Shocked and Delayed

The Colonel begs permission to interrupt your holiday festivities (Merry Christmas, by the way) with this important announcement:

December 31, 2019 is not (the Colonel says again, NOT) "the last day of the decade."

The Colonel knows this comes as quite a shock to many of you recovering from other shocks received lately.

Some of you were shocked to find that, despite the fulfillment of your congressperson's pre-inaugural impeachment promise, Donald Trump is still ensconced in the Oval Office.  Understanding just a little bit of our Constitution would have insulated you from that voltage.

Some of you were shocked to see that a college football team, from another state, to which you rabidly claim allegiance -- even though you've never been within 50 miles of the campus, wear a Walmart-bought affinity T-shirt, and proclaim "We whupped y'all!" after every win -- didn't make the play-offs this year.  Don't worry, Bama Bandwagon Boors, there's still a few LSU T-shirts left at your local Wally World -- Chinese sweatshops are crankin' 'em out faster than you can ask, "Siri, where is Baton Rouge?"   

Some of you (like the Colonel his own self) were shocked to see that Ole Miss, whose administration has been so active in the erasure of any name, monument, or tradition that even remotely infringes on the tender feelings of whiny social justice warriors and tyrannical political correctness priests, would, after dismissing one coach for "indiscretions" and his successor for "failure," hire a new coach for whom those characterizations are career hallmarks.  

The Colonel will admit that he is responsible for his own exposure to the voltage in this case -- he started to care about Ole Miss again.  Bad habits are the hardest to break. 

Some of you were shocked (as was the Colonel) to hear that the new "sixth" branch of the military services -- the Space Force -- would fall under the Department of the Air Force.  Hello?!?  Anybody whose ever watched an episode of Star Trek knows that Space belongs to the Navy.

Plus, the Department of the Navy already has experience with managing rouge elements it knows absolutely nothing about.

Looking at you, fellow jarheads.


Fear not, gentle readers, the Colonel is getting to the point of this prattle.

In introduction of that point, a history lesson.

The year was 1999.  As that year drew to a close, breathless (and brainless) commentators, prognosticators, and charlatans began an ever-increasing drum beat of retrospection and prediction regarding the impending end of the millennium.  There was just one little problem.

They were a whole year early.

The second millennium -- the second set of one thousand years, as established and counted by Christian societies (and a Roman emperor) --  actually ended on the 31st of December in the year of our Lord 2000.  January 1, 2001 was the first day of the new millennium.  

Shocking!

Here's even more shocking news:  Each decade ends in a year with the numeral 0 (not 9) at the end.

The Colonel knows that some of you are skeptical of his claim.  So, try this.  Take out ten one dollar bills from your wallet and place them on a clean, flat surface proximal to the reach of your arms.  Grasp the stack of bills in one hand and count them out as if you were paying yourself one dollar for each year you lived this decade.  One dollar for 2011, one more for 2012, and so on.  When you get to 2019, how many one dollar bills will you have counted out?

C'mon, this is easy math -- even for the Colonel.  Doesn't even require taking off your shoes.

The answer is: NINE.

"But, but..., Colonel," you argue, "you started the decade at 2011.  That's a trick!"

Yes, yes he did. And, no it's not a trick, because the first year of the present decade was 2011.

Okay, the Colonel knows this is hard to take at face value.  So, let's try this experiment with the same parameters, but in a different setting.

Let's imagine that we are shepherds working on the outskirts of a wide spot in the road south of Jerusalem, called Bethlehem.  We had a life-changing experience ten years ago, and we have accounted for the passing of the years since by numbering them as each began.  For example, one shepherd says to the next, "We are in the first year AA (after angels)".  We are at the beginning of the tenth year since that startling night.  What year is it?

For the LSU and Bama grads struggling with this, there's a not-so subtle clue in the eighth word of the second to last sentence above.

For the rest of you, congratulations for saying the correct answer, "Ten" out loud and startling those around you (even though your shame if caught reading the Colonel's drivel probably means you're sitting somewhere alone).  

Now let's assume that we shepherds only get paid at the end of each decade.  The not-so bright shepherd (you know, the one wearing the "Feel the Bern" tunic) announces at sundown of 31 December 09, "See y'all (well..., he is from south of Jerusalem) later.  I'm headed to town to collect my wages."  He shows back up at camp at sunrise on 1 January 10 after having made a trip to town to see the boss and complains bitterly to the rest of the lads (and lassies) that "I worked the whole decade of the 00's for that scrooge and he only paid me for nine years!"  

So, what do the rest of us do?  Does the old retired centurion stand up and bellow, "Follow me boys (and girls)!  We're on strike!  Let the boss tend his own stinkin' sheep!"   

Or, do we shake our heads at the utter stupidity of the members of the DSJ (Democratic Socialists of Judea) and go back to poking sticks in the fire?

See, there is no year 0 in our modern calendar.  It begins as 1 A.D. (or C.E.).  So, in the first decade A.D., only 9 years had elapsed at the end of 9 A.D.  In the first century A.D., only 99 years had elapsed at the end of 99 A.D.  In the first millennia A.D., only 999 years had elapsed at the end of 999 A.D.  In the second millennia A.D., only 1999 years had elapsed at the end of the year 1999.  

So, the current millennium did not begin on 1 January 2000.  It actually began on 1 January 2001.  And, the current decade did not begin on 1 January 2010, but 1 January 2011, and will not end until midnight on 31 December2020 / 1January 2021. 

Here's where the Colonel has to admit that what he just told you may not be 100% true.

For about 1600 years the western world marked the passing of days and years using a calendar commissioned by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.  This Julian Calendar began each new year on 1 January, but during the medieval period western Europe, Britain in particular, began to begin each year in the middle of March (for various reasons associated with either solar cycles or religious holiday associations).  The Julian Calendar did account for the scientific fact that the earth revolves around the sun every 365 and almost a quarter days (365.24 to be more exact), by adding an extra day to February every four years.   

The problem with this quick fix was that over centuries that .01 day (roughly 11 minutes) error added extra days to the actual count of days elapsed.  By the middle of the 16th Century A.D., that .01 day error had badly un-synced the human calendar and actual solar calendar.   A calendar commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII (no relation to the Colonel) in 1582, attempted to correct the flaw in the Julian Calendar.  The Gregorian Calendar included a more accurate calculation that added an extra day to February in years divisible by four...

...unless the year is also divisible by 100.

The Colonel ain't makin' this up, and it gets even more complicated.

If the leap year is divisible by 100, but also divisible by 400, the leap day is added anyway.  

Makes the Colonel want to watch "Catch 22" and "Monty Pithon's the Holy Grail" again.  For the umpteenth time each...

Viewed as a nefarious "Papist Plot" in many quarters, the Gregorian Calendar was not uniformly adopted across the western world.  By the time Britain (and her far flung colonies) got around to adopting the Gregorian Calendar (nearly two centuries after its introduction), the British Empire's calendar was out of sync with the rest of the western world by nearly two whole weeks.  

An act of Parliament adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the British had to jump from 2 September to 14 September to adjust to it.  

The Colonel kids thee not.  

While lots of British subjects were unhappy with the loss of those 11 days for a variety of reasons that you can well imagine, Ben Franklin is reported to have remarked favorably about the idea of going to bed on the night of the 2nd of September and not having to get out of bed until the morning of the 14th.  

The Colonel kinda knows the feeling -- when he hit the rack last night he was 22.  When he woke up this morning, the Colonel was four weeks shy of his 64th birthday.

And, if you think that the calendar we are using today (it's the Gregorian Calendar, by the way) is keeping perfectly modern track of time..., well..., you're wrong.   The eggheads that make their living studying the numbers tell us that, if we keep the Gregorian Calendar until then, by the year 4909 (in which the Colonel might not be still be pestering you with his posts) a twenty-six second error per year will result in the Gregorian Calendar being one full day ahead of the solar calendar.
    
Anyway...,  the Colonel's bottom line, regardless whether we've kept track of the actual count of days elapsed since the inception of the Julian Calendar (and it's minor Gregorian modification), is that all of you breathlessly celebrating that "last" this and that "of the decade" are a year early.

The Colonel thinks he'll settle the matter in his own life by burning all the calendars within reach of his frost-nipped and tendinitis-ravaged finger tips.

Oh, and a year-long nap might be in order, as well.

See you next decade!        


                     

Kicking the Habit

2018 is shaping up to be a much different year for the Colonel.

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.               

Sleepless in Oxford

The Colonel knew what he signed up for when he joined the Marines.  

His mother was nearly apoplectic and his career Air Force NCO dad couldn't decide whether he was more upset that his son was going into the Marines or that he was going to be a [expletive deleted] officer.  They, and everyone else in the Colonel's world, opined with amazing foresight that serving in the Marine Corps would be hard at first and then get worse.

So, the Colonel knew what he was getting into.

Nobody, however, warned the Colonel about the absolute gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, hate-inviting, head-in-hands, cap-throwing anguish that would attend his life every football season as an Ole Miss Rebel.  

Thanks to his aforementioned career Air Force dad's assignments, the Colonel spent little time in Mississippi (his parents' home state), and knew precious little about Mississippi -- other than lots of doubled consonants.  There was that fifth grade year ('66 -- '67) in Columbus, while his dad went to fight the communists in Vietnam -- but, other than that, he had no clue.  He knew more about Morocco, Panama, and other foreign places (like Arkansas and Louisiana), than the 'Sip.  He was 18 and a stranger in a strange land when the Colonel's folks dropped him off in front of his dorm in Oxford.  

Ole Miss greeted the Colonel like something foreign on the bottom of a penny loafer.  Ole Miss was old money, southern aristocracy, and partying preppies.  None of which matched the Colonel's pedigree.  To say he didn't fit is like saying you shouldn't put ketchup on a T-bone.

Duh.

And, yet...  even though Ole Miss didn't love him, the Colonel fell in love with Ole Miss.  

It wasn't love at first sight -- more like love at long association.

And, it was a tumultuous, if not torrid, affair, punctuated with Rebel yells and early fall mornings cutting through the Grove for that 8 o'clock class, alone on his path and in his thoughts, the greatest of which was why in the name of all that is righteous did he let his academic advisor sign him up for a 5 semester hour math class that met at 8 in the morning every... day... of... the... week.

An 8 o'clock 5 semester hour math class should have been enough warning to send the Colonel running for his life.  That particular first semester freshman hell was, it turned out, harbinger of the nature of his life-long, love-hate relationship with Ole Miss.

And, speaking of harbingers...  Ole Miss football in the mid-seventies was atrocious.  The first season of games attended by the Colonel was painful.  

Eleven on a scale of one to ten painful.

Root canal by a recent dental-school grad painful.

Bumper hitch ball - shin collision painful. 

Listening to Donald Trump pa...  

You get the picture.

Rebel football was so bad in 1974 that South Carolina beat us 10-7 on our homecoming.

Why is that so bad you ask?

South Carolina won just one football game that year...

Then, just when the Colonel finally resigned himself to muddling in the mire of Ole Miss football mediocrity, the Rebels would pull off a stunning upset (Alabama and Georgia in '76, Notre Dame in '77); playing football like they actually knew how to play to win.

The last ten years -- since the Colonel returned to, and re-retired on a slice of country paradise just north of the campus..., and bought season tickets -- have been particularly painful.

There have been spectacular wins against hated rivals and complete collapses against non-conference patsies.  The emotional roller coaster that is to be an Ole Miss Rebel is not for the faint of heart.

Luckily, the Colonel, as has been pointed out by many close to him, has no heart...

Still, the Colonel gets entirely too wrapped up in the outcome of a game played by a bunch of teenagers.  So much so that most Saturday nights during football season, he doesn't sleep.

Not one wink.

Win or lose, late into the wee hours of Sunday morning, the Colonel will toss and turn, replaying the game's turning points.  It's stupid, the Colonel knows.  But, he ain't smart and you can't make him...    

Tonight, a hated rival -- LSU -- comes to town.  Nothing epitomizes what it is to be an Ole Miss Rebel more than Rebel Nation's absolute and abject hatred for LSU.  Tonight, the Colonel will pay way too much to park way too far away and hike way too long to climb way too high to his season-ticket seats for which he pays way too much of his hard-earned pension to yell way too hard for a bunch of teenagers in whom he invests way too much of his emotional energy.

In all probability -- if his long history with Ole Miss is any indication -- the Colonel will walk a couple of miles back to his car tonight, dejected, frustrated, and swearing that this is the last year he's gonna subject himself to this insanity.

Then, again... we might just win.

Either way, the Colonel won't sleep much tonight.          

      

              

Own It

Great pinnacles of success and fame all too often have their co-dependent depths of failure and disgrace.

And, often, the faster the rise in prominence, the more dramatic the fall from grace.

A good man and a good coach (not a perfect man, nor a perfect coach) fell from grace last week.  There, but by the Grace of God, go all men.  And, as with all men in disgrace, this good man has no one to blame for his fall but himself.

But, then again, maybe that's not completely true.  Maybe some of the fault for a good man's tumble from a pedestal of prominence belongs to those of us who put him there.

We shine glory on public personas, in particular (but by no means exclusively) winning college football coaches.  We, not so much they themselves, build cults of personality around the men who lead our favorite teams.   The coach becomes a mythic being, bigger than the team he leads.  We follow his every utterance, yearn for a glimpse of him in public, seek his signature on a souvenir, cheer the announcement of his name.  

We Ole Miss Rebels made Hugh Freeze the celebrity he became.  

We own the broken man that he is today.

Oh, we can claim to have been misled, hoodwinked, sold a bill of goods.  But those claims are as empty as the Gatorade bucket after a big win.

Hugh Freeze was, is, just a man.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  But we made him more, encouraged his hubris, winked at his feigned humility, and, ultimately, abetted his transgressions.  And, now, Rebel Nation is angrily reducing a good man (not a perfect man) to something less.   

Own it Rebel Nation.  Don't wash the stink of it off of yourself until your contrition is complete.  Don't pretend to be shocked at behavior that should not surprise even the most morally-greased long-distance swimmer in the bitter cold cesspool of human nature.

Hugh Freeze didn't create by himself the bubble of personal perfection that surrounded him like a glowing aura.  He had lots of help.  

Rebel Nation help.  

Mississippi help.  

And, the good Lord knows we Mississippians have a near mortal headlock on the wearing of clean clothes over dirty bodies, presenting ourselves as upright in the daylight while crawling on our bellies in the dark.  

Hypocrisy is our birthright. 

So, let's not kick any harder at the prostrate form of a good (not perfect) man fallen from grace than we would want ourselves to be kicked.

Oh, and this sordid story is not through in its telling anytime soon.  Not by a long shot.  This is the gift that keeps on giving for sports writers and other journalistic moralizers.  This stick will be poked into our eyes for years to come.  We should be inured to that -- there are plenty of other sticks to the eyes we Mississippians have suffered, and will continue to.  

And just when we think the wound has healed enough to remove the bandage of public shame, the scab will be ripped off by the next good (not perfect) man, whose edifice of our adulation we have built on the shifting sands of unreasonable expectation, comes tumbling disgracefully down.  

Own it, Rebel Nation.   We are Ole Miss.                    

Bulldog Summer

A right of passage changes one's definition.

Forty years ago this month, the Colonel was headed for Quantico, Virginia, with 250 other NROTC (Marine Option) midshipmen, and entrance into a crucible of physical and mental heat and pressure.

Three years previous, the Colonel had arrived on campus as a freshman to begin his matriculation at the cultural epicenter of the New South.  The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), and the little town of Oxford which hosted it, were hardly a decade removed from actual occupation by federal troops sent to quell a redneck insurrection surrounding the entrance of James Meredith.  Ole Miss was also a little over a decade removed from the heyday of Rebel football in which the boys in red and blue had dominated the SEC and won National Championships.

The shock-waves of that era, like the fading roar of a storm-pushed wave crashing on a beach, still echoed on campus.  Their effects were everywhere, both physical and psychological.  The columns of the university's administration building -- the Lyceum -- still bore visible marks of the fusillade of rifle fire directed at the federal marshals holed up inside.  Sent to usher Meredith on his integration march through the doors of the Lyceum, those feds were now pinned down behind them, and would be until troops of the 101st Airborne Division arrived.

Meredith was an echo heard but little discussed.

Football greatness, on the other hand...

The last great Ole Miss quarterback for a generation, Peyton and Eli's daddy, was now playing for the 'Ain'ts.  From the heights of gridiron glory the Rebels had fallen fast and hard.  The fall of 1974 would show just how hard: a 3 and 8 season was punctuated by a homecoming loss to South Carolina.  The Gamecocks went 1 and 10 that year.  But Rebel nation believed it was only a season away from renewed glory atop the polls.  One season turned into forty before that happened, but that isn't important right now.

During his first years at Ole Miss, the Colonel was awash in the reverberations of past generations.  And, it wasn't all about Ole Miss.

He had been offered, and had accepted, a full-ride NROTC scholarship out of high school -- a Marine Corps specific NROTC scholarship, that would result in a commission as a jarhead second lieutenant upon his accomplishment of a bachelor's degree.  Oh, and there was one more requirement...

The Colonel would have to survive "Bulldog" -- the Marine officer corps' version of basic training.

Marine option NROTC midshipmen went (and still go) to Bulldog the summer between their junior and senior years.  Every day of those preceding three years had some easily detectable gravitational wave emanating from a Marine camp on the shores of Chopawamsic Creek -- the home of the Marine Corps' Officer Candidates School.  Every day was spent in some sort of preparation for Bulldog -- the seniors who had just returned from their crucible and the Marine officers and NCOs on staff made sure of it.

So, layered over the Colonel's undergraduate studies toward a degree in Political Science and History, were three coats of paint -- red and blue, black and white, and scarlet and gold.  

Everywhere on campus were reminders of the history of Ole Miss, dating back to its founding in 1848 -- statues, plaques, and bullet holes. The red and blue, and black and white.

Everywhere in the Colonel's sphere of fellow travelers on the road to military service, and the hard men preparing them, were reminders of the history of the Marine Corps dating back to its founding in 1775 -- stories, plaques, and bullet wounds.

The ultimate objective was pinning on gold bars and becoming an officer of Marines.  Qualifying for that commission required a degree, so a liberal arts education was a by-product for the Colonel.  But, if truth be told in the Colonel's case, the layer of scarlet and gold was thick and smothering, nearly to the detriment of all else.  

The intermediate objective, one of the pigments in the scarlet and gold, during the first three years of the Colonel's matriculation at the Harvard of the South (Harvard, by reciprocal agreement, refers to itself as the "Ole Miss of the North") was preparation for the summer of '77 and an appointment with a cadre of hard men (combat veterans all) who would provide the heat and pressure for a crucible and right of passage. 

Semester studies may have temporarily satisfied examination requirements for transitory classes, but countless more hours than those were dedicated to steeling mind, body, and spirit for a summer of scarlet and gold hell.                

The mission of the Marine Corps' Officer Candidates School (OCS) is:  "to educate and train officer candidates in Marine Corps knowledge and skills within a controlled and challenging environment in order to evaluate and screen individuals for the leadership, moral, mental, and physical qualities required for commissioning as a Marine Corps officer."

That mission statement contains the phrase "controlled and challenging environment."  From a candidate's perspective, while certainly "challenging," the environment of Bulldog was anything but controlled.  Particularly the first few weeks.  "Chaos" is a better word.

Chaos, heat and pressure, and very little sleep.

But, and credit goes to those who prepared him, the Colonel thrived in the chaos, heat and pressure, with very little sleep.

In August, when he, and the four others who had gone to Quantico with the Colonel, strode back onto Ole Miss' campus, it was as a changed man, now defined in a way only a few others were.  He thought he was ready to take on the world.

In a way he was.  In a larger way, he had no earthly idea what the next three decades would throw at him.  

But, Bulldog was always the touchstone.                 

Different Year; Same Old Song

The Colonel has never been one to ascribe particular emphasis to the concept of a "new year."  Adding a sequential numeral to the current calendar track of Earth's revolution around the Sun -- arbitrarily offset as it is from the seasonal planetary wobble track -- just seems such an inane reason for hope, let alone celebration.  

Ebullient wishes of "Happy New Year" and solemn signatory to revolutionary personal resolutions based on the beginning of a dozen segments of an archaic numeration of the passage of planetary rotations, each loosely connected to the cyclical passage of the largest satellite through Earth's shadow, seems -- dare the Colonel say it -- idiotic. 

Seriously.  Why do we do it?

It really is just an arbitrary cause celebre.  But, the Colonel guesses that if you need a reason to party, the beginning of a new calendar year is as good a reason as any.

Still, if one is hard up for a reason to party, why not celebrate New Month?  Why wait a whole year to wish others health and prosperity, to resolve change of behavior, or to countdown in eager anticipation of something entirely new than the moment before.

Heck, why not celebrate New Week?  Well, the Colonel guesses many people do -- partying on New Week's Eve (Saturday night).

But, the Colonel's original point is that there is placed, in his not so humble opinion, far too much import to the midnight demarcation between the last day of December and the first of January. 

Now, the Colonel will admit in this year's case that there is ample motivation to place it firmly in the soon-forgotten rear-view.  The year 2016 hasn't been a banner year as far as years go.  Oh, it started off rosely enough -- the Colonel's Ole Miss Football Rebels appeared in (and won) the Sugar Bowl for the first time since Eli's  and Peyton's (aka Traitor Manning) daddy was slinging the pigskin in red and blue.  But, shortly thereafter the year took a nosedive.

There were a few personal mountain tops -- chief among them celebration (with a two-week Mediterranean cruise) of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's 40th anniversary of wedded bliss with the Colonel -- but, the lows far outweighed the highs.

Actually, it's better said to say "the losses far outweighed the gains."

By the time the year began to wane, the Colonel had lost a promising young grand nephew, one of his domino playing buddies, and the finest father-in-law for which a man could ask.  And more potential personal losses are mounting up.

But, to look to a new calendar year for relief of the grief of the old is empty-headed at best.  

Grief is a constant in the condition of man.  There will always be losses, until the day one becomes the loss of another.  A new calendar year will not bring back lost joy. 

So, party hardy this coming Saturday night, if it brings you happiness.  The next day will not bring you any more joy than the previous.  Neither days, weeks, months, nor years -- cold calendar calculations at best -- bring joy.  

One's spiritual condition is not calendar dependant.  It is foolhardy to place hope for happiness in the mere passage of time. 

Sometime toward the end of the next calendar month the Colonel will complete yet another air-breathing trip around the sun.  Don't get him started on the inanity of celebrating birthdays...     
     

       

Glad Cad

Forty years ago this summer, the Colonel was halfway through his undergraduate studies at Ole Miss.  

Well..., the Colonel uses the word "studies" in the most general and non-descriptor fashion possible.  As the Colonel's college transcripts will attest, he was not exactly the model student.  Unless by model student you mean that he spent the vast majority of his matriculation at the "Harvard of the South" participating in every activity imaginable outside of actually studying.

And, the Colonel doesn't really claim to have attended a college -- he went to Ole Miss.  There is a vast difference.

But, that's not important right now.

What is of the greatest import with regard to this post is the fact that the most fantastically amazing change was about to take place in the Colonel's life.  He was about to get hitched for life with the love of his life -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda.   

There are those among the spare readership of the regularly irregular posts on this blog who will ask, "I thought hunting and fishing was the love of the Colonel's life?"

Those folks know him -- just not as well as they think.  It is true that the Colonel had a well-worn habit of introducing himself with, "hunting and fishing is my life -- the Marine Corps is my hobby...and, I'm passionate about my hobby."  But, that was a half-truth, at best...

Hunting and fishing was the Colonel's first love to be sure.  But the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda quickly and easily supplanted the pursuit of fin, feather, and fur.

Some among the readership of this blog -- you faithful few with nothing else of any measurable worth to do with your time but to spend it perusing posts hereon -- will ask, "I thought Ole Miss football was the love of the Colonel's life?"

Ah, but there is another layer of love, which, when peeled away, reveals the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda at the center of the Colonel's passion.  Make no mistake there aren't many things that will quicken the cold, flinty cinder that passes for his heart more than the melody of "Dixie" -- if buried not-so secretly under another more politically correct tune -- as the Colonel's Rebels take the field.

Yet, more often than not, in his lengthening life, the Colonel's Rebels have disappointed; let him down; crushed the cold, flinty cinder that passes for his heart; pushed him downtrodden out the exits; left him more bitter and further hating Bama and LSU.

In all the Colonel's years with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- approaching a half-century -- she has never let him down.

The Colonel wishes that he could say that he has reciprocated -- but it just ain't so.  The Colonel is a cad.

He's a glad cad.

Glad that the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda saw something in the Colonel that the Colonel himself couldn't see.

Glad that when God said to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, "that knucklehead over there is the one" she followed His direction just as she has every day since -- providing the Colonel a rock of faith in his life against which every storm imaginable has crashed without impact.  

Glad that out of the 3.5 billion women on this planet, the Colonel found the only one who understands him, and loves him despite that understanding.  

Forty years ago, the Colonel and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda decided they couldn't wait any longer to become man and wife.  In spite of all of the advice to wait until he graduated, they decided to dive headlong into the matrimonial morass -- clueless and unafraid.  They set a date -- July 31, 1976.  And, they kept it. 

If he could go back, the Colonel would do it all over again.

Well..., maybe he's try to limit the times he made her cry...      

Calling Out Rebel Nation

The announced attendance was just north of sixty thousand, but if you can prove there were any more than two-thirds that number actually in the stands at Vaught-Hemingway Saturday to watch Ole Miss take on New Mexico State, the Colonel will give you a free swing at his scowl and jowl-shrouded jaw and give you fifteen minutes to drum up a good crowd to watch you take your best shot.

The Florida Gators chomped down hard on the Colonel's Rebels' special season hopes last week and their teeth did more deflating than the ball-boy in the Patriot's locker room.  On the way to Gainesville last week, Rebel Nation was feeling the rare high of a top five ranking and liking their chances to represent the SEC West in the title game.  Late Saturday night, a week ago, those dreams crawled mauled from the Swamp and limped back to Oxford like the remains of Pickett's division retreating from Cemetery Ridge.

But, holy apocalypse, Batman, the world didn't end.  The season's not over.  The Rebels are still 5 and 1.  A trip to Atlanta is still possible...  

...might be to play in the Peach Bowl, but, the good news is TCU will likely not get left out of the final four this year and take out their frustrations on us, again.   

Rebel Nation is quite possibly the most cynically fickle collection of fair-weather fans in the history of collegiate sport.   Our football team is playing some of the best ball that has been seen here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere since Johnny Vaught won four National Championships, and we can't be bothered to show up and cheer for 'em on a glorious fall day with which God specifically blessed Oxford.  

Yeah..., we were pouty-face disappointed our boys didn't defend their there-to-fore undefeated season against Florida any better than the French army defended Paris in the summer of 1940.  And, yeah..., it was a truly terrible New Mexico State team that made the trip from several thousand square miles of kitty litter to several thousand square miles of kudzu to be the Homecoming hors d' oerves.   

But, true fans SHOW UP.   And, true fans STAY.

Okay, the Colonel will admit that he left the Tennessee-Martin game early.  But, the Colonel is old and it was 157 and 1/2 degrees in the stands.  He was sweating like an old, bald Marco Rubio, and grandson #2 had a belly ache that might have had something to do with rapid ingestion of four pounds of cotton candy while sitting in a sauna.

The Colonel will have you know, however, that he and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda stayed to the end of game yesterday -- even if it was about as exciting as a Spring Game.

The Colonel takes that back.  Seeing Archie Manning catch a football thrown up to his sky box from the student section was pretty exciting.  Students caught a ball that the PAT net didn't and the most noise all game came from the game of "keep the ball away from security."  Archie threw the ball back to the students -- wonder who it was that was last person to catch a pass from a Manning in the Vaught...       

Speaking of Archie...  Rebel Nation loves to recount the glories of his tenure under center, and how fans faithfully filled the stands to watch his exploits.  We fail to remember, however, that Mr. Manning's Rebels only won seven games his senior season.

Of course, playing with a broken arm might have contributed to the loss column significantly, but you get my point.

Or, maybe you don't.  The Colonel knows there are at least a few readers of his barely literate swill that are rabid Bama Bandwagon Boors, or equally rabid and just as pitiable bandwagon LSU fans, and are so used to win-filled seasons (even if you won't admit that is the only reason you are a Bama or LSU fan) that you can't conceive of not going to a game if you had season tickets.    

At any rate, loyalty ranks right up there with integrity in the Colonel's character estimation.  

See you in the Vaught, Rebel Nation.       

Fumbles, Interceptions, and Breaks

Saturday was one of the longest days of the Colonel's life.

There have been longer days.

The last few days of shipboard deployments come to mind -- sailing slowly westward across the Atlantic, crossing time zones and setting the clock back an hour every other day.  Time truly warps at sea -- the Colonel remembers looking at his watch and the time would be 0700.  Eight hours later he would glance at his wrist and the time would be 0705.

Those were longer days.

Still, Saturday seemed to stretch laconically, each minute bending time and winding the Colonel's dysenteric bowels into ropes of tension so tight he could taste the friction.

Many of you, faithful readers and wasters of rod and cone time, may have missed the fact that there was a college football game of some import played in a small college town in Alabama Saturday night.  The Colonel's Rebels played the Tide. 

And, because Bama Bandwagon Boors comprise one of the largest demographics in the South (fairweather football fans who couldn't find the city of Tuscaloosa on a map of Tuscaloosa County, yet use the term "we" incessantly when talking about Alabama football), the game was reserved by ESPN for it's prime time slot -- kick-off at 9:15 ET.

9:15 ET in the PM.

That's a few hours past the Colonel's bedtime!

Has the Colonel mentioned that Saturday was a long day?

The Colonel tried everything he could think of to make time pass quickly.  

He asked the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda if she had any small projects that needed doing.  The Colonel's Lady maintains a list of "quick" projects.  Her definition of the term "quick" and the Colonel's definition vary wildly -- one of Miss Brenda's "quick" projects can easily consume the better part of a growing season.

The Colonel's best friend rattled off half a dozen projects from memory and the Colonel set off in pursuit of rapid time passage.

Forty-five minutes later, all of the quick projects on Miss Brenda's list were completed.

Awww, Come On!

The Colonel tried taking a nap.  He fell into a deep slumber, dreaming fitfully of fumbles and interceptions.  

Ordinarily one of the Colonel's naps would make ole Mister van Winkle jealous.

Five minutes after assuming the supine position, the Colonel woke refreshed and wide awake.  

The Colonel could continue to bore you with the minute by minute   minutiae with which he attempted to abbreviate an interminable day, but he will be merciful instead.  Suffice it to say that by sundown, the Colonel was exhausted.  

The only thing keeping him awake was the gnawing reality in the acid-filled pit of his cast-iron stomach that no matter how good of a football team the Colonel's Rebels put on the field that night; no matter how well they played; no matter how masterfully the coaching staff orchestrated alignments and assignments; there was just no way Ole Miss was going to escape T-town undefeated.

It was going to take all of the above AND take more breaks than a worker on a union contract.

Ole Miss doesn't get breaks against Alabama.

Any Ole Miss fan (and, we are admittedly a small band) can recite year by year, game by game, quarter by quarter, more than a century of the breaks going in favor of Alabama.  

To be sure, most years Alabama was clearly the better team -- but this year...  This year... felt different.  Last year was miraculous, beating top-ranked Bama at home; and magical, tearing down the goal-posts and parading them through Oxford.  But, this year's team looks even better than last years.

Still, Saturday night's game was in Bryant-Denny stadium, where Ole Miss had won only once before.  Visiting teams don't get breaks in Bryant-Denny.  They get broken in Bryant-Denny.

But, as the Colonel watched in stunned unbelief punctuated with manifold losses of military bearing, the breaks fell lightly into the Rebels' outstretched hands like manna from heaven. A recovered fumble here, an interception there, and the boys in powder blue helmets had a two-touchdown lead.

In the second quarter...

In Tuscaloosa...

But, time and the Alabama Crimson Tide wait for no man -- they came storming back and the Rebels took a flimsy 17-10 halftime lead into the visitors' dungeon.

The Colonel has seen this game countless times before.  Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory is a Rebel tradition.

Someone forgot to let Freeze and the boys in on that particular Rebel tradition.

The score was 30 to 10 late in the third quarter and the Colonel was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. With good reason.  Alabama hadn't gotten any breaks all game -- they were way overdue and way underpaid.

With time slowed to an inexorable crawl late in the waning minutes of the game, the Rebels clung to a slim 43 to 37 lead.  Ole Miss had hung forty-three points on the vaunted Tide defense -- in Tuscaloosa -- and still had not been able to put the game away.  

The cold, shrunken, flinty cinder that passes for the Colonel's heart was on the verge of exploding from his chest and filling the room with shrapnel... when, wonder of wonders, the inevitable game-winning Tide comeback faltered in a fast flurry of incompletions.

The Colonel sank into the warm embrace of his over-stuffed leather chair and pinched himself -- surely, he was still dreaming.

The dream endures.

Free Laremy Tunsil

It's a theme as old as conflict itself.

Gideon had the Midianites.  David had Goliath.  Moses had Pharoah.  Leonides had Xerxes.  Gandalf had the Orcs.  The AFL had the NFL.

Ole Miss has Alabama.

Free Laremy Tunsil.


The Colonel's Ole Miss Football Rebels hold a winning record, or at least a respectably close record, with every team it plays regularly.

Except Alabama.

In the half century the Colonel has been a Rebel, he has seen the boys from Oxford defeat the Tide...

Wait for it...

Seven times.

Seven.  Even using Common Core, counting to seven is pretty stinking simple.

Free Laremy Tunsil.  


If you include the years before the Colonel became a Rebel -- all the way the back to the inauguration of the series in 1894 (contrary to popular belief in the Colonel's family, he wasn't around back then) -- the record against Alabama, and the refs (yes, the Colonel went there; and will again, just wait), looks even worse.

Nine wins total.

Nine.

Common Core still doesn't make the accounting difficult.

Free Laremy Tunsil.


Needless to say, as rare as a win against Alabama (and the refs) is for Ole Miss, back-to-back Rebel victories over the Tide are rarer still.

How rare, you ask?

Put down the Common Core manual.

Ole Miss has never beaten Alabama two years in a row.

N. e. v. e. r.

Not even including 'Bama wins vacated by the NCAA.

Free Laremy Tunsil. 


Last year, as delirious fans rushed the field and tore down the goalposts, the Colonel hugged everyone still standing in Section H of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

The Colonel ain't a hugger.

But..., his Rebels had just beaten Alabama, and the refs, and the Colonel lost his military bearing for a few minutes.

Sue him.

Oh..., and if the Colonel's Rebels pull off the UPSET OF THE CENTURIES (19th, 20th, and 21st) this coming Saturday in Tuscaloosa, the Colonel is going to open up a booth in the Grove the following Saturday and post a sign saying "Free Hugs."

Free Laremy Tunsil.


Ole Miss has opened the 2015 season with an offensive explosion not seen in Mississippi since Grant took Vicksburg.  The men in red and blue have out-scored their first two opponents 149 to 24.

Take away the three defensive touchdowns and the Rebels have scored...

Pick up that Common Core manual and turn to page thirty-seven...

... eighteen touchdowns.

E. i. g. h. t. e. e. n.  

Or, in Common Coreese:  Ten tens, minus two twos, plus eight eights, circle the fours, enter the number six and draw a line through it... 

Or, in Coloneleese:  Count all the fingers on both hands, take off your boots and count all the toes not missing feeling from that long winter in North Norway thirty-five years ago...

The Colonel doesn't mean to brag (well, he does, but for instructional purposes only), but... no SEC team has ever scored 73 or more points in back-to-back games.  

E. v. e. r.  

Well..., now one has.

Free Laremy Tunsil.


Granted, their first two opponents weren't exactly SEC calibre foes like, say, Jacksonville State or Toledo, but the Ole Miss offense has lit up the scoreboard without the services of one of the best offensive left tackles to ever play the game -- Laremy Tunsil.  

Thanks to an NCAA violation fishing expedition made possible by a humiliated step-father's claims (Laremy decked the clown for pushing his mother, and the deckee retaliated by claiming Tunsil broke some rules regarding contact with agents), Laremy Tunsil has not played in the last two games -- held out by an overly cautious Ole Miss athletic administration.  

And, we're not talking Johnny Football - level allegations.

Not even close.

Johnny MONEY Football was proven to have done far, far worse.

Half game suspension.  

Free Laremy Tunsil.  

So, perhaps the most potent offense, and defense, Ole Miss has ever fielded, heads east this Saturday to Tuscaloosa, where they have won...

(Excuse the Colonel while he does the Common Core math...)

...once.

O.N.C.E.

Here's where even the most die-hard, Walmart-bought "197 National Championships" T-shirt-wearing Tide fan has to admit...

You want Laremy Tunsil on the field for Ole Miss.

If only to shut up the Rebel Nation "the whole world hates us and stacks the deck against us any way they can" conspiracy theorists when the Tide (and the refs) send the Rebels back to Oxford with another loss in Tuscaloosa on the record.

Free Laremy Tunsil.   


Oh..., and...

BEAT BAMA!  

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, the Colonel will join a lucky, if long-suffering, small nation of kindred spirits as he and 60,000 of his temporarily closest friends conduct a near-religious rite, replete with pilgrimage pageantry, legionary parades, historical hymns, and rote chants whose roots in antiquity are so deeply buried that the meaning of their words are as obscure as the mud at the bottom of the mighty Mississippi herself.

Tomorrow, on the campus of Ole Miss, the Old and New South, in general, and the Old and New Mississippi, specifically, will cease the culture clash for a few hours, forget the feelings-based fights over the truly inconsequential and hug and holler out what connects them in ways they don't even fully understand and are certain no one else does.

Tomorrow, the Colonel will join at least four live generations, and the ghosts of at least a dozen more, in reverent revelry under the oaks, elms, and magnolias forming the ceiling of one of the most holy cathedrals in the South; a naturally beautiful ten-acre park at the heart of one of America's most beautiful campuses, serene for the most part of any day of any season and frenetic sea of happy humanity on seven Saturdays in the fall.

Tomorrow, the Colonel will join the throng of expectant Rebel revelers pouring from the Grove toward the beckoning stands of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, like parishioners parading from church to coliseum with the roar of the lions in their ears, to roar themselves in throaty, primal support and gleeful, grinning approval of valiant feats of skill and gridiron gladiator victory.

Today, the Colonel will prepare. He's old. The flinty, shriveled cinder which passes for his heart is cold and unstretched by months of inactivity and unready for the voltage the Colonel's Rebels will likely put through it this season.

The Colonel, from long experience, has learned to temper his expectations with regard to his Rebels.

But, this just might be the year.

Gotta get ready.

Are you ready, Rebel Nation?

Season of Seasons Assessment

The Colonel's annual season of seasons is rapidly coming to an end. As annual season of seasons go, the 2014/2015 edition ranks (in preliminary assessments) as one of the best all time.

The Colonel must admit, however, that his season of seasons assessment standards may have slipped somewhat, coincident with his slipping into advanced age.  What he means is that twenty years ago, his preliminary assessment of this current rapidly ending season of seasons would have no doubt been that it was a far less satisfying one. 

That's the beauty of notching more years in your belt -- the more seasons of seasons the Colonel experiences, the more he has with which to assess comparatively.

Season of seasons relative measurements allow the Colonel to positively assess seasons of seasons heretofore considered negatively and thereby achieve contentment and satisfaction in assessment of seasons of seasons at the end of which the Colonel may have been discontented and dissatisfied.

The Colonel will provide examples forthwith.  But, first, the Colonel feels the pressing need to explain what he means by "season of seasons."

A season of seasons begins each year with the kick-off of the college football season. Dove season, deer season, and duck season nest within, and compete with, the season of sojourns to the Colonel's season ticket seats in the hallowed confines of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. 

A season of seasons ends with the last day of duck season and the commencement of the Colonel's endurance of the worst month on the calendar.  The month in question is so horridly loathsome that the Colonel refuses to recognize it by name; instead, referring to it as "after January" and "before March."

A season of seasons includes the Colonel's celebration of Thanksgiving and Christmas -- tightly regulated to the actual days on which those two holidays occur.

Season of seasons assessments are subjective exercises.  This is not to say that they are bereft of objective data points.  In fact, seasons of seasons assessments are replete with objective measurements.  Said measurements were once the only variables considered in a season of seasons assessment.  Not so, no more. 

The Colonel, even as unempathetic, insensitive, and unfeeling as he is, senses the frantic boredom creeping up on the two dozen of you who irregularly waste rod and cone time perusing posts here on. So, he will get to the point -- as blunt as it is. 

A season of seasons primary assessment is derived, in the Colonel's case (and, since he's the one posting hereon for your perusal displeasure, the case that matters), primarily by the gridiron success (or lack thereof) of the Colonel's football Rebels.  

No doubt most of Rebel Nation's retrospective of Ole Miss' 2014 campaign is tempered by the stinging loss to TCU in the Peach Bowl.  The Colonel's assessment also includes that data point, but views it relative to the near half century of his experience with Rebel football.  

It was a GREAT season!

Of course, the Colonel would be fine with a three-win season, as long as the wins were against LSU, Bama, and TSBU. 

Secondary season of seasons assessments rely on the Colonel's experiences throughout the hunting season components of the season of seasons.

The Colonel's game bag was more often empty than not at the conclusion of each hunt this season, and yet he assesses each season this year to have been rousing successes.  Time afield has become a far more important measurement.  That's the Colonel's story and he's sticking to it.

One a scale of one to ten, the Colonel ranks this season of seasons an A- ...

At any rate, the Colonel will be posting more regularly now that there ain't nothing more entertaining to to do with his time... 

Mississippi Pride

The last games of the 2014 college football regular season were played in a paroxysm of prideful rivalry this past weekend.  

Here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere, the annual intrastate grudge match between the Colonel's Ole Miss Rebels and the Mississippi State Bulldogs kicked off Saturday afternoon with passion and potential perhaps at an all time high for an "Egg Bowl."

Both teams began the season with great expectations.   Halfway through the season both teams were 7 and 0.  

Unprecedented.      

At one point, State and Ole Miss were together in the top 4 of the preliminary new College Football Championship playoff poll -- thanks primarily to State's wins over perennial powerhouses LSU and Auburn; and Ole Miss' wins over Alabama and A&M.

Unbelievable.

The SEC, and the SEC West in particular, seemed to be turned upside down.  The talk at mid-season was that the Egg Bowl, not the Iron Bowl, would decide the West.  That certainly was the Colonel's fondest wish.

But the SEC West wasn't so much turned upside down as it was just settled into a rare equilibrium of really good teams from "top to bottom."  That kind of high-quality balance in a seven-team division of a "power-five" conference makes for some great football.

It also makes it nearly impossible for any team to get to the conference championship unscathed.   When you have a conference full of legitimate contenders, the likelihood is that championship-chances cannibalism will result.  

Does anyone really believe that FSU would be undefeated at this point playing in the SEC? 

But, most of the above falls under the rod and cone wasting category of MOTO -- Mastery of the Obvious.  Apologies.

What probably sets the Colonel apart from nearly every other football fan in the great state of Mississippi is that he doesn't hate the other Mississippi school (far too much hate already invested in Bama and LSU -- none left for State) and he has a fairly rigid (but not completely binding) "no-gloating" rule.

To call the Colonel "old school" would be an understatement rivalling Custer's "Troopers, things are about to get interesting."

The Colonel has never been a big fan of "smack talk;" never liked taunting; never liked "rubbing it in;" never thought much of outlandish celebration of a score or victory.

Well, he says "never," but the truth is the Colonel probably did a little bit too much of all of the above early in his formative years.  At some point in the last four decades of his "adulthood" (and the Colonel uses that term as loosely as a newborn's diaper deposit) the Colonel began to emulate the example of some really great leaders (his dear old Dad among them) and sought increasingly to veneer over his fanaticism with a liberal dose of sportsmanship.

For the LSU and Bama fans who may have stumbled across this post in a cyber Monday Christmas gift search for corndog sampler gift packs or pachyderm-printed bathroom tissue, the term "sportsmanship" does not involve the following (many of which the Colonel has seen in person on more than one occasion):

Cursing at and taunting a five year old in opposing team colors.

Screaming profanities at ladies in opposing team colors.

Killing trees on the opposing team's campus.

Throwing whiskey bottles at opposing team fans.   

The Colonel could go on, but you get his drift.  At some point we should all take a deep breath and remember the words of that great humanitarian and philosopher of the human condition, Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?" 

For the record, the Colonel is more than just a bit disappointed in the Rebel Nation derision directed toward crushed State fans.  The Colonel is not a fan of the "#FailState" meme.  The Colonel believes we are better than that.  

Take the high road, Rebels.  Love is the greater force.  Leave the hate-generation to Coach Mullen.  Our coach says it best:  "We don't play out of hate for the other team; we play out of love for each other."

The Colonel really likes that philosophy -- it's the philosophy upon which was built the really great teams of Marines with which he served.   

The Colonel congratulates Mississippi State on their best season ever.  You should be very proud.  Heck, the Colonel is proud of you.  

State and Ole Miss have a record-setting combined regular season win / loss total of 19 and 5.  Wins in bowl games will give both Mississippi schools at least 10 wins in the same season for the first time, ever!

Next year, let's finish this the right way:  Egg Bowl decides the West. 

Mississippi First!