Halloween has never been kind to our Rebels. All time, we are 6-7-1 on All Hallows Eve, with only three of those wins coming against SEC foes. I doubt I need to remind anyone of this, but no single play has defined the relationships among Ole Miss, Halloween, luck, irony, and LSU quite as well as Billy Cannon's touchdown punt return against the Rebels on 1959's Halloween night. With little time left in the game, the Rebels, then one of the best teams in the nation, were leading 3-0. A punt to Billy Cannon, LSU's halfback who would win the Heisman Trophy that year, led to an LSU touchdown.
LSU had, once again, won a game on a ridiculous big stroke of fortune and Ole Miss had, once again, tragically allowed victory to wriggle out of her grasp. That was the only blemish on Ole Miss' record that season. Billy Cannon, as many have said, won the Heisman Trophy that night in Baton Rouge. Of course, in true Ole Miss fashion, the Rebels would later pummel the Tigers in the Sugar Bowl that year, but none of that mattered. National champions were, at that time, crowned before the bowls were played.
It would, in true SEC fashion, take a national championship controversy involving the Alabama Crimson Tide to reverse that system only a few years later.
Yesterday was miserable. We continued to fail at bucking the trends with which our football team has shackled itself. Poor performances after high rankings, letting an otherwise equal or lesser opponent best us via big plays, and not showing up against an SEC squad on Halloween continued to remind ourselves that we are, painfully, Ole Miss.
Last night, as my idiot cab driver drove a couple miles in the wrong direction--mind you, this is after waiting in the rain for damn near an hour just to get one--I realized that I had let Ole Miss ball get the better of me. I was exhausted, fairly drunk, in a ridiculous costume, and wretchedly doleful. I let an otherwise excellent opportunity to have a blast--namely, Halloween, the day in which young women get drunk and dress like prostitute cartoons--to become spoiled by the never-ending struggle that is Ole Miss fandom. I've really got to stop letting this happen to me.
I'm sure WW will have a postgame up sometime. Until then, I'm gonna do something to keep my mind way off of Rebel ball for a little while.