Is a Feeling of Ole Miss-ery Already Creeping In for Rebel Faithful?

I know how you feel Ole Miss fans. I know what it's like to clutch a preseason magazine close to your chest and inhale the paper and ink slowly, get high off the football season anticipation. "Athlon has us No. 10 in the country!" you might say. It's a giddy feeling, enrapturing even. Like being told you can go home with any sorority girl of your choosing in the Grove. Hotty Toddy, Gosh Almighty, Ole Miss is a legitimate contender for the national title!

Except, and Rebel fans know exactly what I'm talking about, in the back of your mind you really can't believe your good fortune.

The Greg Hardy and Dexter McCluster car fire? You expected it. The Jamar Hornsby dismissal? You knew it was inevitable. Jevan Snead tripping and falling into an open culvert on campus, being rescued after a vigil on national television, and breaking his throwing arm in the process? Easy, easy, that hasn't happened. But if it did, you'd have expected it, right?

Dickens began A Tale Of Two Cities with these words, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..." (You may not remember that because the Cliff Notes didn't begin that way) It takes a gaudy preseason ranking for a perennial doormat to make those words ring true for a sports fan.

Peril lurks around every date on the calendar. Remember when you were a kid and Christmas never seemed like it would get here. You wanted a Miss Elizabeth wrestling figure and a Dukes of Hazzard big wheel more than life itself and, yet, even as Christmas neared, you were terrified you might not get either. Each day heralded the sweet suspense of uncertainty. You'd toss down a calendar date and stare at the square, delicious anticipation -- we're going to win them all -- mixed with delirious dread -- State's going to take our egg!

Right now Ole Miss fans are 35 days from the start of the season and each day is a feather to the bottom of their feet, the tickle of temptation, the agony of being tortured with pleasure.

Why does it matter so much to the Rebels to be ranked so highly?

Consider: Ole Miss is the only SEC West team never to advance to Atlanta. Ole Miss has not won an SEC title since, wait for it, 1963. Since then? The best they could do was change the speed limit on campus to 18 miles an hour in honor of a signal caller who couldn't quite get them a championship. Guy by the name of Manning, Archie. You may know his sons.

Since 1970, they've been to just 15 bowl games. That's a little better than one every three years. They've never won more than 10 games in a season. Ever.

And now they're supposed to make the leap and win 10 in the regular season? I say 10 in the regular season because that's what it would take, 6-2, minimum in the SEC West. Yep, the Rebels are at a place where a 9-3 regular season is a disappointment.

These are truly the times that try a fan's soul.

Trust me, I know.

How?

Because back in 2005-2006 my alma mater, George Washington, was set for the greatest basketball season in the history of the program. Ultimately, the Colonials went 26-1 in the regular season, rose to No. 6 in the country. For anyone who has ever been to a GW basketball game, this should have been the height of fan ecstasy.

But it wasn't.

Why?

Because I wanted more. I was greedy. And in the process I couldn't enjoy a good season because I kept demanding a great one. Ole Miss fans are in a similar position as summer wanes and fall advances. That's why I can tell you the eight stages that encapsulate their fan state of mind.

1. The Calendar Stare

Raise your hand if you're an Ole Miss fan and you haven't debated the danger of opening on a Sunday in Memphis. Every single Rebel fan has their hand raised right now. At least those with computer access.

You've found yourself waking up in the middle of the night thinking, "By God, if Memphis beats us the first game of the season, I will burn down Graceland with a bottle of 151 and a Zippo."

And you're not even joking.


2. The Hand-Shaking Schedule Review

When your team is supposed to be good, paradoxically, every team on the schedule looks like a football leviathan. I mean that, every single team. The stakes are too high in college football. Where once you felt comfortable skimming across the schedule and penciling in six or seven likely wins, now your hand shakes when you hold the pencil above the schedule.

Southeast Louisiana Sept. 19? Crap, that's off a bye week and sandwiched before a revenge game at South Carolina. Will the guys be ready?

At Vanderbilt? They beat us last year. And this year it's on the road.

3. Reflections on Failures From Yesteryear

Remember when Eli Manning got stepped on dropping back from center to effectively end the LSU game in 2003? That year, that magical year when if Ole Miss could have managed four more points they would have played Georgia in the SEC Championship Game, was so agonizingly close.

The poignancy of an almost victory somehow becomes even more poignant as a season of promise nears. It's almost as if you have to dose yourself with painful moments from your fan reality to quench the building optimism.

Yep, 2009 could be a perfect season, but it could also be the year when our quarterback gets tripped by his own lineman on fourth down.

Again.

4. The Rival Hate Surges

As your national profile increases, the hate for your provincial rivals, amazingly, soars to a new height. They hate you more for being uppity and you hate them more for making you play them when they have nothing to add to your lofty status.

I've already mentioned burning Graceland. But what if, God forbid, the Rebels roll into Starkville and just need one more win to advance to Atlanta for the first time. That's Starkville, where they still call escalators, magic stairs.

There they are, standing at the top of the magic stairs with their cowbells, the Mississippi State F'in Bulldogs.

It's one thing to lose to a rival when you're both awful or mediocre. But to lose when you're good and they're awful? When they have nothing to gain but ruining your perfect season? It doesn't get any worse in a rivalry, the asymmetry of disparate rivalry outcomes for Ole Miss: ruination on the one hand, mere survival on the other.

5. Expectations of Failure Conflict With Soaring Optimism

You're bipolar. One moment you're convinced that your team is destined for a 7-5 season. The next, that 11-1, or be still my fluttering heart, 12-0 is a very likely outcome. You vacillate between these extremes much to the amusement of casual fans or those that, blasphemy, don't really care that much at all.

In your heart of hearts, you're a brooding Quentin Compson staring over the bridge at the Cambridge fish below. Uncertain whether to jump or strike up a parade.

6. You Hate the Media

Either they're hyping your team or disrespecting your team. There's no middle ground. And don't be mistaken about this, the media has their own agenda. They're all agents working to screw up your players' heads. Get them all starry-eyed with optimism so that they can't focus a week at a time. And if they aren't doing that? Well, they're all about tearing y'all down, killing the confidence that came from a robust finish.

How else to explain the third place vote at SEC Media Days? Not even third in the SEC, third in the SEC West!

The nerve, those bastards.

7. Arguments Ensue With Your Wife Over Road Trips You Normally Wouldn't Take

Suddenly, you absolutely have to be in Columbia, S.C., Sept. 24. It doesn't matter that Sept. 24 is a Thursday night or that Columbia is over 550 miles away. In order to get there from Oxford and not miss three days of work, you have to pay $2,000 and make 15 different flight connections. Somehow you have a three-hour lay-over in Ames, Iowa.

Your job? It doesn't matter. Your family? They don't matter.

This is your team. And this is their year. They might never be this good again for the rest of your life.

Even if this is true, your wife won't believe you. (Although some wife's will, this is why the Grove is heaven on earth.)

8. You Can't Enjoy Any of It

In the Grove they like to say that they may have lost a football game, but they've never lost a party. An attitude like this explains why the first Tennessee game I planned this season was the UT-Ole Miss game Nov. 14th in Oxford.

I truly love Oxford: the people, the bookstores (Square Books is amazing), the food, the drinks, the women in sundresses. Life doesn't get much better.

But if you're an Ole Miss fan, all of this is, suddenly, secondary. Your team has to win and you don't care if the games have all the flavor of Sunday night fishing in Moldova. And damn all the people who have the nerve to grin and laugh and have a good time with a game coming up.

In the end, I'd say to calm down and enjoy the ride. But you'd just ignore me anyway.

After all, Ole Miss is thirty-five days from beginning their first march to Atlanta.

Or not.

Gosh Almighty, indeed.