He knows, there's still a good bit of 2017 to play through, but he's in the red zone with a comfortable lead. Besides, no year has ever beaten him.
One of the reasons that the Colonel is optimistic about a different new year -- different in priorities, if nothing else -- is that he's going to cleanse his soul of an addiction that has ruled him for decades.
The Colonel is going to kick the Ole Miss Rebel Football habit.
Allow him to be crystal clear on this point: the Colonel will always be an Ole Miss Rebel -- proud that when the choosing time was upon him in the halcyon days of his misspent youth, he chose to go to Ole Miss... instead of college.
It was the third best and second worst decision he ever made.
What was the Colonel's first and second best decisions, you ask? Well, for those of you who don't know the Colonel personally and to whom the answer is not obvious by personal observation -- the first and second best decisions he ever made were Jesus and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, respectively.
The worst decision the Colonel ever made is, frankly, none of your business.
Ole Miss ranks as one of the Colonel's best decisions because the school began the process that marked him as a little different than everyone else. The Marine Corps completed that process, but this missive isn't about the greatest fighting force mankind has ever seen.
This missive regards an institution whose very soul embodies the best and worst of the people from whose state it takes its name.
And, Ole Miss Rebel Football is the physical manifestation of all that is good (and not so good) about Mississippi.
To be an Ole Miss Rebel Football fan is to turn your back on the rest of the world and hike your kilt.
To be an Ole Miss Rebel Football fan is to pine for regular winning seasons, but take solace in the irregular upset of highly favored rivals.
To be an Ole Miss Rebel Football fan is to, with a straight face, walk proudly under the arch of the "Walk of Champions" even though the last football championships were so long ago that their memory exists only in the hearts of octogenarian Rebels.
To be an Ole Miss Rebel Football fan is to warmly and graciously invite opposing fans into your tailgate tent and then hotly and viciously tell them "we're gonna beat the hell out of you."
For the Colonel, his Ole Miss Rebel Football fandom has been a drug with unpredictable and monstrous effects. The highs are the highest and the lows are the lowest.
When the Colonel matriculated at Ole Miss in the mid-seventies Ole Miss Rebel Football was in a post-Archie Manning (and post- Johnny Vaught) hangover that left Ole Miss Rebel Football fans with so very little to cheer for that the only rallying cry of any consequence were the stirring strains of "Dixie" and the sight of tens of thousands of miniature Beauregard Battle Flags snapping to the beat.
By the time the Colonel retired from the Marine Corps, moved back to the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere, and purchased Ole Miss Rebel Football season tickets, the miniature Beauregard Battle Flags had been banned in a spate of political correctness appeasement.
But, they still played "Dixie."
No matter how horrible Ole Miss Rebel Football got (and it got pretty stinkin' horrible) the Colonel and 50 thousand of his closest friends could (after shelling out way too much hard earned greenbacks for seats, parking, and stale concessions) fill the hallowed confines of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and do what no other public collection of people in the world could do -- sing "Dixie."
Without malice. "Dixie" was our love song to a region that was way beyond the rest of the nation in racial reconciliation. Scoff if you must at that notion -- but if you weren't there with the Colonel and 50 thousand of his closest friends (black and white), you just don't know the truth.
Then, a paroxysm of political correctness appeasement once again seized the trembling hearts of the temp-help then poorly filling leadership positions in the University of Mississippi's administration.
"Dixie" was banned.
You could feel the spirit lift from the campus and drift away on a north wind of neo-reconstructionism.
Amidst this spirit-killing de-dixiefication of Ole Miss Rebel Football, the long-standing mascot -- Colonel Rebel -- took a politically correct knife to the back. He was replaced by a cartoon bear. The bear has just recently been replaced by a cartoon landshark.
What's next?
If the current trajectory continues, the nicknames "Ole Miss" and "Rebel" will eventually succumb to the fascism of political correctness.
Oh, and did the Colonel mention that the University of Mississippi -- a state-funded, public institution -- no longer flies the flag of the state?
What's next? Change the name of the institution, because the very name "Mississippi" offends the sensibilities of a very vocal and very small minority?
Will the flag of the United States of America slide down the pole in front of the Lyceum one evening, never to fly again, because it also offends the sensibilities of that very vocal and very small minority?
Here's a fact you can take to the bank. The Colonel, and his money, will no longer be a party to fascism. He'll no longer shell out way too much of his hard earned cash for seats, parking, and stale concessions, to sit in a half-empty stadium and have his tinnitus-ravaged hearing assaulted by bigoted and rapine rap.
The Colonel is kicking the habit. He will, however, forever loudly and proudly be an Ole Miss Rebel.
Even when the political correctness fascists get around to outlawing that self-identification.
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