RCR Presents:  Science

Deep in the recesses of the Lyceum is located a two-inch thick vault door, the combination to which is known only to myself and James Meredith, behind which you will (never) find the laboratories of Red Cup Rebellion, Inc.  In this super-secret lab, Ole Miss historians, statisticians, partisans, halogens, artisans, pathogens, and, of course, snarkisans (or, bloggeurs) work tirelessly day and night in an effort to piece together some sense among the seeming anarchy that is Ole Miss Athletics.

And, perhaps, there has been no greater breakthrough than what our scientists came across last Saturday while watching the Mississippi State game.  It's really quite remarkable.  Amazing advancements after the quantum leap.

After years of research, we have come across a principle that allows us to predict with some certainty that Ole Miss will win some piece of an SEC title in basketball or advance to the College World Series for the first time since 1973 in baseball.  What postulate permits us to propose with pomposity such preposterous prosperity?  The immutable law of "Ole Miss Transferred Athletic Success" or OMTAS.

The principle is simple:  all Ole Miss athletic teams draw on the same source of karma.  Consequently, the success of one major athletic program is inversely related to success of the others.  Allow me to illustrate:

• In the Spring of 2002, Ole Miss advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in school history creating a supreme dearth of karma that began to show in the final shot for Valparaiso in that tournament.  Subsequently, the Ole Miss Men's basketball team went into "Rod Barnes" mode, and athletic success eventually transferred to the football team, propelling it to the Cotton Bowl.
• Athletic success left the football team in 2004, transferring to the baseball team.  Men's baseball achieved the most wins in school history and went to a Super Regional against Texas.  Baseball took on vastly greater importance for the university.
• While basketball and football continued to struggle, Ole Miss baseball won the 2006 SEC Tournament Championship.
• In the fall of 2006, Andy Kennedy began his first season as head coach of Ole Miss men's basketball.  In that first season, he shared the SEC West crown and won SEC Coach of the Year.  As a consequence of athletic success transferring to basketball, football continued to struggle and baseball took a minor step back.
• Basketball had a successful season in 2007.  Clearly, however, athletics had overdrawn on success in 2006-2007, as the football team won no conference games and the baseball team missed out on hosting a regional for the first time since 2002.
• In 2008, the knees of Trevor Gaskins, Chris Warren, and Eniel Polynice were sacrificed on the altar of the Cotton Bowl.

The chain of transfers in success is so compelling, so closely related that it allows us to make some predictions about the future of Ole Miss athletics if we make accurate contemporary observations of athletic failures.  The difficulty, obviously, will be in construing whether a singular event - a devastating Egg Bowl loss, for example - is the indicator of the transfer.  Moreover, our sample size is not yet large enough to accurately predict to which sport the athletic success will be transferred. 

What we can say for certain, though, is this - no Rebel athletic failure should so disappoint the Ole Miss fan.  Now, through the security of the OMTAS Principle, we can know without a shadow of a doubt that recent setbacks in one sport are only concrete indicators of forthcoming prosperity in another.  With that we here at the Cup prospectively congratulate either Houston Nutt on his season-saving Cotton Bowl win, Andy Kennedy on his outright SEC West Title, or Mike Bianco on his first trip to the College World Series.