Ole Miss Rebels News: Better wake up, the University is in turmoil

There has been a lot of Ole Miss Rebels News recently and especially since the 2019 Rebels football season began and we take a look at some of the problems.

This commentary was written by Chuck Rounsaville owner of the Ole Miss Spirit website called https://247sports.com/college/ole-miss/.  Chuck has given me his permission to share his commentary about where we are or are not as a university and as a fan base.  It’s scathing but it is 100% accurate.

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“The Answer Man” by Chuck Rounsaville

On my morning walk Sunday, it all came together, all the answers to everything Ole Miss is struggling with right now, and, unfortunately, the list is long, so take a deep breath, get in your recliner and come along with me, The Answer Man.

The number one thing we need to do as a university community is treat each other with sarcasm and condescension. If we can’t be patronizing and show disdain toward each other, who can we point those wonderful attributes toward? Especially on social media – there’s nothing like washing dirty laundry in public and showing superiority by eating your own. And what good is discussion without personal insults and going for the jugular?

Ole Miss Rebels Football

No fun in that. Unity, togetherness, being of one mind to reach our potential? Don’t be ridiculous. Contempt, not compassion, is the only communication tool for those working toward a common goal. I’m right and you are wrong, can’t you see that, dunderhead?

Next, hire another mealy-mouthed chancellor who is just a figurehead and will let things flow like they are now. After all, why would there need to be any hard looks at why our number one rival is now kicking our collective asses in many areas? After all, we have more azaleas and dogwoods than they do and we haven’t lost a party yet. You know, the important stuff. Let’s not stand up to the NCAA or the SEC office. Just take what they dish out lying down and whimpering. Let’s get more people in here that will allow us to be bullied and, metaphorically, castrated.

Please don’t let the new chancellor take a close look at the laziness and incompetence on campus. After all, it’s a laid back village for many who simply cannot afford any kind of evaluation as they sleepwalk their way to retirement . We need more people on campus with 10-hour-a-week, well-paying jobs who don’t want anyone coming into their turf and finding out how little they actually accomplish, to the detriment of hundreds of university employees who do work their tails off. Believe me, there are plenty of each and we need to keep perpetuating the sorry ones.

Next, we must keep politicizing everything. This place is not about education, it’s about brainwashing and indoctrination. Left, right. Conservative, liberal. It’s no longer about ethics and right and wrong and knowledge. It’s no longer about nurturing young people’s minds where they can decide for themselves how they want to be governed and decide for themselves what they stand for. It’s about force-feeding them a doctrine and turning them out into the world to do our bidding.

Also, student recruitment of Mississippi kids should remain an endeavor where Ole Miss is outworked and outflanked. We must continue to hear recruitment horror stories daily about kids who are contacted by such-and-such university weekly but hear from ours once in a blue moon, if at all. We must keep the attitude of come-here-if-you-want-but-we-aren’t-going-to-recruit-you. It’s the only way to growth and it keeps us “exclusive.”.

We have to keep declaring our greatness when we aren’t great. We have to keep declaring our superiority to other schools when that era is long gone. We have to keep that long standing Ole Miss tradition of bragging when there’s little to brag about and the we-are-better-than-you lie that has been perpetuated for generations without much tangible proof.

Let’s make sure we keep this environment of little to no cooperation between local businesses and Ole Miss. Between Ole Miss and the Oxford community. After all, this is a turf war. Ole Miss and the City of Oxford should be separate entities and never should they co-mingle for the good of all. Resistance is the way to growth and success in any endeavor. Cooperation? Outdated concept.

Please make sure free speech is recognized above all else, no matter the subject matter. It doesn’t make any difference that a professor who represents our school and teaches our children uses profanity on social media, writes to “f— civility” and promoted an act of non-violent domestic terrorism. Why should compromise and civil disagreement be a part of our landscape? He can hide under the banners of tenure and free speech. There should be no repercussions for that type of behavior. This is America, where one can do and say as they please, right?

For goodness sake, let’s fire coaches every three or four years. After all, it’s their fault Mississippi is 50th in everything but obesity and adolescent pregnancy. It’s their fault Mississippi produces the least number, by far, of Division 1 prospects of any state where the powerhouses of our conference reside and that we essentially split our prospects between two SEC schools, two of the smallest schools with two of the smallest athletic budgets. It’s their fault that Ole Miss’ athletic revenue is nearly $50 million a year less than Alabama, LSU, Texas A&M and Auburn. Who needs an extra million or so a week to become a power? It’s their fault, period.

It’s a cycle of hiring and firing that we need to stay in here, especially football, because then we have a convenient scapegoat and don’t have to take a hard look in the mirror. A wasted timeout? Fire him. A play that didn’t work? Fire him. Blow up a recruiting class? So what, fire him. Loves Ole Miss? Who cares? Bleeds for Ole Miss? Let him bleed, just fire him. Justify it each time we fire one with a “he’s leaving a rich man” dumb comment. Don’t the people making the decisions know that the next coach, and the next and the next, will have the magic wand that will make Bama and LSU and Auburn and others shiver and allow us to pass them without any resistance?

Now is also the time to continue to let state politics kind of take care of itself and not support Ole Miss candidates while the Bully Bloc has slowly but surely eroded and in some cases overtaken our political clout. Our own PAC? Please, that’s not important. My friend Charlie Williams tried to start an Ole Miss PAC and couldn’t raise enough money for a good vacation to Disney World. We have to keep our priorities straight, after all.

And last, but certainly not least, for everything holy, let’s please, please continue to discuss and fuss about the Civil War every chance we get, even in our athletic venues. Can we please continue the twice a year history lesson and argument of what the Civil War was really about? Slavery or not slavery is always a good dinner conversation and something that needs to be dragged out of the closet bi-monthly at least. Can we please keep living in the past? Can we please keep dredging up these things over and over and over until our ears bleed, then shelve them for a few months and dredge them up again? That war was only 160 years ago. Hell, we should still be fighting it. Oh, hell, we still are.

Do these things and we will continue to survive, but not thrive, and continue to be just where we seem to want to be, wallowing in our own bed of underachievement while reaching around to pat ourselves on the back.

Obviously, some of this is too harsh, but folks, we gotta wake up!!!!!