re: ESPN 30 for 30: Ghosts of Ole Miss

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A native Mississippian’s take on the 1962 Ole Miss championship football team will air tonight on ESPN.

As part of the network’s “30 for 30” series “Ghosts of Ole Miss” details the role the Rebels played in the riots and uncertainty that accompanied the forced enrollment of James Meredith, the school’s first black student.

“Ghosts of Ole Miss” airs tonight at 7 on ESPN.

Wright Thompson, a native of Clarksdale, lives in Oxford and writes for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine.

Three years ago he wrote a feature on the 1962 team. The movie is based from that work.

“The amazing thing to me is that everybody knows the story of the riots, though I would argue that nobody really knows,” Thompson said. “We’ve all heard it described as a riot, and a riot doesn’t seem like a very big deal. I’ve seen the footage. There are things there that as a Mississippian who did not live through that time are very hard to watch.”

Ultimately, amid the chaos, Meredith was enrolled.

Through it all, a football team destined for a special season stayed sequestered in a campus dorm not knowing what the next days held, much less the end of the football season.

one perfect season

That Ole Miss football team, however, finished the fall unbeaten and untied, the school’s only perfect season, and won the SEC and national championships.

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