It brings me great pleasure to welcome everyone back to the best time of the year, football season. The time of the year when all bets and weddings are off. When leaves, temperatures, and dreams fall without fail. The season that acts as a warm comforting blanket to us all, because no matter how crazy the world around us gets, how stressed we are at work, or the problems we may face in our own personal lives, we all have football season to fall back on. We’ll finally have something to talk about with one another again. “Can you believe that game last night?” we’ll ask. “Hell, I could’ve caught that!” We may add. It’s this joyous season that keeps families together and tears house-divided relationships apart. The summer is great, it really is. You use this time to take family vacations to places without football stadiums, like the beach or the mountains. You may even talk about things like each other and how you’re all “doing." There are swimming pools, lemonade stands, and the sound of children’s laughter. However, even the Olympics can only hold over the unquenching thirst for football season long enough before we all hit our breaking point. I’m just happy to say, we made it. We earned it. It’s finally time to invest our emotional well-being in the hands of 18-22 year olds again, and to entrench our identities into outcomes we have no control over! It's finally football season!
For Ole Miss fans, however, this season has a different buzz to it. There’s an aura surrounding this football team so bright that the whole country has taken notice. For the first time in most of our lives, Lane Kiffin and the Ole Miss Rebels have assembled a team with legitimate National Championship aspirations. Not playoff aspirations, but win the whole damn thing aspirations. It's not just all the talent retained and acquired or the wealth of experience accumulated on the coaching staff. Many teams have failed with great talent. Jimbo Fisher’s entire career at Texas A&M is a great example of this, but this isn’t that. This is a team that appears to have something more. Something special. Something you can’t quantify on paper or teach in classrooms. There’s a cohesive energy in the building that is undeniably evident. Pat McAfee said it best when referencing a video of RB coach Kevin Smith making a basketball shot in during a team meeting, as the team erupts with excitement, “Ole Miss team meeting, ELECTRICITY. It’s these types of moments that you see from a team meeting that make people who have been in a locker room go OOO that team likes each other, that team seemingly all in.” It’s not just talent or me talking myself into things. You feel how badly this team wants it, not for themselves but for each other. You see the work hard/play hard mentally in attempts to keep a long and grueling season fresh and lively. They aren’t doing it how it’s always been done, because that’s not who they are. They’re creating their own box and doing it their own way. When Jaxson Dart, Tre Harris, Jaden Ivey, JJ Pegeus, Jordan Watkins and others decided to come back, they deemed this season “The Last Dance," inspired by the final run the 97’-98’ Chicago Bulls core went on en route to their final championship before being inevitably broken up. They’ve gone all in. The fanbase responded by going all in via The Grove Collective, and now we’re here, where the rubber meets the road. Where preparation meets opportunity, and these boys give everything they have for a common goal: to bring a National Championship to Oxford, Mississippi, forever cementing their names in the history books. Writing a story that can’t be unwritten. This week we’ve got Furman, but as they say, when lofty goals are taken on. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, we made it. Hotty Toddy and buckle up, as we prepare for a season we'll never forget.
PICK 5: (Finished at just under 70% last season)
Notre Dame @ Texas A&M -2.5
New coach. New era. Gameday. Excitment. Still great talent, including quarterback. Love the Aggies at home.
LSU -4 vs. USC
Continuing to fade USC vs. the SEC until proven wrong.
Penn State -8 @ West Virginia
There’s a chance this one is a shaky start on the road, but I think there’s a big enough talent game here for the Nittnay Lions to pull away over 4 quarters.
Furman @ Ole Miss -42.5
Tried, but ultimately couldn’t stay away. 42.5 not enough. Going to be a long day for Furman.
South Dakota St. @ Oklahoma St -10
This feels like a trap, but I’m going to see if I can grab the cheese without getting caught.
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