It wasn’t all that long ago that Ole Miss was a football team wandering the desert. We had lived through the embarrassment of Hugh Freeze’s behavior and stabilized under Matt Luke, who was tasked with doing the most with the least. His inconspicuous reign ended most conspicuously—with a player miming a dog peeing in his opponent’s endzone after making a touchdown, which backed up the extra point spot and caused the kicker to miss.

It was the piss and miss that got us our current head coach, Lane Kiffin1. Along with Keith Carter, the athletic director, it’s been Lane who’s been the root of the most successful period of football at this school.

Ole Miss fans are finally having to pay the piper this year. We’ve gotten a few years of fun in the build-up to this season. In those years, we were good at football, but we knew we weren’t ready to really compete with the best teams. This year, though, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner with money, talent, and coaching, and we’ve got to prove that we know what to do with all of that.

The Ole Miss Fanbase

We’ve been able to talk a pretty big game the last few years. No one really expected much of us but we did beat those expectations most years. And frankly, that was unusual. Ole Miss football fans are used to losing games in heartbreaking fashions. We’re conditioned to lose every game—we expect it. It happens often enough that I can’t even claim that the losses are unexpected, they’re simply going to happen in a new and exciting way each time.

We even have an acronym2 for it: WAOM. We are Ole Miss. We are Ole Miss, and this is what happens to us. We expect the worst and perhaps that attracts it to us, but the worst does seem to find us quite a lot.

And yet, we have expectations for our team this year. As a fanbase, we’ve spent quite a lot of money assembling this roster, not to mention the hefty salaries for Lane, the offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., and the defensive coordinator Pete Golding. We have an experienced roster in an era that’s short on those, and the kids keep talking about this being the last dance. There’s clearly a deadline, and we’re about to hit it.

This year feels like it’s going to set the tone for the next decade for this program, and if it’s a success, we might truly be able to believe that we’re the top tier program we keep claiming we are. If that’s not how this season ends, I’m afraid the money dries up, takes the talent with it, and the coaches and everyone else give up on us. No big deal.

I am including this video because my mother discovered it before I had enrolled at Ole Miss and has not stopped singing it since then. She subscribes to this newsletter. If you don’t see her in the comments, well, I guess she didn’t read this email and now you know where all my childhood trauma comes from. Hi, Mom.

What constitutes success this year?

I think it’s fair to say that it’s playoffs or bust at a minimum. We have to win all of the games we really have no business losing, and then we need to win at least one of the games against the big brand teams: LSU, Oklahoma, and Georgia3. If we want a home game in the first round we need to win two of them, and if we want a bye we’ve got to sweep.

When there were only four playoff spots, it was easy to say that the playoff was too small for anyone without years of top-tier recruiting, a forgiving schedule, and a heaping spoonful of luck to get in. But things have changed. Anything short of making the new 12-team playoff with this roster is simply not enough.

I’m not a championship-focused fan. I like winning, but I understand that there are ebbs and flows to sports, and no team is going to be good forever. So when I say making the playoff is the lowest possible bar for success this year, I am serious.

Ole Miss and its fans have done everything possible to put this team in a place where they can succeed, and if the team doesn’t make the playoffs, there is likely some curse on Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Unless we can get everyone down to the field to burn their most prized possessions, we’re doomed to mediocrity and missed connections with the glory of victory. That’s all there is to it.

What is at stake?

If we truly do bear a curse4 and miss the playoff, I think the program is set for a nosedive. Ole Miss fans simply cannot act like we’ve been here before because we haven’t. We can’t look dispassionately on the situation and console ourselves with the fact that we have top-notch athletic department infrastructure, four years of being in the national conversation, and the longest sustained period of success since college football integrated. I think the fans turn on the program in despair disguised as disgust, and the money, players, and coaches all disappear.

We cannot handle success because we don’t really believe it’s in the cards for us. If it ever happens, it’s a fluke. And to be fair, we don’t have many reasons to believe otherwise. Our baseball coach won a championship5 and had people calling for his head a year later6.

tl;dr

This is the most important football season that Ole Miss has ever had. If we’re in the playoff, this is a jumping off point to sustained success. If we miss it, there is no easy path to come back from that.

Ole Miss fans know this. And we know how rare it is for one of our teams to fully capitalize on the chances it’s given. The combined knowledge there is what’s truly driving the anxiety that’s gnawing through every Ole Miss message board site the internet can muster. We know the stakes, and in our hearts, we still believe that the limits on our achievement might just be the canopy of the pines rather than the sky itself.

I hope for my own sake and for the sakes of my fellow alumni that a hundred or so teenagers in Oxford, Mississippi are going to prove us wrong.

ARE YOU READY?

I love the football hype videos. If you’ve got a favorite one, I would love for you to share it in the comments below to get everyone hyped up for the first full week of games!

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