Mailbag: KKK Arrives in Ole Miss

Last week I wrote about the controversy over The South Will Rise Again chant at Ole Miss. In that piece I noted that Ole Miss was the only SEC school that couldn't escape the South's past. Now a new controversy is here, the Klu Klux Klan is protesting for this week's game against LSU. Seriously.

Faulkner memorably said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

And when it comes to Ole Miss that's certainly the case.

Proving that killing a wasp with a shotgun is tough business, the KKK has now stepped in to defend student's rights to chant, "The South Will Rise Again." The KKK issued this statement: "We aren't coming there to cause problems or cause trouble, Trouble has already been caused by a handful at Ole Miss, including the black student body president, who wants to shape Ole Miss into yet another liberal sodomite college."

Once the KKK takes your side, you've lost. Justifiably so. But so has anyone else on any side of the issue. Especially, by the way, putting this whole thing in a football context, Ole Miss's recruiting.

You think any other SEC school might mention that Ole Miss is a great place to go to school if you want the KKK to march on the day you play your biggest out-of-state rival of the year?

Anyone else think this would be a great time for Dave Chappelle to come out of retirement and bring back his black klan member character?

Our beaver pelt trader of the week is Bill Belichick for taking the risk on fourth down.

Astute readers of the mailbag will note that I didn't get the mailbag up last Friday because of the UT arrests combined with an early book signing in Oxford. So we missed the tally of the picks from two weeks ago.

I went 3-2-1 and Audrey, my family's French exchange student, went 2-3-1.

That ran our total's for the season to 23-22-3 for me and 18-26-4 for Audrey.

Now, our picks weren't public in the mailbag last week--although I tweeted them -- but here they were.

My picks are in bold:

UT @ Ole Miss -6

Stanford @ USC -10.5

Iowa @ Ohio State -17

Florida -17.5 @ South Carolina

Notre Dame @ Pittsburgh -7

Auburn @ Georgia -4.5

So I went, as usual 3-3. Meanwhile here were Audrey's picks along with her rationales:

Ole Miss
Stanford for smart people
Iowa
South carolina for Jordan
Pitt for brad
Auburn for my hair color

She went 4-2, picking up a game on me.

Our records as we enter the homestretch:

Clay: 26-25-3

Audrey 22-28-4

---

Here are my picks for this week:

California @ Stanford -8

Kentucky @ Georgia -9

Ohio State -12 @ Michigan

Oklahoma -6.5 @ Texas Tech

LSU @ Mississippi -4

Vanderbilt @ Tennessee -17

And here are Audrey's along with her rationales:

California hotel

Kentucky kiki

Michigan fleur

Oklahoma voila

LSU tutu

Tennessee pipi

On to All That and a Bag of Mail.

Chaz writes:

I have heard, from a source within the school, that Ole Miss is test marketing the "Hotty Toddy Man" as Colonel Reb's potential replacement (not kidding). I thought you might find this interesting/disturbing. Everyone that I encountered in the student section thought he was a joke too. I can't imagine coupling the outrage from disposing of Colonel Reb with the possibly greater outrage of choosing this guy as the new mascot. Colonel Reb would really be crying then.

I cannot imagine a greater travesty on Earth than replacing Colonel Reb with Hotty Toddy Man. It's like when Bo and Luke Duke were replaced by those guys who weren't Bo and Luke Duke during a contract dispute on the Dukes of Hazzard.

Only worse.

Actually, here's a greater travesty, playing your biggest rival on the season with a chance to lock down a likely 9-3 regular season record, and having the KKK show up to protest.

Andrew D. writes:

Clay,

There's a lot of chatter about whether Rich Rodriguez should be fired this season, but I haven't heard or read anybody discussing the prospect of firing him "for cause." I haven't looked at his employment contract, but I imagine that if UM can fire him for cause, then it won't be liable for his buyout. If such a clause exists, then the athletic department could potentially fire him for his recent off-the-field incidents, like their time-keeping problem. This seems like a cheap way to get rid of Rich now because if they wait a year to fire him then they may not be able to use the "for cause" justification (unless, of course, he creates even more distractions in the coming year, which is very possible).

In any case, I think that this is an interesting angle to the story that I haven't seen discussed anywhere.

Ding, ding, ding, Andrew D. gives me a premise for a column next week.

That's actually a really fascinating question, one of many reasons why I'm glad that lawyers and lawyers-to-be are such frequent readers and e-mailers.

Now, this would clearly be a contractual dispute if they used this rationale because I don't think it's clear that this is a for cause violation, but much like Billy Gillispie's issue with Kentucky, it's very likely that there would be enough of a dispute that Michigan would get off the hook for, at minimum, half of the buyout.

Now if Michigan was really convinced that something untoward took place, they could play hardball and take this all the way through the courts. But that would open up the program to discovery and who knows what other violations Rich Rod might know about. Or what other violations Michigan might know about that could end up public and lead to violations. (Note: I'm not singling out Michigan here, just pointing out that any program under intense scrutiny with the coach and administration at loggerheads often has a substantial amount of skeletons in the closet.)

But the key point for takeaway here is that Michigan would lose their for cause claim if they kept him on and overlooked this incident. If they fired him after a sub-par third season, a year from now, Rich Rod would get his buyout.

Very good email.

J. P. writes: