A little slow around here.

We apologize for not being as active today as we have been. There are a few reasons for this:

1.) Jobs

2.) We aren't welcome* at practice anymore so no practice reports (for a while at least).

3.) The freakin' Olympics are on TV! Right now! Seriously, why are you even here?

We promise, we'll throw some content your way in no time.


* "Welcome" is a funny word to use here. I doubt we, as rogue, smartassed bloggers, were at all "welcomed" at last weeks practices. There just wasn't anybody at the gate shooing us off is all.

Global Warming to Affect Football Schedule

Thanks to our guest contributor, Former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore

Hello, hi, yes, of course, welcome, yes, welcome, thank you, thank you very, very much. I am here to speak to you today about an issue which is very crucial to not only ourselves, in the present, but our children and our grandchildren, in the future. This issue is, of course, the issue of worldwide global climate change, also known as "Guh-low-bull Waaaar-ming." Yes, due to our society's continual and exceedingly reckless use of fossil fuels, which emit dangerous amounts of what scientists call "Guh-reen-house Ga-yuh-siss," the entire Earth is subject to rising temperatures as these "ga-yuh-siss" trap the heat produced by our all-knowing and loving sun God, Ra sun.

Now, I, as a Democrat, have a lot of friends within the scientific community who have done a lot of research which supports these theories. Everything from core samples of our arctic ice to increasing occurrences of unusual weather phenomena point to one thing: we've increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. This increased level of carbon dioxide can raise temperatures all across our globe and have dire, dire consequences.

For example, I have been told that you Ole Miss Rebels have pushed back the kickoffs of your home football games due to increasing temperatures in and around Oxford. While many of you may be celebrating this change, citing more time to sit in your "Grove" and drink your "alcohol" in preparation for an undoubtedly more pleasant football game, you must not ignore the role your irresponsibility has played in this increasingly important global epidemic. Many of you purchase many expensive foods for your elaborate pre-game celebrations and adorn yourselves with high quality fabrics, most of which are imported. This demands an unnecessary use of fossil fuels which could easily be avoided. Furthermore, many of you arrive to your, how do you put it, "tay-ull-gates" in large gas guzzling SUVs and have even been seen supporting one of the world's largest Hummer advocates. These are dangerous habits which, of course, must be broken.

Ole Miss, you can do better. As I understand it, your Chancellor recently signed the university to a green initiative. I also understand that traffic has been severely reduced on campus and that academic departments are being encouraged to purchase and use educational equipment which utilizes as little energy as possible. These are all wonderful steps in the right direction...

Wait a gosh-durned minute! What? You mean to tell me, Al Gore, that you people are building a new Jyumbuh Trawhn?** What?! God-damn you people! I created the motherfucking INTERNET! Have you not learned anything?! I'm being totally serial here! Damn you, Mississippi, damn you to a one-or-two-degrees-Fahrenheit-hotter-than-normal Hell!


**Thanks are in order to NAFOOM for this rendering.

Preseason Hype

Erik at DeepSouthSports has put together a fairly detailed rundown of preseason Ole Miss hype from a varied sundry of sources. He features the struggle of Jerrell Powe, Vegas betting odds, and the king of the Gypsy snake-charmers, Phil Steele, among other things. It's an interesting read and should get you salivating for football, if you weren't already.

With concerns to other bits and pieces of preseason hype, Greg Hardy has been named to the Ted Hendricks preseason watch list and four Ole Miss Rebels have been named to the coaches' preseason all-SEC team. Michael Oher and Greg Hardy were both unanimous selections to the list. I imagine that both Oher and Hardy will live up to their respective hypes this year and could even make a few clutch plays which separate wins from losses. Oher will be Jevan Snead's best friend on the gridiron and frustrate the hell out of opposing defensive ends while Greg Hardy will pull one of (I'm now taking bets as to which one) John Parker Wilson's limbs clean out of socket.

I know it sounds kinda silly and he says it far too often, but Houston Dale is right, we're hungry, dammit. I'm starving for more than 4 wins. If that causes me to come off as being overly optimistic, then so be it.

Speaking of Houston Dale: what the hell is going on in this picture to the left? If you visit any of the links above regarding preseason accolades, you'll be sent to the newly designed OleMissSports.com which features this bizarre picture of HDN. While I like the new design and feel it to be a bit more professional, it has its little quirks. As far as I can tell, the picture was taken at Coach Nutt's welcoming press conference/tent revival at the Ford Center and is kinda taken at that "hey, vote for me, victory rah rah" angle, but whose fucking hand is that? Is that Houston Dale's? If so, that man's got some big damn paws. And scary ones, at that! I dunno, maybe I'm looking into this a bit too much but it looks as if some sort of demonic creature is protecting HDN's dark yet dear, dear womb. I know that I'm either not looking at something correctly, or it's some sort of optical illusion, or maybe it's a camera trick, but that shit's still weird. Oh, and Arkansas fans, we already know you're going to come in here with a bunch of "well lol he's been doin alot of txtin haha lol PIG SOOIE," so please, save us the trouble.

R[R]C Visits the Volunteer State

EDITOR'S NOTE: We know a lot of you don't give a shit as to what exactly we're doing with our summers. We don't care. We need to pass the time somehow.

After leaving Asheville, Whiskey Wednesday and I drove through the Great Smokies to reach our ultimate destination: Gatlinburg, Tennessee's Pancake Pantry. I know it may sound stupid to, well, everyone that isn't us, but this place is seriously one of the greatest Southern eateries. With a huge breakfast menu that features 20+ different varieties of pancakes mixed and cooked to near perfection, you cannot go wrong with this place (there's also one in Nashville if you're not into kitchy crafts and bizarre mountain folk).

A couple hearty stacks of flapjacks and a pot of coffee later, we hit I-40 to visit Knoxville and, more specificially, take a look at Neyland Stadium. After getting lost on Tennessee's campus, we pulled our car onto Pillip Fulmer Way (yep) and parked beside the stadium. Despite the ongoing construction, we easily sneaked onto the upper deck and were treated to a pretty impressive view. I only had a camera phone with me, so you'll just have to get over the grainy, off-color shot.


Neither one of us had ever been to a game in Neyland, so we were both sufficiently impressed. Another great quality about the stadium is it's proximity to the Tennessee river which lends to the SEC's 2nd best tailgating tradition: the Vol Navy. As far as college campuses are concerned, Tennessee's is nothing special. It's not too far from downtown Knoxville or the Smokies, though.

After our stopover in Knoxville we headed on into Nashville. Nashville has always been one of my favorite cities in the South. Great music, great bars, good people and a clean(er) downtown area lend to Nashville's reputation. We visited Vanderbilt's campus and made a point (as we have everywehre we've been so far) to visit the football stadium. After having seen Neyland, it was easy to be unimpressed with Vanderbilt Stadium but, let it be known, it is still impressive that a conference's "token academic school" can consistently fill a 40,000 seat venue. I'd like to see if Duke, Wake Forest, or Stanford could say such a thing.

That night, we saw a show (on a Wednesday, mind you) that would have easily headlined Proud Larry's on a Saturday which was only attended by a few dozen people. Our hosts, Scott and Lisa, explained to us that people from Nashville are more-or-less "burnt out" by all of the shows and rarely, if ever, attend them. Another thing I noticed about the audience aside from it's unexpectedly small size is that they actually listened to the music as opposed to drunkenly chatting over it.

The next morning we visited Gruhn's Guitars, Hatch Print Shop, and Grimey's Music; all local establishments which are iconic of Nashville's music heritage.

That's it. It was a short a trip but it was incredibly fun to see things which I knowingly should have seen a long time ago (espcially Athens and Neyland). Hopefully I'll actually get to visit Georgia and Tennessee during game weekends sometime in the near future. If any Bulldogs or Volunteers have a few couches for a few of us Red [REDACTED] Cuppers to crash/maybe vomit on, we'd gladly invite ourselves.

SEC Fan Base Power Rankings

While doing nothing, I decided to start an internet fight... with everyone.

Here's the deal: I've spent a fair amount of time observing SEC sports. Certainly, many of you have paid greater attention for longer, but I imagine that I have gathered enough information as to who I like and don't like and that is especially true with concerns to the fan bases of each respective conference member. Therefore, in my continuous boredom, I have put together a power ranking of the SEC fan bases. I'm obviously biased towards Ole Miss (and, as you'll see, against some others) so I will rank the 11 other conference members with 11 being the most enjoyable fans and 1 being the least enjoyable fans. Enjoy.

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-These first two fan bases and I have shared fairly extensive interaction, almost all of which has been fun, cordial, or both.

11. Georgia
First up are the Georgia Bulldogs. From all that I have gathered, Georgia fans are a class act. My first experience with the original Bulldogs came two years ago in the Grove. From the time we set up our tents to the time we passed out on Saturday night, the Bulldog faithful were out in full force. We suffered a surprisingly close loss that evening (remember the phantom holding penalties?) in front of a national audience yet, despite having been defeated, the Georgia fans on hand weren't ones for shit talkin' and drunken hooliganism. Y'see, Georgia is better than you, and they know it. After a gridiron victory they don't have some sort of inferiority complex kicking in and bringing them to taunt the children of the opposing fans. For example, after last year's Sugar Bowl I met dozens of Bulldogs on Bourbon Street. Whenever a defeated horde of Hawai'i fans were in the vicinity the aforementioned Georgians didn't resort to asinine taunts or jeers. Instead, they gave their recent opponents the "I just fucked your girlfriend" look and moved on. In addition, these UGA fans had nothing but respect for me and my friends for being fellow SEC fans. They love their school, they love their team, and they love the SEC in general. It should be noted that the only Georgia fan I've ever not liked was this harlot I met recently in Montgomery, AL. She had a whiny attitude and a snotty demeanor more appropriate to a denizen of Starkville than that of, well, anywhere outside of Starkville.

10. Vanderbilt
Here's an anecdote: At last year's Vandy game I witnessed one of the most embarrassing defeats of my life. As I was hanging my head in shame (literally), an older gentleman wearing a gold and black polo patted me on the back and said, "It's just a game kid." While a bit of a "pop warner" response, I feel it clearly illustrates my point: Vanderbilt has not been consistently good at anything in decades and their fan base reflects that. They're quiet and do a fairly good job of minding their own business. Their school has an academic reputation to maintain and they will oftentimes place that before athletics. At the aforementioned game, a grizzled man in his early 40's wearing black gym shorts, a Vandy jersey, and black Reeboks drunkenly waved a homemade Commodores flag while taunting my friends and me to our faces. To boot, the man couldn't afford a $30 pair of AM/FM headphones and was literally holding a small radio up to his head to tune in on all the action (I wish I had taken a picture). Another, wealthier Vanderbilt fan, seeing this, quickly came over and assured us that this man most likely never attended Vanderbilt. We were losing the game, yet this man was focused way more on the integrity of his degree than that of his football team. I will say this though: their fans are terrible hecklers. A few Commodore students were sitting in front of us during the Vandy/LSU game in Hoover this past year and the best insult they could collectively muster was "hey, ummm, LSU guys, umm you're gonna LOSE!" Apparently, "clever" isn't something the college admissions boards look for.

-My experiences with the next two fan bases are much more limited. They're not "nonexistent," but they're not as strong as the fan bases on the top or bottom of these rankings.

9. South Carolina
Realistically speaking, my experience here is too limited for me to appropriately opine on the matter. I think the whole "cockaboose" thing is pretty cool and I really enjoy the Garnet and Black Attack so, huzzah, South Carolina! Furthermore, the fact that your these fans fill their 80,000+ capacity stadium even when they're the bottom of the SEC is incredibly admirable.

8. Kentucky
I have never been in an environment with Kentucky fans in which they gave a shit, meaning that I've never attended a Kentucky basketball game. During the one Kentucky football game I attended I was able to witness one of Coach O's rare SEC victories. I was also able to interact with several of them at Hoover. Most of the fans at the SEC Baseball tournament were the typically quiet friends and family of the players however, sitting in front of us during the Kentucky/Ole Miss game were what looked like crosses between Jared Lorenzen and Kevin Federline: snotty, fat, goatee-having, baggy-shirt wearing Kentuckians. They directed their heckles and taunts at the families of the diamond Rebs, specifically the younger sisters of Cody Overbeck and Brett Basham. Shortly later, their fat asses were escorted from Hoover Metropolitan with Stewie Griffin's sousaphone blaring at their backsides.

-Number 7 isn't so much a rant against the fans as people, but rather it's a rant involving my disgust with a certain behavior of theirs.

7. Auburn
I hate the War Eagle chant. To be fair, it's not necessarily the chant itself (the words, the rhythm, etc) that I detest, but rather the terribly bizarre situations in which you'll hear Auburn fans shout it out. A friend of mine had always made fun of War Eagle saying "they'd likely scream it at funerals," but I never believed it to be that sincere until I attended a wedding between an Ole Miss girl and an Auburn guy once in Montgomery, AL. At the rehearsal dinner, an old guy pulled out an "are you ready" during a toast he was giving. I, along with the other Rebels in attendance, casually rolled my eyes and thought the whole thing was silly. He didn't get his much desired "Hotty Toddy." Yet, a minute later, the same man blurted out a War Eagle to which a few dozen folks, young and old, replied loudly in kind. I was stunned. "They'll literally say War Eagle when and wherever provoked," I thought to myself. It's a like this Scrubs clip. Press play, enjoy the clip, and substitute the word "pickles" with "War Eagle." You'll swear you're on the plains of Alabama.


-These next four schools have the worst affliction of sidewalk fans in the conference. They are able to fill their megastadiums not only with students and alumni, but any asshole who can afford a ticket and an appropriately colored hat.

6. Florida
As has been said, Florida fans wear jorts. There is photographic evidence of this all over the internet so we would be remiss to incessantly harp on this point. While Florida most certainly fits in the category of a team with a large "sidewalk" fan base, their in state rivals of Florida St. and Miami are even guiltier of said offense. This is troublesome because the increasing encroachment of the Northeast (New Yorkers relocating to die retire) on Florida's once Southern soil has brought techno music, hair gel, and protein powders into the mainstream among Gators fans. While not particularly mean-spirited, the Florida fan base is quite a nuisance. I guess that's why a touch of Schadenfreude wells up in your gut when you see things like Auburn's kicker mocking the "Gator Chomp." It's sort of like the rest of us saying "dammit Florida, you're so fucking weird."

5. Tennessee
Orange, orange, orange. You see it everywhere, coating everything. "And it's not like that orange you can stand...it's that 'throw-up' orange. It's not that orange that you can sit with, (it's) that puke, inside of a pumpkin orange." Tennessee fans are everywhere and there's seemingly no end to them in sight when you're trekking through the Volunteer state. They've ruined Rocky Top (yeah, it's a real song) for everyone and, for that, I cannot forgive them. In addition, a lot of their sidewalk fans are a part of the "kooky hill folk" strain of meth users people and are generally quite insufferable.

I will say this though: they're not nearly as hostile or willing to publicly start an argument as our SEC Western division foes. I visit Tennessee often and whether it be the Smokies, Nashville, or Memphis, I'm likely to encounter anywhere between a dozen and a billion Volunteer fans. Yet, I haven't experienced any real hostility to date.

4. LSU
LSU is 4th on this list? How the fuck did that happen? Good God, how things have changed. I have several friends who attend or attended LSU and many of them are well versed people who always serve as good company. Unfortunately, cajuns breed at a rate most rodents would find shocking and neglect to send their offspring to institutions of higher learning (I mean, somebody's gotta man the trawlin' nets). This leads to an LSU following which is comprised primarily of incomprehensible assholes. At last year's Mardi Gras, a coverboy for Guido Douche Elite Magazine found out I was of the Ole Miss persuasion. After receiving hell for a minute or two I naturally assumed him to be an LSU tiger. Nope, not at all. Turns out the guy "went to" a community college. Note, I didn't say "graduate from." I turned to the guy, smugly swigged my beer, and calmly said "community college, huh? I'm a graduate of a four year university." I could see his blood boiling even under his self-applied tanner. Also, those asses who walk around dressed as pimps should be thrown alive onto a flaming pyre.

3. Alabama
The Bear is fucking dead. He died over two damned decades ago. Live in the present for once. Honestly, if you weren't so insane I would really enjoy Alabama fans. Most of the students and alumni of Alabama that I have met were fairly intelligent and rather classy individuals. It's the crimson clad slackjaws coming down from Sand Mountain every weekend that are the problem. I'd swear, some of these folks act as if they have aims of reuniting the ethereal spirit of the "Bahr" with the corporeal body of "Saint Nick" via voodoo charming/ouiji. It's tragic really. Alabama is a good school with a storied football program; yet it is completely ruined by the crazies.

-Nazi Germany didn't hate Gypsies as much as I hate these next two sets of jackasses. They're ignorant, backwards, and illogical; the whole lot of em. Alright, maybe not the "whole" lot, but more of them are bonkers than what would normally be proportionally healthy. Furthermore, their staggeringly high inferiority complexes cause them to annoy us at no end.

2. Mississippi St.
What a nuisance these guys are. I don't think there is another group of football fans outside of College Station, TX who put more emphasis on beating their instate rival than the Mississippi State band of Maroons. If they have a 1-11 season coincide with an 11-1 Ole MIss Rebel season (a fantasy, I know), with their win/our loss involving the exchange of a Golden Egg trophy they would be more than ecstatic. Take, for example, last year's Battle for the Golden Egg. An Ole Miss team which was winless against all SEC foes was defeated by an unlikely fourth quarter comeback. The cowbells clanged, the maroon flags waved, the Walrus' tears flowed, and the owners of YouTube had to slang rock on the side just to cover the new bandwidth costs. I swear, you'd assume these poor bastards had beaten USC in the Coliseum or won an SEC title but, no, that didn't happen. They squeaked by a shitty Ole Miss team. Way to go.

1. Arkansas
Up until a few weeks ago, Arkansas would have been 6th or 7th on this list, maybe. I had little experience with them and it wasn't horrible (or particularly pleasant) at that. I was rather indifferent towards the Razorbacks, just as most of us Rebels were. I found a few of them to be reasonable folk and made sure to mentally segregate them from the ozark-grown corn liquor sector of the fan base. Now, with the circumstances surrounding the dismissal and hiring of Houston Nutt, those lines have blurred. They're all off the reservation, and that's not just us saying this. Literally, everyone on the outside looking in sees just how nuckin-futs these oinkers have become. No wonder Houston Nutt seems to be in dire need of intravenous Xanax supplements. I link all of this Arkansas insanity to an incredibly strong inferiority complex that sees its roots way back when in the old Southwest Conference days. Then, Arkansas' biggest rival was Texas. To Texas, however, they were an afterthought behind Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Once they merged into the SEC, a fake "golden boot" rivalry was formed between the Hogs and LSU. LSU, though, would be quicker to call us Rebels, the Florida Gators, the Alabama Crimson Tide, or the Auburn Tigers rivals than they would the Arkansas Razorbacks. With the Las Cronicas de Boss Hawg unfolding and eventually winding down in Oxford, MS, the Hawgs finally have that rival they've been so anxiously waiting for. Or so they thought. Yes, even to us Ole Miss Rebels the Arkansas Razorbacks will likely forever be a 3rd tier rival. Certainly this season will see an unusual amount of weight placed on the annual SEC West meeting but the tensions will subside sooner rather than later, on our end at least. This may sound silly to some of you, but I've seen sentiments to this effect expressed by Arkansas fans.

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So, where do you think we fit into this? I, of course, am directing this at any and all SEC fans outside of the Ole Miss family. Throw some sweeping generalizations our way and let us know how horrible we are to you with respect to other SEC foes. We'd love to hear it.

Summer Time Blues Explained In Song

Kudos to The Lexington Brothers for putting how we all feel about the months of January-August into song.  Also, sorry for all the youtubery today, but I am running out of ways to pass the time before August 30.

NCAA 09: A Preview of sorts

I recently downloaded the demo for NCAA 09 from XBox Live and, after perusing the game, I'm certain this version of NCAA is going to be one of the best yet. Many of the biggest problems with the 08 version, namely the slower frame rate and inexplicable pauses, seem to have been solved and a ton a new features have been added. These features include an "Online Dynasty" mode and the ability to add custom stadium sounds. Yep, that means Hotty Toddy can be a part of your gaming experience so long as you upload some sort of sound file into the game.

The demo only allows you to play with LSU (Ryan Perrillouxzzr is still on the game) or Ohio State so I wasn't able to gauge how good the virtual Ole Miss Rebels are. However, some screenshots of the roster from who-knows-where should help. In addition, this screenshot should give you an idea as to how the Rebels and the southwest corner of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium will appear.

Being as how I only casually played the demo version, I can't give much more than the aforementioned as a part of my "review," so I'll just leave that up to the professionals. This video should also give you an idea as to how improved this version of NCAA will be.

Also, as many of you know, Darren McFadden, everyone's favorite getter of "dat woooooood," is the cover athlete for the XBox 360 version of the game.
While I most certainly think Darren McFadden is a great choice for the NCAA 09 cover athlete, it would be interesting to see what the cover would look like with an Ole Miss Rebel. Say, I dunno, Jevan Snead maybe.Yeah, like that. I awoke to this gem sitting in my inbox yet no credit was given to the cover's designer. Whoever you are, I'd like to buy you a drink. Seriously. While not legit, it looks pretty damn close and obviously took some time to make.

And while we're on the topic of alternate covers to NCAA 09, Gump for Heisman put together an excellent bunch of alternate covers featuring Alabama, LSU, Ohio State, and others. My personal favorite is:

Yeah, I'm pumped about the 15th. Since I've got nothing better to do, I may end up being one of those hapless souls waiting around WalMart at midnight just to get my hands on a copy.

Ole Miss coverage from ESPN and Sports Illustrated

2 things:

-Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel says the Ole Miss Rebel football team has the fourth greatest potential for a turnaround season.

-ESPN's Chris Low released his rundown of the SEC West on his college football blog. Among other things, he predicts our Rebels to finish 5th in the West and ruminates over the likelihood of Bobby Petrino's hasty departure from Arkansas, à la Louisville and Atlanta.


Read, enjoy, opine, comment, criticize.

PS - I added the OleMissSports.com countdown timer to the blog's header last night. Your thoughts?

Construction Updates

These are pictures taken July 1, 2008 of the baseball stadium expansion and the PoweTron/removal of ArceneauxTron.

A few things to note: they've taken out the seats, the awning has been removed to make way for luxury boxes, and the concrete supporting 1st base side bleachers has been poured. They're also working on expanding right field (you may need to click the picture to see that) and they were getting ready to pour the 3rd base side concrete when I took the photo.

As most of you know, the old screen has been completely torn down. When I took this photo there was no construction going on, but it was obvious that they had done some foundation work to prepare for the PoweTron. I'm pretty excited about both of these construction projects. Sure, they were both a pain in the neck to get the ball rolling on, but now that the ball is rolling I don't think we'll be too disappointed.

Discussion's over, we're gettin' ads!

If they all look like this, of course.

One can either click or pray to Allah for biggification.

On one of the many Rebel message boards out there I saw a plug for Rebel Talk, a new set of Ole Miss forums. When I went to check it out, that's what I saw. How does this happen? I'm not a peruser of pornography, let alone burka-free blasphemy. I don't utilize any sort of online dating service. Hell I'm not even Arabic! Anyway, I thought it was odd and amusing enough to warrant a screenshot.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get ready for my date with Mubhina Al-Musheen tonight. We're going to see WALL-E.


P.S. - I need a fuckin' football fix right away, if you can't tell.

Internets Available in Arkansas: Accessed by Hog Fans Part Deux

With regards to Houston Nutt, Arkansas fans have the demeanor of a jilted ex-lover. They absolutely despise him and want everyone out there to know it. Yet, despite the animosity, they secretly love and miss him. As I am certain many of you have noticed, Arkansas fans of all shapes and (cerebellum) sizes continuously bash Houston Dale Nutt all over the World Wide Web in an effort to let us Rebels know just how foolish we are for hiring coach Nutt after firing Ed Orgeron. "Nevermind the winning seasons, the defeats of #1 ranked LSU and #2 ranked Auburn, the Heisman-worthy performance of Darren McFadden, and the continuous national TV coverage," they cry. HDN may or may not like weather ladies and has an affinity for scaring off whiny little shitstains primadonnas, making him an abominable bastard of legendary proportions, lest ye forget.

This of course is right in line with our constant bombardment of Tennessee and Duke boards to bash Cutcliffe and our online assault of Saints fans over Coach O...

Oh, wait. I forgot, we've got better things to do.

Frankly, I'm fed up with all of this hog slop. I've seen far too much of it and a great deal of it is poorly written, asinine, and lacking real creativity (much like this blog). Through a very brief period of web perusing, I have come up with prime examples of the kind of garbage that has caused me to lose whatever respect I may have had for Arkansas and its fans. I assure you this isn't the best stuff out there. Finding that would take hours of wading through this muck. Rather, I have just assembled a few snippets of Ozark rambling which typify this nonsense. All spelling, grammar, and punctuation is 100% the result of the original author and has not been edited.

Rivals.com and OMSpirit.com periodically clear their cache so shit talkin' from the period just after Nutt's hiring is not available. However, if you just search for these kinds of posts, you can find them.

"McKinneyHog(akathedonkey)" on Rivals writes:

Hey tulsa have you moved to Oxford yet to follow your man love yet? People on hogville really miss you. Not!!!!!!!! I have a degree in Physics not in English.

"Tulsa" is another user (TulsaHawg or something along those lines) who previously called out "The Donkey" on his poor spelling and grammar. Tulsa, wishing The Donkey to cease his poor usage of English in order to better the image of his alma mater, did not mention Houston Nutt or Ole Miss. "Nevermind that," McKinneyHog(akathedonkey) said, as he accused his fellow Hog fan of having "man love" for Houston Nutt so strong that he would move to Oxford to express it. The best/worst part about this post is the "Not!!!!!!!" he places after referencing what I am assuming are similar pissing fights on Hogville.
McKinneyHog(akathedonkey) doesn't understand...
If that's not bad enough, the poor bastard then begins to defend himself against the criticisms of his linguistic "skills" by proclaiming that he was a physics major, as opposed to an English major. I doubt it, McKinney. Y'see, physicists still read and write. Maybe you are a freshman soon-to-be-former physics major, but I doubt you've got a four year degree in anything, let alone physics.


RebelFaithful.com is different in that much of the original HDN bashing is still intact. If you would like to see prime examples of this stuff, you could spend hours reading the threads in their trash talk forum.

MusicCityHog writes:

Pig slop???? Nothing and I mean NOTHING is any slopier than an 0-8 SEC record....I hear that Nutt has brought in some 1 star recruits...I guess you Reb fans, coaches, and 1 star recruits are just so much smarter than the rest of us.

He objected to the notion that his writing was "pig slop" on the grounds of our Rebels poor season being "slopy." I'm not sure what he means by that. Steep maybe? Anyway, this is a textbook example of a red herring fallacy so not only can this asshole not spell, but he is unable to form a logical argument. Also, he criticizes Coach Nutt's supposed inability to recruit. He'll be unpleasantly surprised to see Coach Nutt's recruits, namely Enrique Davis, dance all over their endzone and fuck their women, come October (maybe not, but seriously that would be fucking great).

PiggySmalls writes:

We SUCKED BALLS under nutt unless it was for matt jones dmac or felix

I'm just going to leave the poor capitalization and word usage out of this and simply point out the fallacies of his argument. PiggySmalls asserts that Arkansas would have "sucked balls" without the three biggest stars and offensive weapons on the team over the last seven years. While that is a valid assertion, I doubt one could reasonably fault a coach who counts on his players to win games for him because, get this, that's what they all do. This is akin to people that want to discout Cutcliffe as a head coach because of the Mannings. While I'm not a Cutcliffe apologist, I do feel it absurd to say something like "well, without Eli he would have been shit."

Guitarguy writes:

Blank should keep his idiot mouth shut after sucking Vick off the way he did and then trading Shauve. WHat a dumba$$! HE needs to just get out of football all together and keep his trat shut. I doubt even Cuttcliff would want to coach the Atlanta thugans

So it's Arthur Blank's fault that Bobby Petrino is an Asshole? This nonsense drives me up the wall. I understand how one must be supportive of your head coach, especially your new head coach, but a lot of these Arkansas fans think that Bobby Petrino is justified in his unabashed douchedom. Oh, and by the way, it's Matt Schaub, you tool.


Then, of course, there's YouTube, the globe's largest bastion of idiocy. The comments here are usually quite brief (a phrase or two) yet somehow contain multiple baffling mistakes.

yuipas15975, a commentor on this video, writes:

nutt sucked and he will be worce at ol miss

"Worce?" Seriously?!

kyNtiff, a commentor on the same video, writes:

houston you suck you trader
die!

kyNtiff is actually not misspelling "traitor." She is, believe it or not, an anti-capitalist and hates monetary systems and the exchange or possession of commodities. She hates Coach Nutt for his trade affinity to the extent that she wants him dead! As you can see, this greatly bewilders Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. After reviewing her YouTube profile, she has an interesting affinity for Star Wars and MoTown. Rather hypocritical for an anti-capitalist, don't you think? In all seriousness though, where does she get off calling Couch Nutt a "traitor?" He loved Arkansas! They ran him outta town like some kind of heretic despite him bringing the national spotlight on Arkansas to an extent last seen when Arkansas was a part of the now-defunct Southwestern Conference! Yet he's the traitor? It's not as if I had to search for hours or even minutes to find this drivel. Arkansas YouTubers are quite upfront with their feelings and completely unashamed (or perhaps unaware) of their tendency to butcher their native language.


I'm certain you've all seen this a few dozen times over the last couple of months. My advice to you, don't even worry about their "argument" or "points." Just point out their horrible spelling, grammar, and formatting. Really, you can't lose with this approach. Let 'em have it. You're better than they are and you fucking know it.

"Not now, Ma! Some asshole's talkin' shit 'bout Bobby on the intrawebs!"

Where Do We Stack Up? Quarterbacks

Again, summertime isn't the best time for a Southern sportswriter (can we call ourselves that now? I just did, I guess); anything football related seems a little rushed. However, having almost conquered GTA IV, there won't be much left other than premature football predictions to help me avoid schoolwork and/or my job. That being said, I'd like to continue our line of preseason stack-ups with quarterbacks and hopefully provide you, the readers, with an idea of what to expect come August.

1. Ryan Perrilloux, Jacksonville State University: What's that you say? JSU isn't a member of the SEC West? Well hot damn, I guess Perrilloux should've thought about that before becoming the biggest fuckup in college football in the last 20 years.

2. John Parker Wilson, Alabama: Obviously, you hate to make this pick. JPW is a bitch, pure and simple. Look at the link: this image is likely similar to the one ingrained in JPW's retinas as we speak. He might not sleep at night because of Greg Hardy. However, in what may very well be a 4-way tie for the best QB in the West, his experience can't be ignored.

3. Jevan Snead, Ole Miss: Damn, what a goofy-ass picture. I am a little less confident in Jevan for having laid eyes on it. In picking Jevan as the 2nd best QB in the West, I'm hedging my bets that we might actually win a few football games this year. Think about it though: how many more games would we have won over the past four years with only average QB play? Jevan can almost certainly keep his completion percentage at over 55, and keep the TD/INT ratio at greater than 1. I'd like to think that he could be much better than that, but those numbers still might make him 2nd in the West. Just one request, Jevan: please, please grow an awesome-ass, small town Texas mullet. We at the RSC would be appreciative, and you'll get laid like carpet anyways.

4. Kodi Burns, Auburn: During the 2007 season, Burns enjoyed a surprising emergence as an offensive dual-threat for the Tigers, while aparently sporting a pretty wicked tan that has since worn off... Anyways, Burns has a lot left to prove as a passer in AU's revamped spread offense, but he has the potential to move drastically up or down this list.

5. Casey Dick, Arkansas: Please, sports gods, please. Don't let Casey Dick/Arkansas be decent next year. It just isn't right. One has to be a bit wary of Dick's hidden potential (that'swhatshesaid!!!!@) after a lights-out performance in Arkansas' spring game. Dick might be most limited by whom he's throwing to.

6. Whoever starts for LSU: Again, fate has been on LSU's side for too long. This guy needs to be miserable. I wish we played LSU on opening day, when the new QB is at his greenest.

7. Wesley Carroll, MSU: MSU's offense can't even score on MSU's defense, as evidenced by the 0-0 snoozefest that was State's spring game. The Maroon-White game probably wasn't even the most interesting thing going on in Starkville that day... Chew on that. Carroll isn't awful, but he is a youthful gunslinger type with no major receiving weapons, a depleted line, or an offensive scheme that plays to his abilities.


So there it is: question marks all around for the quarterbacks of the SEC West. Although this group doesn't have a Tebow or a Stafford, top to bottom, this appears to be a pretty good set of signal callers. And maybe, just maybe, Ole Miss will feature the best of the bunch under center.

That's all for this installment of RSC Stack-ups. More to come later, unless something more interesting is going on.

Rebel of the Week: Possession Receiver Edition

It's June. I just graduated and my job does not start until August. I am hung over a lot (such as right now) and have gotten exceptionally good at slacking off. I know I haven't been keeping up with regular R.o.t.W. postings but, seriously, it's June. There is not much going on at all in terms of Ole Miss sports right now so dealing out weekly accolades momentarily requires me to dig into the ever fleeting lump of brain cells which hold my dearest Rebel memories.

This week, after reminiscing on Egg Bowls past and seeing the 1997 game on Turner South's "College Flashback Classics" or whatever that silly shit is called, I knew right away who to dedicate this week to. Cory Peterson, the "deceptively fast possession receiver" of the Tuberville era was known for his sure hands and abilities as a kick returner. The greatest memory of Peterson, of course, comes from his performance in the aforementioned Battle for the Golden Egg. Down by a touchdown in the waning final minutes of the game, the Rebels, led by Stewart Patridge, scored a touchdown. Tommy Tuberville, in one of his wiliest moments, told his players that "overtime is for complete pussies" and decided to go for two.

The play was simple. Patridge's first look would be the slot reciever who would be running a five-step/in route. That slot reciever was Peterson. The catch was made and Mississippi State was defeated, 15-14.

Also, there was this badass fight beforehand.


Congratulations, Cory Peterson! You're our Rebel of the Week!



PS- I know that I shamelessly lifted that image from Rivals. Don't waste your time telling me about it.

A Poll

I installed a poll on the sidebar concerning the hopes you may or may not have for this upcoming football season. The poll will last until noon of August 30, exactly five hours before the last kickoff ever against the Memphis Tigers.

New poll: DO IT!

A Red [REDACTED] Cup History Lesson

According to many folks on the outside looking in, we're a bunch of bigots. Oftentimes, folks in Starkville, Baton Rouge, Tuscaloosa, and other places make said argument. But, are they justified in doing so? Let's look at the facts.

FACT: Ole Miss was integrated before Mississippi State.

FACT: Ole Miss was integrated before LSU.

FACT: Ole Miss was integrated in the same year as Alabama. Granted, Alabama was integrated a whopping two-and-a-half months before Ole Miss in a much less violent (albeit still controversial) fashion.

FACT: According to statistics available through the Princeton Review, only Mississippi State (19%) can boast a ratio of black students higher than ours (13%) among the aforementioned (Alabama has an 11% ratio while LSU stands at 9%). Maybe this statistic is misleading because Mississippi, as a state, has a higher ratio of blacks than both Alabama and Louisiana but it still somewhat demonstrates a point.

This raises a question: why are we the bigots? Oh yeah, the Rebels team name, Confederate flag, Dixie, and Colonel Reb. We wacky Mississippians just can't seem to get that whole "Civil War" thing out of our damn minds! Faulkner was right in that, down here "the past isn't dead. It isn't even past." It is true that Colonel Reb is no longer an official symbol of the university, Confederate flags are not flown in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, and the playing of Dixie is quite limited, but we Rebels are still unashamedly proud of our Southern history and heritage. Really though, how hard are we clinging to our past, relatively speaking? Are we the only ones with vestiges from the Civil War lingering in the back of our collective mind?

The short answer is, of course, no.

While we may be more "direct" with our approach to Southern history, for many of the schools and fan-bases in the former Confederate States to fault us is quite hypocritical. Let's take a few examples I more-or-less thought up off of the top of my head and verified (sorta) with Wikipedia.

First, the North Carolina Tar Heels. The University of North Carolina General Alumni Association provides a nice etymology of the term and reveals that, while the term is quite old, it first gained popularity during the Civil War. The legend has it that a regiment of North Carolina's troops taunted a recently defeated group of Virginians by telling them that they needed to put tar in their heels so they would "stick better in the next fight." The term then became used to describe North Carolinians as a whole, alluding to the idea that the soldiers and people of North Carolina weren't exactly the type to back down in a fight. During the war and thereafter, the term was essentially a badge of honor for North Carolinians. Yet, no one is clamoring for the removal of the Tar Heels moniker.

Next up, Auburn. "War Eagles" were used by forces on both sides of the Civil War as scouts and mascots. While the true origin of Auburn's mascot and battle cry is shrouded in uncertainty, legend has it that the first eagle mascot was a former confederate bird who had been rescued from the battlefield and nursed back to health. When he began flying over the stadium during a defeat of the rival Georgia Bulldogs, he was viewed as symbol of good luck (a much cooler version of Mississippi State's cow story). The War Eagle is obviously reminiscent of the Confederacy, yet is not at all viewed as offensive.

Then there's LSU. These assholes have no room to talk. While I may have been stretching a bit with the aforementioned Civil War references, the history of the Louisiana Fightin' Tigers is well documented. Just check this out. The Louisiana Infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia were called, by Lee himself, the "Tigers" for their ferocity in combat and their ultra neat striped pants. The LSU Tiger mascot is an obvious homage to these bygone times. Toss in Louisiana's racial history (even recent events such as Jena Six or the aftermath of Katrina) and you've got quite a confusing situation. Most of these elements of LSU are hardly ever mentioned whereas one would be hard pressed to find a lot of media coverage about Ole Miss which doesn't mention our tumultuous past. While some people are indeed crying race (eh, not really) on this one, LSU has come nowhere close to the crucifixion upon a cross of political correctness that Ole Miss has had to endure.

Have these schools done anything wrong? Not at all. So why are we so evil? We've really cleaned up our act in the last 10 years or so but yet, many still insist that tailgating in the Grove is akin to Klan rallies. Some may wonder as to what the solution to all of this is. Well, short of hopping the the nearest Delorean and removing all Civil War references from the get-go or, better yet, using a more subtle reference than "Rebels," there's nothing we can do.

That is, of course, excluding the option of telling our would be finger-pointers to fuck themselves, but I'll leave that one up to you.

Post Scriptum: as you can tell, we've got a lot of time on our hands. 75 days until kickoff, bitches.

We stalk you through the intrawebs

If you'll look at the bottom of our right-hand side menu you'll see that we've installed a small hit counter. For every IP address that views our page in a certain time period it registers one hit and adds it to the total visitor count (12,500 as of this morning). Furthermore it enables us to, in shockingly incredible depth, view all sorts of information about our visitors. For example, we can see which posts are the most popular, which websites have been linking to us, and what operating systems our visitors are using among many, many other things.

The best feature of all of this, in my opinion, is the ability to see what Google search terms were used to locate our site. While a few dozen "red[REDACTED]cup" and "red [REDACTED] cup blog" searches a day (just bookmark our site, seriously) constitute the majority of these search terms, we'll get a few really bizarre searches every now and then.

For example:

• [REDACTED] Cup Related searches- Understandably, we get a lot of searches which are related more to plastic drinking containers than to Ole Miss sports. Many of these Googlers are curious as to the nature of the [REDACTED] cup ("how big are [REDACTED] cups" and "how wide is the top of a [REDACTED] cup") whereas others are curious as to the fortunes raked in by the barons of the picnic supplies industry ("[REDACTED] cup heir").
• "orange county choppers"- This Google search yields approximately 3.3 million results. After looking through the first few pages of the results of this search I've seen the official Orange County Choppers website (more than once), Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, and a myriad of other things which shine favorable light on these douche rockets. How many pages this user had to sift through to stumble upon our blog which only mockingly mentions these bikes in passing is beyond me. Furthermore, if those were his search terms, what was this person looking for? All of the information you could want on these motorcycles are on the first few pages of this search. This one simply baffles me.
  
• "[REDACTED] say it ain't so" - Initially, I was going to put this in the first listing. "How does this have anything to do with cups," I asked myself. To see the link between this search and our site, I plugged it into Google and realized that this inquisitor was not curious about plastic cups as I had previously assumed but, rather, he was looking for tablature related to Weezer's "Say it Ain't So." Honestly, I'm rather ashamed that I initially made such a false assumption. I've drunkenly played enough Rock Band to know this song back and forth...on plastic-button guitar, that is.
• "patrick willis virginia marijuana" - When I first saw this, I had a reaction similar to "what the fuck is P Willie doing in Virginia?" It turns out, a fella named Patrick from Willis, Virginia recently plead guilty to felony Marijuana possession charges. While I have nothing against even the stickiest of the icky, I don't see Patrick Willis as much of a weed smoker so this one threw me for quite a loop.
• "top tier sororities at ole miss" - Look's like someone's getting their pre-rush research done! Here's my advice: be a complete whore. Sure, you may not get into Chi Omega acting like that but the boys will fucking love you. That's for damn sure.
• " 'John Cohen' 'Ron Polk' baseball Jewish" - Believe it or not, we're on the first page of results garnered by this Google search. Fortunately, we're on there for making fun of the city of Miami as opposed to anti-Semitic rhetoric. Still, this search is incredibly interesting. Cohen is, believe it or not, the single most common Jewish surname which leads one to rationally conclude that John Cohen is either Jewish himself or of Jewish descent. Why is all of this important? Well, I'm certain you're all aware of Ron Polk's epic hatefest on the hire of John Cohen, but not a lot of us are certain as to the motives of coach Polk for doing so. Cohen is a former player of Polk's at Mississippi State and had a successful coaching career himself in the Southeastern Conference. How could Ron Polk object to that? The only conclusion I can come up with is that Ron Polk is incredibly anti-Semitic. There, you (may or may not have) heard it here first!
• "nathan stanley's mom" - We are literally the first page on the list with these search terms. Honestly, I'm surprised this isn't searched for more often by creepy Rivals.com subscribers and jealous high school classmates of Stanley. Pick it up creepsters, you're letting me down.

An unabashedly non-sports related post

So I picked up Bill McKibben's book 'Deep Economy' the other day. McKibben, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, is essentially a writer on social commentary. 'Deep Economy' is an appeal of sorts to transition the economies of the world into more sustainable, localized entities that can exist in spite of peak oil and all that garbage. Without trying to sound like too much of a hippie liberal guido communist, the cause is something I really believe in. But, to bring us to the point of this post, I believe in that very cause most fervently of all when it presents itself in the form of a good-ass piece of bacon.

I'm talking here about Oxford's newest restaurant, Big Bad Breakfast, operated by John Currence (of City Grocery) and located on North Lamar near Panini and Volta. Big Bad Breakfast (BBB is the logo, and also much easier to type) is the latest local eatery to take advantage of the various quality foodstuffs available right here in north Mississippi. What sort of foodstuffs? Read this damn article, because as evidenced by my lack of an article in a month or so, I’m too lazy to tell you.

Anyways, the Ghost of Jay Cutler and I went to BBB a few days ago to nurse away a light hangover, and we were quite pleased with what we found. Ghost (I don't really call him that, we're not in a damn fighter jet squadron) got the Big Bad Breakfast Platter, from which I shamelessly stole some bacon and hash browns. The bacon is probably the best I've ever had, and has a really nice spicy tobasco flavor to it. I ordered the brandy-spiked French toast for myself, and it was pretty excellent, very light and fluffy compared to most French toast. The coffee was Cafe du Monde chicory, and it, too was stellar.

Anyways, I dig places like L&M's Kitchen, The Ravine, and now BBB for making use of great local produce to serve up some of the best damn food that you can get anywhere. This is my shameless plug: go to BBB. The location isn't one that makes it easy for them, but the food kicks ass, the service was good, and the atmosphere was awesomely corny and southern. Can't recommend it enough.

Post scriptum: I have been kicking around ideas with a couple other RSC guys for posts to pass the time between now and football season. If you want restaurant reviews, local music write-ups, videos of LSU fans injuring themselves, or whatever, let us know. If you don't, we'll just do whatever the fuck we want. Until next time...

Yes, another T-Shirt post

No ma'am, I don't. And neither will you for much longer I imagine. You coach is an asshole. Before all of this Houston Nutt/Bobby Petrino drama occurred, I really had no major qualms with Arkansas. Of coruse, they're an SEC Western Division foe and they've come out on top more often than not lately (the last 4 straight, to be precise) but I never really got riled up about them like I would for LSU or State. Now, Arky has shot up that list simply because of their horrible, horrible, horrible fans. You've likely seen these idiots on our message boards bashing Houston Nutt like some sort of recently divorced 40-something while clamoring on and on about the merits of Bobby Petrino.

Residents of Fayetteville, get this through you head: Bobby Petrino is a fraud, a coward, and a whore. We all know that Houston Nutt has his occassional bouts with the crazies but I'd take crazy-stupid-wacky over callously greedy any day.

Ok, rant's over. I don't know why, but that t-shirt really set me off big time.