep in the ball pit. Mouth open, a half-eaten piece of rock candy stuck to his auburn hair hanging over a freckled face, he clutches a wad of ski ball prize tickets to his chest. Jefferson Davis Bryant (J-Bear to his friends), owner of the establishment, found him while closing up shop the night before.

Coming to grips with defeat through balloons.

"You want wake him?" asked the Ecuadorian cleaning staff.

"No, Consevella. Let him be. Just clean around him. The little guy's had a rough day."

Loss was unfamiliar to Greg McElroy. Undefeated since puberty, he coped in the only way he knew how-- the same way he had the last time a Greg McElroy quarterbacked team came up short. He binged on rock candy, ski ball and then cried himself to sleep in a corner of the ball pit while animatronic bears serenaded him with happy songs from a better time. 

Like Greg, the Alabama Crimson Tide are not a group that really knows a lot about losing, and that includes how to get the taste out of your mouth and move on. More likely than not, they're going to take the same route of frustrated English soccer fans and just take out their frustration by mercilessly beating the sense out of someone who can't really defend themselves. That's obviously the thinking of whoever set the kickoff for 8:00 pm CST. Some things aren't fit for the light of day, and Mark Ingram against the Ole Miss linebacking corps is likely going to be one of those.

But maybe...just maybe, they won't know how to bounce back. Like Drago in Rocky IV, the rest of the world has seen them bleed. With the unfamiliar taste of blood in their mouth, Alabama might come to the revelation for the first time that they are, in fact, mortal. With that lesson learned, they lose the edge, the swagger that previously drove their team. Sometimes loss metastasizes in more loss.

Ole Miss knows loss to the point where coping has become part of our unofficial motto of never losing the party. When you wake up on Sunday morning with that taste in your mouth, the best Listerine is the melted ice in last night's rocks glass. Gargle, swish, spit and get ready for the week to come. 

One of the great overlooked quirks of the invasion of Poland is that when the Nazi tanks rolled across the border, the Poles sent horseback calvary to meet them. These poor bastards straightened their uniforms, took a strong swig of vodka and actually charged tanks with horses. Not because they wanted to or even thought they had a chance of success; they charged because when it comes time for a fight, you're pride-bound to do the best with what you have. It's a Hell of a mentality, and it's one that you're going to need if you're going to be on the Ole Miss side of things tonight...along with a little good vodka and maybe a lance. Jerrell Powe didn't drive his moped all this way just to lay down. He's going to a club a fucker or two, and I'm riding with him. 

As for little Greg in the ball pit, play him home, boys.

Oxford Underwear Bandit: Justice and Cash

There are two things we hold sacred here at the blog-- justice and cash money. When the pursuit of those comes together, there's no holding us back. So it is that we take on the case of the Oxford underwear bandit, where local Lafayette County authorities (a modern-day version of the Untouchables) have put out a $1,000 reward for information leading to the thief's capture.

Between June 5 and Sept. 5, Oxford police have dealt with a dozen break-ins where a suspect -- the same person, police believe -- has entered young women's homes, stealing only their underwear -- ignoring jewelry, electronics and other valuables.

Almost all cases have involved students at the University of Mississippi, with one case being a recent Ole Miss graduate; the exception being a 36-year-old mother who police describe as "very young-looking."

The suspect has tended to strike between 7:30 a.m. and 11 p.m., always with the home uninhabited -- although in one case, a woman returned within three minutes of the break-in, thanks to a home alarm system

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/sep/12/underwear-thief-targets-homes-of-women-attending/

After extensive research and surveillance, we've narrowed it down to five prime suspects:

Rebel the Black Bear

Description: A large black male, full shiny coat of hair, smells of berries

Last Known Residence: The Ewok Village on Hawthorn Road next to Campus Walk

Current Occupation: Mascot hopeful and the constant search for sweet, sweet honey.

Motives: Known forager, possible family history of petty larceny, intrigued by musky smells, naturally curious

Alibi: Has never stolen anything he couldn't eat, and thongs get caught in his teeth.

Jackie Spears

Alias: Dr. Teeth

Description: Young black male with a luminous smile.

Last Known Residence: Memphis, Tn

Current Occupation: Grillin' the shit out of anything that moves.

Motives: To get caught and bring his mugshot glory to the greater Oxford area.

Alibi: Has never actually seen a pair of women's underwear. They dissolve as soon as he opens his mouth. To Jackie Spears, "panties" are as real as leprechauns.

Billy Cannon

Alias: Legend, Louisiana State Inmate #13334956

Description: 6'1, 220 lbs, cloven feet, smells of sulfur and corndogs, head like a Dick Tracy villain

Last Known Residence: Angola, Louisiana

Current Occupation: Director, Louisiana State Prison Medical Director/Eluding sneak attacks by maniacal Billy Brewer still trying to tackle him.

Motives: Known theft of other valuable Ole Miss trophies, including 1959 National Championship.

Alibi: Only runs at midnight. Also, still has the underwear of every first born daughter in the state of Louisiana mailed to him on their 15th birthday in keeping with Napoleonic law and the "Billy Cannon Appeasement Act," the last piece of legislation signed by Governor/Mental Patient Earl K. Long.

Pete Boone

Alias: God's Banker

Description: Gray around the ears, black around the heart, polyester around the waist.

Last Known Residence: An army cot in Robert Khayat's laundry room.

Current Occupation: Ole Miss Athletic Director/Meter Maid/Author

Motives: The only way to profitably scalp the rest of his season tickets for this year's home games would be to partner them with slightly-used coed lingerie in his eBay listings...also could be used to help move the inventory of his latest novel.

Alibi: If he was indeed guilty, could not resist the offer of $1,000 to turn himself in, though he would weep tears of betrayal into the bills for nights afterward...just like after David Cutcliffe was fired.


Lefty Testudo



Alias: Frequently answers to, "Hey you, stop pissing on my hedges."

Description: Like the starting center for the Lollipop Guild's intramural basketball team with a skill set and lifestyle mirroring Lithuanian legend Arvydas Sabonis late in his career.

Last Known Residence: Winters in the pine straw piles behind the Ole Miss physical plant, but summers on the cool tile floors of the AOPi House lobby.

Current Occupation: Evangelizing against the evils of Canadian whiskey/Perfecting the practice of "Blackout Mondays"/Burrows like nobody's business

Motives: History of high-risk behavior involving the residences of Ole Miss women and strange mating habits in the wild...also a known forager.

Alibi: Only interested in plus size women's underwear, otherwise they won't fit fully over his head, leaving him susceptible to sunburn.

Late Breaking Bullitein Update, New Suspect is Added:

Kenny "The Snake" Stabler
From his autobiography "Snake"about Raiders training camp:

"The collecting of female undergarments," Stabler wrote, "became an annual rite of training camp for many of the Raiders . . . I liked to tack my collection up on the walls."

Stabler also has a history with Oxford's second favorite criminal offense and defending the Redneck cultural traditions under fire by the Man,

"All I wanna do is drive around in my truck and drink Jack Daniels... and they just don't understand."

Ole Miss/Vandy: Another Chapter In The South's Greatest Football Rivalry (Brought To You By Eddie Money)

Early morning start? Check. Low rent broadcast coverage? Oh yeah. The dulcet tones of at least one dude named Dave? Present. A stadium half-filled with red-eyed, overheated fans? Done.

When they all come together, it can only mean one thing-- the South's greatest football rivalry has come around once again to amaze and astound us with feats of self-destruction, apathy and mediocrity. It'd be like if Steve-O from Jackass joined Nickelback on a tour of Topeka and then it was broadcast by the local high school A/V club.

It was an exciting time when we heard about the new, record-breaking ESPN/SEC TV deal. Every game on some branch of ESPN! While we had grown to have a colloquial affection for the Trip-Daves formation and Golden Flake glory of Jefferson Pilot (eloquently expressed by Dr. Saturday here), it was time for us to shine the shoes, cut the hair, wash the ass and go for the bright lights of the Worldwide Leader.

While we were correct that the days of the 11:30 CST starts and Three Dave coverage were over, what we didn't know was that they would be replaced by kickoffs that were actually 30 minutes EARLIER, equally regional television exposure with 2/3rds fewer over-hyped Daves, replaced by the stunning ambivalence of college football's third-most unjustified Heisman winner-- all still under the global empire of Golden Flake snack products (and, at least where I watched it, Eddie Money's 2010 World Tour...good seats only $10. Like the best of Dean Martin last year, I'm buying).



So what went wrong for the Rebels in the 2010 incarnation of this classic match-up? I will defer to the words of John Lee Pettimore, who was one of the brave, sweaty, over-caffeinated crew standing on the line Saturday morning in Oxford:

John Lee Pettimore:  There are few words. Crowd sucked. Team sucked. Grove still kicks ass. Team sucked. Our O-line couldn't block me and three trolls.: 
Atticus: Trolls can be ferocious. I'd take a troll or two on our line these days

John Lee: At least they wouldn't stand straight up and try to lesbian titty rub the opposing D-line. I bitched and moaned about O-line recruiting for the past three years in order to avoid having to watch this. I will continue to bitch and moan.

So where do we go from here? Set new goals and redefine what it means to have "success." What are those new goals you ask? I'm still considering that, but I'd imagine they will include not throwing up on my shoes, avoiding actual rape on the field and beating Arkansas in Fayetteville. 'Till then, I'm riding with Eddie. Take me home, boys.

Tulane: And the Art Of the Finishing Move

"It got pretty gritty. I started to hear the word "draw" in my sleep. Then one day, I was just walking down the street when I heard a voice behind me say, "Reach for it, mister!" I spun around... and there I was, face-to-face with a six-year old kid. Well, I just threw my guns down and walked away. Little bastard shot me in the ass. So I limped to the nearest saloon, crawled inside a whiskey bottle, and I've been there ever since."

This was we expected at the beginning of the season. A larger than life defense, anchored by Jerrell Powe, carrying a largely undeveloped offense with Nathan Stanley holding on for dear life. Then, Jeremiah Masoli took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and somehow ended up sharing the backfield. For one half, the only surprise was the pleasant competence of the offense.

Then we laid our guns down, turned our backs and some squirrelly little bastard shot us in the ass.

We've crawled back out of the bottles and now, wandering the streets of New Orleans, another prepubescent voice calls out "draw." Time to find out if we've got what it takes to stomp on a throat.

Ole Miss/Jacksonville State.

I would like to talk about what happened yesterday, but I don't know. I fell asleep after the first half. And if any of the coaches or players were honest, they'd admit the exact same thing.

Like Houston, I was awoken by a flurry of text messages with varying forms of "What the fuck?" I pulled the game back up at the beginning of the first overtime. It was then that Lefty Testudo sent me this:

Lefty: This is awful. What will Bama do to us. There will be no virgins left.

Atticus: Any virginity we've got left isn't worth protecting.

With baited breath, I anxiously await the input of Basil and the rest of the Arkansas nation. That's fine. It's certainly their right. They ate their cupcake without pulling a Mama Cass. The Ole Miss message boards are already thick with calls of "Fire Houston." And then, one voice of unintentional wisdom rings out from the commentariat abyss:

"Let's not overreact. I'm not going to jump ship like the rest of the Titanic survivors."

Nothing to see here...

Drive on. It don't mean nothing
My children love me, but they don't understand.
And I got a woman who knows her man.
Drive on. It don't mean nothing.
It don't mean nothing. Drive on.






Is this a song about Vietnam veterans seeing actual horrific things in war? Yes. Is it inappropriate to use this as a metaphor for college football? Probably. That being said, I'm still jamming out to some Johnny Cash tonight...and then when Earl shows up at my doorstep, I'm going to have me a Lt. Dan moment with the sports gods.

I'm sorry, Jeremy. Somebody should've told you about this place before you came here. Good luck with your new career in Canada.

Is This The Beginning? No, But You Can Get There From Here.

Sometimes the devastating hangover or the blackout brown liquor drunk can take a form akin to the famous "Jordan Flu." The idea that when your body is weakest, you turn over control to the more primal instincts and perform in a purely efficient way, elevated to a different level. When things go wrong in the boiler room, your internal Captain Sully Sullenberger has let go of the wheel to go down below and help Mr. Scott put things back together. That's when Captain Busey takes the helm, throws some Marshall Tucker Band in the cassette deck and tries to drive with his teeth.

So it was that I, filled with daquiri, nerves and a few struggling delusions of preseason hype before last year's Alabama game, sat watching Nebraska and made the comment, "We need us some Samoans." Actually, I believe my initial dispatch to Basil while watching Ndamakong Suh was "Mr. President, we have to give bears the right to vote... or bears will rise up and then BEARS will be in Congress and we will be the ones performing in the circus, wearing little hats. " He then translated it into a more understandable form.

Outside of personal prophecetical fulfillment, I'm still not sure what this Masoli signing actually means for Ole Miss. Our last highly-touted transfer QB, another reclamation project with a ganja-tarnished image trying to make good, will be best remembered as part of the chorus to the Coach O song and for the rumored shanking of a teammate. While it's not a perfect comparison, one question remains valid-- can a quarterback walk in cold to August camp and successfully make a positive impact in an SEC offense?

One thing is for sure, the vision of Masoli's skill set and physical make-up is the stuff little Houston Nutt used to doodle on his junior high wide-rule notebooks during home room. Basically a rather large badger with opposable thumbs who is low enough to the ground to hide behind the line, run with power, take the hit after flipping the lateral and smell of freshly juiced pineapples. If he can get his head straight, he can run this scheme and provide the Rebels with at least the minimal amount of offensive competency that's going to be needed for us to win a good chunk of our games this year.

I never embraced the idea of the Masoli transfer. It seemed forced. I couldn't make a connection. Even if Masoli came in and lit the world on fire, what connection can he really have to Ole Miss. At his best, he's a damaged mercenary. Like Rooster Cogburn or Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. Why do I care? I couldn't make the connection until I read Steve Duin's excellent column. Now it works. If anybody understands being a victim of space and time and carrying the stain of those you once associated with, it's Ole Miss. Now lay back into the Right Reverend's river here, Jeremiah, let's see if we can't both wash some of this dirt off.

"I didn't see it, but it sure sounded beautiful."

So says Jevan Snead about the Golden Tips of Dexter McCluster taking a slip screen to the house while Snead was face down in the turf. Jevan found his talent, and Houston Nutt has rediscovered his magical play-calling silver platter buried under the stack of autographed Sports Illustrated preview issues on his desk. After cursing Houston for leaving it collecting dust for almost an entire year, the Silver Platter of the Sacred Grove screamed "GET THE BALL TO THAT LITTLE BASTARD WITH THE GOLDEN TIPS!"



Tyrone Nix called a masterful mix of blitz packages that kept the happy feet of the 8 Mile stepping and the balls sailing. And as if that weren't enough, Nix snuck into Greg Hardy's dorm room the night before, stole Hardy's Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds DVD and then blamed it on Mallett, because as has been pointed out, he looks like a guy who might do such a thing. It adds a whole other level of fear and confusion when the 275 lb future first round draft pick is screaming "GIVE ME BACK MILEY!" as he comes barreling after you (referencing Hardy's quote earlier this week about renting a Miley Cyrus movie...link to come, hopefully).

Next week, Auburn. And what Basil and the rest of the Arkansas fan base will say (when they finally regain their faculties from yesterday), is that this is the classic recipe for a Houston Nutt letdown game. Coming off a great win and thoughtful coaching, the Nutt teams lose focus against lesser opponents and have a hard time maintaining success. I don't know if I'm buying that. Last year, when Jevan's light finally come on, he kept it going for most of the rest of the season. There's no reason to believe our defense has shown any sign of let-up and could actually get better if our offense can start to put up early leads and force opposing teams into more obvious passing situations. Not saying I'm not a little worried about a dropped game next week, Auburn's still an SEC team playing at home. I still have some belief that Gus Malzahn is competent and perhaps genius offensive mind (though he's working with somebody else's parts at the moment). It could very well all come crashing down, but right now, all is right with the world and we're on our way to a mildly satisfying 10-win season. On that note, I give you a beautiful woman singing a badass song. There is probably more football from yesterday to discuss, but the radiance of the Golden Tips prevents me from acknowledging any of it at the moment.

Bombs and Screens (Nobody's Darlings)

The shine is off and now we find ourselves back where we're most comfortable-- lost in the middle of the SEC pack somewhere behind more established powers, playing the early morning lo-fi undercard and our off-field eccentricities getting the bulk of the media play. Nobody really knows where we fit into the fray, but it's clear we're neither leading the back or bringing up the rear.

It's been said by more than a few of my fellow Ole Miss fans that this game is where we'll find out what we are. The same was said for South Carolina. And Alabama. A win, and we're back on track to a 10 or 9 win campaign, another step forward from last January's high and respectable postseason bid. Lose, and we're back in Shreveport playing $5 blackjack with stretch-marked cocktail waitresses wondering if this is all there is for us and cursing our foolish delusions of grandeur.

The biggest problem anybody has is when you start to believe the things other people say about you, good or bad. An outside voice that lends validity to your own wild fantasy/paranoia can be more an incredibly dangerous thing. We've had both. In a vacuum, all Ole Miss fans always harbor wild hopes of a return to glory and prominence, shedding the weight of the past and rising back to national relevance. In the same soaked corner of your brain is the idea that we're the fuck-up sons in a prominent family, and we should be grateful that our more accomplished relations allow us to sit at their table and share their affiliation. What gets expressed will generally trend toward whatever side of the thought process the outside world lends the most credence to. I feel like that's where the Ole Miss and Arkansas fanbases come together, and it's what makes our shotgun rivalry of Houston Nutt-dom so interesting.

What we both need to realize is that, in the end, we'll be judged on our results and any success we have will be on our own backs. It needs to be a trench warfare mentality. Nobody's got our backs. Nobody really believes in us. Somebody's got to be built up so that they can be torn down, and we're useful for that purpose on occasion. But we're nobody's darlings, and what success we have is our own. Fuck everything else.


Everybody wants to see you fall. That's why they always love to get you high.


The Arkansas defense seems to have taken steps forward and the Ole Miss offense seems to have taken steps back. But what has Arkansas done? They've been steamrolled by Alabama like everybody else. They put up a decent fight against an Auburn offense that has since been shown to be lacking and kicked the bones of the elephant graveyard in the Big 12 against Texas A&M. Even the Florida offense has looked uninspired thus far (though it needs to be noted that the same could be said about Florida at this time last year). Their safeties still suck. Their linebackers are athletic and aggressive but don't possess a great deal of sense or discipline. They live off of blind pressure and a prayer of deep inaccuracy.

Florida lived off the screens for what success they had on offense. Georgia lived off of blindly heaving the ball down the field in hopes that the safeties were out of position. Nobody has combined both approaches, but we've got the tools to do it. Let Grandy, Pat Patterson, Lionel Breaux loose down the damn field and tell Opie to chuck the fucking ball. When you run, run hard, quick and between the tackles. When you throw, throw deep. When Jerry Franklin has a boner through his football pants, screen.

Our defense is nothing short of greasy, swaggering violence second only to Alabama in the SEC. Mallett does not handle pressure, and as Kentrell Lockett has astutely pointed out, he'll generally be right where you think he is. "When you get there, he'll be there." Arkansas has put up numbers against crappy defenses and folded spectacularly when somebody has gotten in their face.

The only outside voice I believe is the blind voice of money. People in Vegas know things. I've learned this the hard way during darker times. And the business community, who has no interest in our hype or deflation outside of cold calculus, still believe we're a decent team playing another decent team on our home field and have apportioned a healthy 6.5 point margin in our favor. This gives me more hope than anything else. Vegas cares not for storylines or student section chants or Heisman fluffer missions. It's a weigh and measure in the true sense of the word.

Tomorrow comes early. See you kids out there.

Throw Some Sawdust On It, Worry About It Later

There was a guy I went to college with who was affectionately known as The Custodian, because he would pick up what others left behind. There was no reason for it. He could stand on his own and hold his weight on the normal market when he was so inclined, but always slipped back into the slop. After a while, he almost preferred it in a weird way.

How did he get there? I'm sure at one point he had a crisis of confidence and resorted to what has now commonly come to be known as a slumpbuster. You justify the step down as a temporary fix in a hard stretch, and then you'll return to your normal standards once times get flush again. But it doesn't always work the same for everybody and every time you go back down the ladder, it gets harder to build up the will to crawl back up. Kind of how Hawaiians developed a taste for SPAM out of necessity, but then kept on eating it. Decades after the shortages of war have ended, they're still confusing it for a delicacy. Now they're standing in an Oahu supermarket with a ribeye in one hand and a tin can of processed meat in the other with a legitimate crisis of indecision. After a while, they quit even picking up the steak and head straight for the comfort and ease of the scrub.


In the case of the Custodian, mix in a natural tendency toward the thickness, and he was screwed with the first hit. So it is with Ole Miss and UAB. We came down a step and took care of business for business's sake. The important thing is not to get to the point where you start to confuse a stopgap for an actual solution. If you're not careful, your whole life can slip into one long slumpbusting session. What happened last night against UAB was fine. We slapped it to watch it roll, and that's all well and good. Just don't start to think it was an actual conquest, and let's jump back up the ladder next week. Speaking of next week:

Let's put one last stamp on the theme started on Friday of war songs for the Arkansas/Florida game...

"I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean. Oh Basil Shabazz, was it slow and obscene?"

Oh sure, pick on the kicker with the funny name. Or the refs. Or The Divine Tebow. Here's the cold truth for the Hog Nation-- Your defense laid down a valiant performance to keep it close and then you were foiled by poor quarterback play in the clutch and bad special teams...sound familiar? And there wasn't a Dick or Nutt in sight. Last season, Houston took his underdog team into the Swamp under impossible odds, played them close...and came away with a win. Just saying.

Ryan 8 Mile Mallet is a good quarterback, but he got the happy feet once again under pressure and air mailed what should have been touchdowns on at least two occasions. But that's cool, let's pound on the kicker. Though an Arkansas fan did sum up their new quarterback pretty well when he said, "Ryan Mallet looks like a guy who would break into your house and steal your DVDs." Yep. It's going to be a good week on the blog.

Other thoughts:

Auburn/Kentucky- This is really inconvenient from a blogging standpoint. Last week, I developed this whole idea of Gus Malzahn as the wronged genius of Captain Nemo about to go on a tour of a unexpected revenge on the world that did him wrong...then they lose to Arkansas in a game where the offense was average at best (though it might be time to re-examine how we feel about a Hog defense that looks much improved since the Georgia game). Then, this week, they only put up 14 points at home in a loss to Kentucky. It was going to be a great running joke for the season and now, just ruined. The Nautilus had to turn back shortly after leaving port because of an overflowing toilet- it's always the small details that get you. Such a shame. There was so much good blogging that could've been done here, up to and including rewriting the Kirk Douglas "Whale of a Tale" song from the perspective of Houston Nutt.



OU/Texas- At Gameday, several proud Oklahomans displayed a sign saying "Keep Norman Normal." During one night in Austin, I almost broke my leg after falling out of a homemade bunk while making out with a girl dressed (or half dressed) as Maverick from Top Gun. This was in April. This pretty much sums up why I have to support the Horns in this game. In my mind, the state of Oklahoma represents all that is wrong with the disturbing American glorification of mediocrity that seems to have only gained momentum in the past decade. In Austin, you might stumble into weird gender-bending role playing with a classic 80s cinema character before ejecting from a hastily-crafted temporary sleeping surface. And yeah, shit might get weird and you might get hurt, but at least you won't be in Norman hoping the biscuits are fresh at the Shoney's breakfast buffet.

Blood in the Sink, Diamonds in the Drain

The smell of musk and deception.
Heel marks on the roof-line.
Bad music on the stereo.
All the seats in recline.

It was the same party, more or less, every year. The same drunks would show up, tell the same stories and the same jokes. Argue about the same things. Somebody would fight, but nothing more than an drunken, groping tumble to the floor. Lazy attempts at punches that burn out quickly and broken-up easily to half-hearted protests. The same lightweights would drink too much, too early and end up puking in the bushes. They’d pass out on the couch, get defaced with a magic marker, and weakly (but sincerely) apologize the next morning. Of course, the apology is accepted. You can’t stay angry at a guy when he’s got a large cock drawn down his cheek.

There would always be girls, but girls of a non-threatening caliber. Interesting enough to make you sit up straight and perhaps take a shot to calm the butterflies before you start in with the familiar pitch, the familiar tease and the familiar range of results. Maybe a shared cigarette and some PG-rated affection next to the Natty Light Keg, something a little more PG-13 in an out of the way corner or, if stars really align, a trip back to your room where you hope against hope that none of your roommates have raided your stash of condoms.

The morning would come with sunlight reflecting off the beer cans strewn in the yard and a house in disarray, but not disrepair. A pain in your head and a little weakness in the knees, but nothing some Gatorade and asprin can’t fix (or Pedialyte and Midol if the brown liquor pour was a little strong). Maybe the girl in your bed is a little more of a 6 in the light than the 7.5 you remembered from the dark, but she’s pleasant enough. More importantly, she’s pulling on her jeans and getting ready to go home. Maybe you pick up a McGriddles or two after you drop her off. Mmm. McGriddles.

It wasn’t exciting, but it was familiar and expected. It was comfortable. It’s not until you’re uncomfortable that you realize how overrated exciting can be.

Because this year, shit got uncomfortable. A bunch of high-flying carpetbaggers showed up, and the party spiraled out of hand. At first, it was exciting to have some new blood and a bigger crowd. The Polls, AP and Coach, showed up with some exciting new drugs, strange colors and weird highs. Phil, though a bit of a dork, brought some exciting new stories to the conversations and kept feeding Jager shots to anybody within arm’s length. SI was slick and old-school like the Dos Equis World’s Most Interesting Man and brought an exciting feeling of legitimacy. Some dude who called himself “World Wide” and his buddy Kirk busted in like a hurricane of lights and noise. And Kirk brought some girls that were, well, exciting.

Maybe too exciting. The girls that exert the gravitational force of exceptional beauty that brings on the paralyzing paranoia of being suddenly out of place (even in a familiar setting) that drives you to the bottom of the fifth. Worse than that, they bring on a distorted reality of what’s possible. You give up the dark-aided 7.5s that were previously satisfactory and join the slobbering, self-conscious hordes chasing the unhealthy high.

SI’s cool elegance of experience quickly deteriorated into mindless, repetitious babble. In the span of a few scotches, he went from respected elder to fucking creepy old dude who pissed himself on the couch. Kirk did bring the girls and then proceeded to have dirty, R. Kelly-style sex with every one of them on every padded surface in every room of the house.

AP: Dude, this place is destroyed. I think the only thing left to drink in his joint is Apple Pucker.

(Def Leopard starts blaring from the next room)

AP: Nevermind. Coach just took his shirt off, jumped on the coffee table and poured the whole bottle over his head.

COACH: (swinging his shirt and touching himself inappropriately): YEAH, BRO! STICKY SWEET!

AP: Well, nothing left to do now but take a shit in the shower and sketch out somewhere else.

ATTICUS: Wait, what? The shower?

AP: Yeah man, that dude Yancey is passed out, head first in the toilet. I think he might have Hendrix’d. I would check his pulse, but you know, plausible deniability and all that.

ATTICUS (pale and sweaty and fighting what feels like the beginning of a bad trip): What the fuck is that smell?

AP: What? No, I said I was going to shit. I haven’t yet. You alright, man? You don’t look so good.

ATTICUS (follows the smell into the kitchen): Jesus. Who put a condom in the toaster?

PHIL: Kirk told me if you warm it up first, it makes it more pleasurable, you know, for the chick.

AP: What chicks? All the ones SI didn’t creep off are locked in one of the rooms with Kirk..

ATTICUS: Which room? I sleep back there.

AP: I don’t know. Whichever one the “Ignition” re-mix is blaring out of.

WORLD WIDE (walks into the kitchen): Well, boys, it’s been fun, but this place is played. I just got a text that there’s a deal over at Bama’s house that’s just raging– like they used to do back in the old days. Y’all in?

AP: Yeah, let me hit the bathroom real quick. Then, I’ll grab Coach and we’ll be good to go. Where is Coach?

WORLD WIDE: Last I saw, he was rubbing one out in the recliner.

AP: Best just to let him finish.

PHIL: Do you think they have a toaster over there?

AP: Hey, Atticus, you need to come with us. Get out of this fucking Hell hole.

ATTICUS: I think I can feel my kidneys bleeding.

WORLD WIDE: Yeah, I know the feeling, man. But you really should bail with us. I donkey punched a hooker earlier, and you don’t want to still be around when she comes to.

ATTICUS: Donkey punch?

WORLD WIDE: Half way through I realized I didn’t have any cash. Seemed easier this way.

KIRK (struts in shirtless, humming to himself): Man, that’s a mess back there. Smells like Corso’s trailer. Atticus, let’s roll out of here, man. I hear shit is hoppin’ over in Gainesville.

WORLD WIDE: We just got back from Gainesville.

PHIL: I say we go to Boise.

AP: You would. Dork.

KIRK: I do hear they’ve got some thick girls there, though.

ATTICUS: You don’t understand. I live here. I’ve got nowhere else to go.