There is a special glow hovering over the people who call Mississippi home. It was a truly special week, and we are still grinning from ear to ear. There are so many things that this state has been battling to overcome, and too often, unfortunately, we lose. But for one glorious week we had our place in the sun. Mississippi has dominated the football arena, but more importantly The University of Mississippi took down a dynasty.

The air was thick with excitement in the Grove Saturday afternoon. Rebel fans were shoulder to shoulder, basking in the tailgate traditions of their beloved university. There is simply nothing better than sitting under a red and blue tent with Solo cup in hand, the Pride of the South playing in the background, and friends cracking jokes and chanting Hotty Toddy. Those moments, in the very heart of the campus, are full of sights and feelings that Rebel fans ache to bottle and save forever, but these moments are fleeting. The better the moment the faster it flies.

Any time you spend in the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium proves to be a majestic experience, and Saturday’s game epitomized that. Thousands upon thousands of Rebel fans were united as one. Students, alumni, faculty, families, supporters, celebrities, black, white, rich, poor – we were all in that game together. The red and blue home crowd so engulfed the arena that hardly a Bama voice could be heard. Every play was heart-wrenching. We screamed, cheered, cried and rejoiced. Every emotion was extreme, and every moment was exhilarating. I have never been in a place filled with more passion than the Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium that day.

The last few minutes of the game were unbelievable. A touchdown pass to Vince Sanders, Alabama’s fumble, Walton’s end zone snatch, and Senquez Golson’s acrobatic interception. When Golson’s foot hit the ground it sealed the deal. Magic! We had actually done it. Yes WE, the entire Rebel Nation, had beat Bama.

Mere seconds after Bo took a knee to cement the win, fans poured over the sides of the stands on to the field. It was blissful anarchy. Fans hung from the goal posts tearing each down. Older fans who had been present for some hard-fought wins and huge upsets couldn’t help but tear up. Watching fans march those field posts through the Grove and on the Square would bring a tear to even the most stoic fan. It was nothing less than beautiful.

We beat Alabama, the team with the long-held top position on SEC brackets with insane amounts of wins and championships. The game certainly did not destroy that image of the Bama Powerhouse, yet it showed that the University of Mississippi has truly become a force to be reckoned with. Alabama hasn’t changed; we have!

It’s hard to put in words the excitement of the weekend. There are so many aspects and details that came together to make an incredible game day.

It can be a little depressing to be a recent graduate. Sometimes it’s hard to realize that it’s all over. I will probably never attend courses at the University of Mississippi again. But this weekend, my first game as an alumna, I realized that it would never be over. Even though I won’t be in classes, I will always be an Ole Miss Rebel, and as an Ole Miss Rebel, I will continue to be part of a family that loves Oxford as much as I do.

As I got in the car after the game to make the trek back to Brookhaven, I was trying to compose my thoughts about what the weekend had meant and nothing I thought sounded nearly as good as Frank Everett’s poem about Ole Miss. So, in honor of this glorious win, I feel the need to reprint his much beloved words:

“There is a valid distinction between “The University” and “Ole Miss”, even though the separate threads are closely interwoven. The University is buildings, trees and people. Ole Miss is mood, emotion and personality. One is physical and the other spiritual, one tangible and the other intangible. The University is respected, but Ole Miss is loved. For anyone without that love it does not exist. The University is geographical, but Ole Miss is universal. There are many universities, but there is only one Ole Miss.

What then is Ole Miss?

Ole Miss is intimate and personal with a special meaning to each one. It is as elusive to define as capturing a cloud.

Ole Miss is agony and ecstasy, with no middle ground. Anything less than glorious triumph brings sheer misery and utter despair.

Ole Miss is the citadel where beauty dwells.

Ole Miss is lacy moon shadows on the great white columns of the Lyceum.

Ole Miss is the Grove where in the spring the soft whispering breeze sings through the high lifted branches of the trees its sweetest songs, and where on crisp Autumn Saturdays are lavishly spread the most massive picnics ever conceived.

Ole Miss is a six-year-old, proudly labeled with a big “18” on his back. Ole Miss is in Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field, Atlantic City and Tulane Stadium or wherever its people are, together or alone.

Ole Miss is in a service club in distant Heidelberg where among hundreds more, a young soldier far from home scribbled his name on the wall with the sole identification “Ole Miss, By Damn!”

Ole Miss is a lonely white cross in an endless row of crosses on a remote and rocky mountainside at Casino.

Ole Miss is an impromptu reunion at a South Pacific crossroad somewhere between Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.

Ole Miss is a smile of recognition, an excited embrace, a warm handshake, a friend in every town, village and hamlet from Tunica to Tylertown and Pontotoc to Pascagoula.

Ole Miss is a quiet little bald man from the red hills of Georgia smiling near the visitors’ gate at Sanford Stadium in Athens wearing a battered old button with wrinkled red and blue ribbon hungry to hear voices and see faces from home.

Ole Miss is an eager freshman yelling, shouting and jumping with uncontained excitement in the line ahead of me at Legion Field in Birmingham. I was numb and silent with apprehension. He demanded, “Who are you for?” I said, “Son, I was for Ole Miss before you were born.” Looking at my gray hair he said, “I guess you are right” and stuck out his hand. We shook and the generation gap dissolved. Ole Miss knows no boundaries of age.

Ole Miss is the deep throb of drumming music that beats a battle song-the lithe steps on long young limbs that measure the marching cadence heralding that the Rebels are on the move again.

Ole Miss is Bourbon Street at its best, or at its worst.

Ole Miss, too, is a quiet meditation under blue skies on Sardis Lake or in an ancient country church at College Hill.

Ole Miss is an unbreakable unity, a lasting living bond between those past, and those present, and those to come.

Ole Miss is a million memories, a million dreams, a million hopes, a million aims blended into one viable regenerating totality of experience and aspiration.

The University gives a diploma and regretfully terminates tenure, but one never graduates from Ole Miss.

In short, Ole Miss is us!”