Yeah, it's a circus...a zoo...the epicenter of the college football world colliding with the most rabid fans on earth. It's SEC Media Days.
It's mostly just a bunch of coach-speak, shoulder shrugs and a whole lot of "you know" and "um" from the players.
But we, as fans of an SEC team, eat it up. It's been more than half a year since Ole Miss took the field against someone other than itself. Our skin has been crawling for more reasons than just the 100 percent humidity and 105+ degree heat indices.
It's officially football season.
Twitter was all aflutter throughout Media Days. Here's a few highlights:
From today:
OleForty(Kentrell Lockett): Why do I feel like its the first day of high school...
EotC DavidNEGATIVEYANKEELIBERALBrandt: Powe gave his tips for weight loss today: Drink water, lots of green vegetables, don't eat after 8 p.m. and cut out (most) of the fried fish.
Upon learning that Ole Miss received three votes to win the SEC West:
Rivals reporter Chase Parham: So the Spirit sent three writers?
Obviously, Houston Nutt had to address two VERY IMPORTANT issues to on-field success in the SEC: the TSUN craze and the current mascot selection. Thank God he's there to guide us through these complex issues.
On TSUN:
"I don't know too much about that."
Nuff said. Nutt realizes that cutesy nicknames from rival coaches gets more attention than recent recruiting success. Btw, how's that in-state recruiting going? Anybody know? Maybe ask the Dandy Dozen.
On the Mascot selection:
"We're Ole Miss Rebels. That's what I go by."
On both of these questions, Nutt just dodges the controversy and doesn't pick a side. This is quite contrary to the popular belief in northwest Arkansas that Nutt is a media driven, crazed, Mitch Mustain-hatin' conspiracy theorist who is trying to destroy the great state of Arkansas including Tyson chicken and Wal-Mart.
Jerrell Powe revealed he hopes to one day be the sheriff of Wayne County and is majoring in criminal justice. Coincidentally, Patrick Willis majored in criminal justice. I hope there's a "run and catch the bad guy" portion of a class just to see these two run down some helpless bastard and snap him like a twig.
I had heard Powe worked for the WCSD during his tenuous battle academically with the NCAA to get enrolled at Ole Miss. It's my understanding he worked in restraining unruly felons. Thank God those meat hooks weren't doing cavity searches (too far? maybe).
Raymond Cotton drew quite a bit of attention as well, though he was nowhere in the vicinity of the 205 area code. Cotton had discussed transferring with Nutt earlier this week, which would leave the Rebels with only two scholarship QBs.
Nutt remained fairly neutral about the situation saying Cotton's parents were behind him staying put. Speculation as to why Cotton would want to leave ranges from the reasonable (he doesn't like the new offense/coordinator) to the absurd (he heard real QBs go to Jacksonville State /Perrilouxearux'd).
Last year, Ole Miss was one of the teams who had a packed press room due to preseason expectations. The Rebels were a dark horse pick for the SEC Championship.
This year, the crowd of reporters was much more sparse from what I understand, and the Rebels were picked to finish last, though a couple rogues still voted Ole Miss to win the SEC.
So what exactly does this mean?
Maybe there's a minority belief out there that the Rebels are going to be very good and be anchored by a great defense. It's offense is in question no doubt, but a few sips of the red and blue kool-aid(and every team has unlimited portions of it at Media Days) could make you think that the Rebels could possibly notch a nine win season yet again.
Hey, WAOM, right? And it's officially football season /keithwoernleDM'd.