The most wonderful time of the year

As I walked around campus today, I noticed a sweet smell that brought back memories of jubilation and despair, victory and defeat. 

It was the smell of whiskey and home cooking, perfume and sweat, giant oaks and green grass, chicken strips and pig skin. 

It was the smell of football season at Ole Miss. 

For a lifelong Rebels fan who has spent thousands of hours watching college football, eating others’ food in the Grove, playing EA Sports “NCAA Football” series and covering Nutt’s boys for a couple of publications, there is no better time of year than the first weekend of football season.

And now that we have entered September, that scent of tailgating and gridiron is so close I can almost taste it. 

Saturday, our little hamlet will be flooded with tourists that call themselves Rebels, and I cannot wait. 

The media excitement around the Rebels has been almost nonexistent compared to last season. 

Gone is the No.4 ranking, the experienced quarterback and the only 1,000-yard rusher/500-yard receiver in SEC history. 

In their places we have a team picked by many to finish last in the SEC West. 

We have two inexperienced underclassmen and a former Pac-10 star who, it now seems, won’t be eligible until 2011, battling at quarterback and a host of youngsters trying to make up the offense Mr. McCluster produced last season. 

While ’09 started in a blaze and fizzled into a snore-worthy Cotton Bowl victory, watch for this season to be the antithesis of the last for the Rebels. The opening five games are as easy a start to the season as the Rebels have had in decades. 

With SEC East perennial bottom-dwellers Vanderbilt and Kentucky being the toughest competition of the stretch, the Rebels could start the season 5-0. 

Though I’ve falsely predicted that Ole Miss could start the season with five or six wins straight many times, I once again find myself convinced. 

After the easy stretch that should see Ole Miss make a run into the top 25, the Rebels will likely be favored at home against Auburn, University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Mississippi State. Of the four SEC road games, only Alabama looks like an unlikely stretch for the Rebels. 

So, despite the scarce national media coverage and low predictions by the “experts,” my excitement level for this season has not diminished even in the slightest for this football season. 

So as the Rebels prepare to take on FCS Jacksonville State Saturday, I will rise early and head to my favorite patch of grass and trees on Earth. 

I’ll enjoy time with friends, family and maybe even some friends-to-be eating home cooked food, drinking my favorite cerveza (don’t tell the campus police that means beer) and talking, at a gradually rising volume as the drinks poor, about how this could be the year the Rebels really do something special. 

Fortunately, we may have more than six weeks until we find out if the Rebels are a real SEC West contender. 

And in that time, they might just become one. 

Regardless, it should be a hell of a lot of fun for all of us. Hotty Toddy!