Ole Miss tickets for the school's football games have been around since Dr. A.L. Bondurant led a charge by the students demanding that an athletic department be formed in 1890. Bondurant served as the coach for those first few teams and delivered an impressive win, 56-0, over the Southwest Baptist University of Jackson, Tennessee. Since that date the school has become one of the winning-est schools in college football history, currently at number 31 with 605 victories.
Throughout the school's athletic history the Ole Miss football team has captured six SEC titles and has posted a 20-12 Bowl record. Its alma mater includes quarterbacks Archie and Eli Manning, running back Deuce McAlister, offensive tackle Frank Kinard, and quarterback Jake Gibbs.
Ole Miss has three main rivalries. The first is an intrastate game known as the Egg Bowl or the Battle of the Golden Egg. The game pits the Ole Miss Rebels against the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The rivalry started in 1901 and has been able to continue even after both teams joined the SEC and after the divisional split of the conference placed both teams in the West Division.
The Magnolia Bowl is the series between the LSU Tigers and the Ole Miss Rebels. The schools began occasionally playing each other in 1894, but the rivalry really began in the 1950s and 1960s when both teams were perennially ranked among the best college football teams in the nation.
Arkansas and Ole Miss may seem an unlikely rivalry, but the hate between the two fan bases began to build after Arkansas joined the SEC in 1991. The two schools had played each other before, with games dating back to 1908, but it was the conference play that thrust this game head first into a rivalry.
Ole Miss football has quietly been one of the best college football programs over the last decade. The head coach (Houston Nutt) switched schools 2008, coming to Ole Miss from rival Arkansas. The new coach helped lead the school to a 9-4 record that included wins over the eventual BCS champion Florida Gators, the previous BCS champion LSU Tigers, and beating the Texas Tech Red Raiders as serious underdogs in the Cotton Bowl.
Ole Miss managed to go 8-4 in the 2008 college football regular season and even ended up getting into the top 25 after a 45-0 win over intrastate rival Mississippi State to end the season. Then the Mississippi Rebels went into the Cotton Bowl and shockingly beat the number seven Texas Tech Red Raiders.
