Each year, the seasons bring their joys and sorrows. It begins with baseball season, followed by the Neshoba County Fair, then college football season and finally there is deer season.

Did I miss one? No, that’s all.

There are also two very important holidays with deeply religious connotations — Thanksgiving and Christmas — but in all honesty, those holidays are so deeply intertwined in Mississippi with college football season and deer season that it becomes one long pageant.

Part of that rich pageant in Mississippi is college football season tailgating. For the third year, I will be spending most of my Saturdays tailgating in the Grove with my daughter, the Ole Miss junior.

As a devoted Mississippi State man, I have to admit that the Rebel faithful

have this tailgating thing down to a fine art. It’s serious business.

Having experienced the Ole Miss football tailgating scene, I have also confronted every Ole Miss parent’s nightmare — The Princeton Review’s annual rankings of the nation’s colleges and universities.

I tend to take those rankings with a grain of salt. The Princeton Review rating is the result of a survey of students. It’s not associated with Princeton University.

To suggest that The Princeton Review’s results are somewhat subjective would be an understatement. No other Mississippi public school is mentioned in the rankings, but Millsaps got a nod for having good “town and gown” relations

with the city of Jackson.

For the record, the recently released 2007 Princeton Review rankings lists

Ole Miss as 2nd on the index of schools where “their students almost never

study” and 5th among American university “party schools.”

Ole Miss also ranked high in the following categories:

n 11th among universities that featured “lots of beer.”

n 9th for schools with “lots of hard liquor.”

n 14th as a university that is a “major fraternity and sorority scene.”

n 15th among students “most nostalgic for Ronald Reagan.”

Reading the rankings, I reflected on my 30 years of experience with the

University of Mississippi — first dating and later marrying an Ole Miss co-ed, then teaching there for a year in the 1990s, and finally as the parent of a UM student.

“Party school?” Check.

“Party school” refreshments? Check and check.

“Fraternities and sororities?” Check, big time.

“Nostalgic for Reagan?” I remember he was popular among the students when he ran for president in 1980 and 1984, so I guess nostalgia filtering down to

the children of those students who voted for Reagan wouldn’t be a stretch.

But from the classroom, I remember teaching a lot of motivated kids who

worked hard and made good grades. I had one or two students who didn’t, but

the majority worked as hard as they possibly could have played after class.

What The Princeton Review doesn’t tell you for 2007 is that Ole Miss faculty

and other researchers attracted more than $102.9 million in outside funding

for research, service and education projects.

The total includes 201 sponsored programs at University Medical Center for

$39.3 million and 301 awards on the Oxford campus for $63.6 million.

Bottom line, Ole Miss has a deserved reputation as a place where folks like

to have a good time and where parties and campus Greek life are priorities.

But it’s also an outstanding university.

Don’t get me wrong. I tried to get my daughter to go to State and get a

proper education. But my late wife — twice a Rebel graduate — won that argument and reveled in it.

Thursday night, I was in Starkville with a cowbell in my hand. Sunday, I’ll be in the Grove with my daughter — who will be safe and sound and getting a good education at the nation’s 5th leading party school.



E-mail Sid Salter at

ssalter@clarionledger.com.