Ever since I met this totally hot guy back in August, Ole Miss has been doing terrible on the field. I’m sure that meeting him has totally caused Ole Miss’s football program to go into the toilet. I’m going out for drinks with him later on this week so I bet we’ll lose to LSU by, like, a MILLION or something. I bet if I stayed at home and watched the History channel instead of going out to have drinks with him we’d totally win this game.

CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION.

Mascots and my dating life and about a million other things that you people cite (artificial turf, band uniforms, etc.) have no bearing on wins and losses on the field.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to paint my nails in the requisite “Beat LSU Red” because for years when I had my nails painted this color we beat LSU. So, clearly, the color of nail polish that I wear will impact us on the field.

Mascot != Wins

Yes, we do need money. We are the least funded band in the Southeastern Conference. The scholarships are not as great as everyone wants to believe they are. Even with the extra I got for being from out of state, all of it didn’t cover half of my out of state costs alone. In this state, you have three about evenly sized I-A schools, a handful of lower division schools and 14 community colleges who sponsor football for a population of less than 3 million. Where I live in Tennessee, you have three I-A schools, but very few within the state go to one of them (Vandy). You have even fewer lower level schools with football and the community colleges don’t sponsor them. But Tennessee’s population is over double Mississippi’s, and its that way across the entire SEC. Factor in the huge percent of our campus that is Greek and its even fewer “available” for band. People wonder why we don’t have a band of over 400, I think its pretty cut and dry.

Do I agree with the direction of the band since Mr. Willson stepped down as the director of the marching band? No. I feel like they are trying to turn them into Jacksonville State, doing one show a year with music nobody knows. In the SEC, the job is to entertain fans, and that certainly won’t cut it.

And whoever says “Band in t-shirts” hasn’t been to a game this year, because they have been in full uniforms every game, but will take their jackets off in the stands like every other band in the region does.

The band should receive more sympathy from people. No matter how bad the team gets and how small the crowd gets, they have to stay through the massacres we have been in this year.

1. Please voice your opinion that more attention and funding is needed to the administration and ask others to do the same.

2. They’ve historically worn t-shirts (like a lot of other schools) for the first game on Labor Day weekend. This year, they debuted their new unis at the BYU game and did not wear t-shirts at any of the games. For the record, I was in the band and hated when we had to wear the t-shirts. However, please do not compare football players who are on full ride scholarships (along with a million other “perks”) to band students who are lucky to get $500-750 per semester. Hell they even have to pay to have their own uniforms cleaned.

3. Go here: https://www.umfoundation.com/makeagift/online.php. Choose “other” and then click on “Band – Friends of Note” in the drop down menu. They take all major credit cards, debit cards and bank draft.

#2: The majority of said scholarships does not exceed $1000 a semester.

#3: I could go on, and on, and on, and on, about how equating the band and the football team fails miserably. If you look at it financially, the band is about as loved on campus as a canker sore. I’m sorry that the poor state of our football time has, per usual, brought negative attention and scorn to a part of gameday that has NOTHING to do with the playing of the game, such as the band and the mascot. Money is most certainly a way to show your support of the band and to make sure that we actually HAVE T shirts to wear so we don’t chafe under those uniforms. The fact that we have to pass around an old KFC bucket for student donations in the middle of the season is degrading.

That makes about as much sense as “We’ve been using leaches for thousands of years to bleed illness out of people so you’re not seeing a doctor because, by god, we’re going to bleed that sickness out of you.”