Rebel Roundup - January 28, 2013

Ole Miss enters picture for Laremy Tunsil, Florida State out, per report | SBNation.com
As you are all most certainly aware, this past weekend was a huge couple of days for Ole Miss recruiting, with many of the top high school players in the country, including top offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil, making their visits to Oxford.

ESPNU Expands National Signing Day for Eighth Consecutive Year | ESPN MediaZone
The Ole Miss campus will be one of 13 that the worldwide leader in sports will be broadcasting from during National Signing Day. Whoever is behind this - Hugh Freeze, Ross Bjork, LaQuon Treadwell (totally within the realm of possibility) - deserves significant appreciation and praise.

Archie Manning Is the ‘First Citizen’ of New Orleans | NYTimes.com
As a part of their Super Bowl coverage, the New York Times did a feature on Archie Manning and what he means to the New Orleanian football culture.

Mississippi gunner Henderson is one of a kind | Kentucky.com
The SEC's leading scorer and blossoming Rebel basketball star is undeniably, as this story puts it, "one of a kind." He's easy to love if he's on your team, and almost impossible to not despise as an opponent. He's brash, confident, unashamed and an absolutely lethal scoring threat - really a perfect recipe for acquiring his newfound status as the SEC's "bad boy"* of basketball.

Speaking of people hating Marshall Henderson
Kleph compiled some tweets from Auburn fans after Saturday night's two-point victory for the Rebs, a victory over which Marshall Henderson made no attempt to demonstrate some humility. If this is something which you would like to see more of (namely angry SEC basketball fans gnashing their teeth over Marshall Henderson's antics) then we've got something in store for you later this week.

Mississippi pays $4.35 million lump sum to Nutt | Meridian Star
I wish I could totally bomb my responsibilities at my job, get fired, and settle for close to five million dollars.

Ole Miss students referred to Office of Student Conduct for election night melee | The Clarion-Ledger
So this tells us basically everything we knew already about the night of Obama's re-election: that there was no "riot" nor was there any mass demonstration or protest of any sort. There were some dumbass undergrads doing dumbass undergraduate things, some of which included ignorant and offensive racially-tinged language. They drew a crowd through their dumbassery, which caused an over-zealous media fueled by inaccurate reports on social networks to label the goings on as a "riot," which is really fan-fucking-tastic for Ole Miss' image moving forward, you know, considering the significance of the events on our campus 50 years ago during the American Civil Rights movement.

Here's the thing, y'all. We at Ole Miss have a very unfair burden placed on our shoulders. For some reason or another, we are the measuring stick by which race relations at higher education in America are judged. When we do "well" (that is, really, do nothing too out of the ordinary from most other university campuses), we're praised and lauded in this, frankly, haughty and condescending manner. "Oh look, the Mississippians are starting to get it now." When we do poorly (again, really, not much too out of the ordinary from many campuses), it's "oh look, the Mississippians are at it again." I considering this, I urge you all to just stop the bullshit which you know is getting us in trouble, because people are watching and judging us.

Is it unfair? Hell yeah it's unfair. But it's the reality of the situation. Deal with it, and be smart in doing so. If a few students acting dumb somehow getting blown into a "race riot" by a media which is over zealous in its attempts to grossly mislabel the South and Mississippi in particular** isn't convincing prima facie evidence that we should tread lightly and deliberately with regards to race, politics, and other social issues, well then I don't know what will convince you.

*Yes, I felt dweeby typing that out.

**Something which I feel is borne out of an anti-Southern prejudice inherent in the American media... but that's neither here nor there.