re: The Fallout Has Begun : Ole Miss Alums To Mail Diplomas Back

This is from a poster on the Ole Miss Spirit.
He's actually spot on about some of this (especially the OM administration sitting around and letting the football program go down the toliet in the '70's and 80's.)

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Just a continuation of.....
the mismanagement that has plagued Ole Miss for decades.
It demonstrates what the priorities of the Administration are with regard to the athletics program, as does their addition of a surcharge to the price of the Egg Bowl tickets to fund scholarship programs rather than athletics facilities.

The bottom line is that Ole Miss has had a series of Chancellors who simply do not give a damn about fielding a successful SEC-level athletics program and so they make no effort to bring it up to speed in key areas like stadium expansion or building a new basketball arena. Indeed, they make no effort to raise funds for athletics at all, but forbid it.

They hire stupid, incompetent ADs like Pete Boone who are basically beancounters with no ambitions or vision for the program, who in turn, hire head coaches who are re-treads or career assistants or they drive away coaches that have real potential (like Tuberville) rather than meet their demands for an SEC-like program.

That they would focus on something as trivial as a mascot while letting the athletics program continue to be mired in mediocrity just underscores their mindset.

As for the issue itself, the change will not do Ole Miss any good, will make it the butt of ridicule in the media, and will probably cost it a fair portion of the non-alumni base that remains, which has dwindled steadily since the Vaught years and which has only held on because of their memories, which the traditions are part of.

Being nicknamed Rebels is a complete non-issue at this point for most recruits, but trying to make it into an issue plays into the excuse-mongering mentality that not only characterizes every Ole Miss Administration when it comes to athletics, but also at this point, most of the fan base. Instead of doing what it takes to be successful, Ole Miss simply proffers excuses for failure....and the "symbols" issue has always been one of those........

Having a bear to represent Rebels is just ridiculous--it would be better either to not have a mascot at all (as has been the case for years) or to just do a complete makeover and revert to the tradition of the "Mississippi Flood" which is not only pretty cool and unique, but was in fact the name of the sports teams before Rebels was adopted.

But the real purpose of the Bear, of course, is to back door elimination of Rebels in a few years.....and eventually "Ole Miss" as well........

But this is how the Ole Miss Administration does things. I don't know what is more pathetic--the fact that they are focused on this instead of trying to create a successful athletics program......or the fact that the same fan base and alumni who sit passively by and shrug their shoulders when a coach loses home games to Jacksonville State and Vanderbilt and who have also sat passively by while successive Ole Miss administrations have turned one of the most successful football programs in the country into a permanent also-ran and kept it there for decades.......nevertheless, in sharp contrast to their passivity regarding things that really matter, become agitated and energetic and active when the issue of a silly mascot arises.......

The whole picture is pretty pathetic, but it is Ole Miss, so what do you expect?

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Imagine LSU caving to PETA demands and ending the tradition of having a live Mike the Tiger on campus?

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That will never happen. Mike has a better lifestyle than 99.9% of the tigers in the world.

peta is full of a buncha retards.

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this will go down in the history books as one of the most retarded overall nonsense examples of stupidity ever. It will literally be an example of how stupid we were "back then".

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Wait, are you talking about when Ole Miss decided to make the school's mascot a white, ante-bellum plantation owner? or when they decided to change it to a bear?

plus col reb was modeled after a black guy

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is there proof he was an antebellum plantation owner? Cause I only saw him on sidelines at football stadiums, basketball arenas, and baseball stadiums.

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what does he look like to you? a police officer? an astronaut? that's a weak rebuttal, bro.

ok. i'll bite.

"He owes his star power to his get-up — a knockoff of the university’s longtime mascot, a caricature of an antebellum Southern plantation owner." ny times, sep. 19, 2010

"The school mascot is a white-bearded old man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and leaning on a cane. His name is Colonel Reb and he looks like nothing less than the very caricature of an old, white plantation owner. He's offensive and the school wants to get rid of him." espn.com

"Change is afoot at the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, as it is more commonly known. Colonel Reb, a scowling, red-suit-wearing, cane-wielding, goateed, bolo-tie-sporting, planation-owning gentleman who was forcibly retired from his on-field position in 2003, has been replaced." vanity fair, october 15, 2010

and, aside from the myriad evidence (including the fact that your school decided to change it--an obvious admission of guilt), is it really that far-fetched to think that a school that calls itself "ole miss," a racially-charged term in and of itself, used to have such a mascot?

but i'm done. You are an Ole Miss fan and I am not. I just thought that the irony of the original post I quoted was funny. I don't really give a shite what y'all have as a mascot. In fact, I kind of wish you would have kept the old bastard... it invariably fricked up your recruiting. lmao.

This thread makes me miss NJReb.

This is much to do about nothing in the long run. When you are standing close to a fire, you really feel the heat. The further you move away from the fire, or the more the fire dies down, the less heat you feel. In this case, time will eventually make all of this go away. Three years from now, when Ole Miss has a live bear next to the Grove, people will embrace the idea of being the Black Bears.

The next frontier that actually could have some backlash will be when they inevitably try to stop the use of the name Ole Miss. I could see huge and real backlash from that scenario. In a sense, I think this faux-backlash to the "black bear" will be a full blown backlash when in five years or so, Ole Miss is officially disowned by the university.

To that end, I wonder who owns the trademark and/or copyright on the term "Ole Miss". If it is not the university, I suggest that someone in the fanbase make efforts to obtain ownership because the university can effectively ban use of the term by outside sources if they own the mark...even if it is disassociated as an official identifier of the university.

The new Ole Miss mascot should be a wine glass filled with fart.