This is an editorial I wrote for class; unpublished.

Ever since the dawn of time, there have been winners and there have been losers. It is impossible for one to triumph without the failure of another.

It’s the same concept as evolution: the strong pick off the weak one by one until the winner is the dominant species.

Last Saturday, Jacksonville State turned the tables on our fair Rebels and turned that smile upside down on every face in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

“You win some, you lose some.”

While even the top five teams in the country will also experience loss (remember when we beat Florida?) but their fans stick by them through thick and thin.

We cannot say the same for the remainder of the Ole Miss fans that were left Saturday afternoon. As the gap between 31 and 10 began to diminish as quickly as it arrived, the fans went from proud parents to that disapproving aunt once-removed that no one invites back to the reunions.

In short: a disgrace.

In order for a team to believe in itself, it needs to be surrounded by hundreds, thousands of screaming fans who will love them even when they make a grave error and lose to a Division II team.

What does a division and some Roman numerals have to do with anything? A loss is a loss, no matter how close and no matter how tragic, our team needs to know that through thick and thin, we will stand by and support them.

When the student section, the main drive of emotion and volume, dissipates into the Grove to find a new bottle of Jack and a bright red Solo cup, the team has nothing to look at behind that Rebels endzone.

We believe so much in the preservation of tradition and our precious culture that we seem to have forgotten the original reason why all of those tents make it to the Grove every Friday night. What point is the Grove without the Stadium?

Yes, we may have the fanciest tailgating set-up…ever, and we might be incredibly proud of our University, but if that’s the case, we need to stick around to hear what they play instead of  “From Dixie With Love” and give our team the support they deserve.

They slave away all summer with two-a-days and 100 degree Mississippi humidity to be the best they can be, and no one seems to support that unless there’s a win to put on that schedule when you get home.

We even replaced the low-point of our team last year with a top-ranked quarterback who cried when he learned he would, indeed, be cleared by the NCAA before that first game.

If a man from clear across the country can be brought to tears by the thought of playing in our stadium, on our field, with our men, why can’t we stick around until that clock runs out to support him?

Stand up, Ole Miss fans, no matter what your mascot of choice might be, and support your Rebels. Maybe if we stop throwing bottles at the field and start throwing out support at maximum volumes, we night not have to watch the biggest upset of the weekend on our grounds.