OMAHA, Neb. – How does it feel to finally win a national championship?
You feel like you’re sitting in the hall of a stadium you’ve never been to before that day, 600 miles from home, wearing a Ole Miss baseball jersey and sobbing openly, so stunned you can’t even stand up and watch the trophy celebration take place on the field below.
Here’s what happened to Ed Thompson of Memphis, Tennessee, who drove Saturday night to be in Omaha for Game 2 of the finals of the Men’s College World Series, a game they won 4-2 over Oklahoma to cure this title. “I saw them win in Game 1 and I just got up from the damn couch and started driving. I got a ticket and I’m not telling you how much I paid, “he choked,” but it was worth it. “
How does it feel to see your school finally win its first officially recognized national men’s championship – in anything – since the school brought out its first football team in 1893?
It feels like leaning over the railing of the grandstand on the left, waving a $ 100 bill to the crew of Charles Schwab Field or someone else who might be interested in winning Benjamin to fill his empty glass in the stadium with a red warning track, or maybe even a few stalks of grass.
So it was for Lynn and Terry Becker, who cashed in on vacation days to come to Omaha late last week. “I want to put some in a jar on my desk,” Terry said. “She wants to sprinkle everything in her flower bed.”
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How does it feel to watch your team move from No. 1 in the nation to dropping out of the rankings like an airless balloon, drop to 7-14 in the SEC game, and have a fan base and media calling for a leader coaching job? Then move from one of the last four teams invited to the 64-team NCAA baseball tournament to the last standing team?
It feels like standing in your chair and holding your baby, born in the middle of this season, knowing that she won’t remember it, but that you can tell her later that she has witnessed what generations of fans of Ole Miss have never had before. And all this against the background of chanting the name of this coach, girded by a crowd of 25,972 people dressed in powder blue. “MIKE BE-AN-CO!” Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance!
So it was with the Lincoln family of Hattiesburg. As Father Jack held his little girl up in a Lion King style, he joined in the applause and admitted, “Yes, well, I wanted him fired in May.”
It feels like a 40-year-old man jumping in the air and trying to catch confetti as a gust of wind in Nebraska sends them to the podium. I have a feeling you’re taking a selfie with your grandfather with his OleMAHA baseball cap while he’s talking about Archie Manning against Alabama. It feels like not so patiently standing in line for a $ 40 T-shirt from the Ole Miss NCAA Men’s College World Series, just taken out of boxes tucked away behind the counters at the official NCAA souvenir stalls.
It feels good. It feels even better than expected because it wasn’t expected.
“This is the best part of him,” said pitcher Dylan DeLucia, who was named the most notable player in the series, although he did not make it to the finals. “No one thought we could do that. Even after we won on Saturday night [to take a 1-0 lead over Oklahoma] he was still there. This makes it even better for us. That’s what makes this band so special. “
“I think that’s why you had over 20,000 fans who showed up here, because it’s a special band,” Bianco added. “They knew it was a special group. It was not just a national championship. I sincerely believe in this. At the time of the presentation of the trophy, when you look in the stands, the stadium holds 25,000 and looked almost still full. This group of young men, I think people have fallen in love with them, their history and where they come from … That’s why they all came here. “
I have a feeling that none of these people will leave the stadium soon. #hottytoddy #MCWS pic.twitter.com/sHIygdJu9D
– Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) June 26, 2022
For 10 days they appeared in waves. There was the first band that came to Omaha at the beginning of MCWS and never left. There was the second legion, which rolled north, while Ole Miss managed to enter the semifinals and championship series. Then there were the third stages, which arrived on the banks of the Missouri River all Saturday night and Sunday morning, desperate to be a part of it all.
For a year, they had heard about the way supporters of Egg Bowl’s main rival, Mississippi, had taken Omaha. For so many years, they had to occupy the back seat of the Bulldogs, which were the hard superpower of the state of Magnolia. That’s why some of them lined up next to the plaque on the outside of the stadium on Mike Feihi Street, clicking photos of their middle fingers pointing to the bronze inscriptions “2021 – Mississippi State” above “CHAMPIONS OF 2020”.
Many of this last group came to Nebraska, knowing full well that they would not be able to secure a ticket. They didn’t care. As Game 2 passed in the middle of the inning of a tense one-run affair, Ole Miss fans sat on benches in front of the main gate on the right field and filled the bars around the stadium, watching television coverage of the action taking place across the street, just on several hundred yards.
They stood under the old outdoor board at Slowdown Beer Garden, like baseball fans in the pre-television era, standing in Times Square and applauding when someone updated the result of the Bronx and Brooklyn World Series. Among them was even the Times Square mascot, dressed in long-retired Colonel Reb, wearing Under Armor sleeves under Ole Miss’s T-shirt like a bad Broadway Elmo, but still taking selfies.
The most popular pitch during the game was the same venue that became de facto Oxford North during this year’s series, Rocco’s. For years, the sports bar / pizzeria has ridiculed the Jell-O Shot Challenge, another scoreboard, but it tracks how many alcoholic sips of gelatin are purchased by fans of the eight teams each June. College World Series Field. The typical result has always been a few hundred. A crazy number is one that can get close to 1000.
When Game 2 entered the late innings, Ole Miss fans threw 16,174 jelly shots. (The previous record was set last year by Rebels’ Egg Bowl rivals in Mississippi with … 2965.)
Well, we’re out of jelly, but we’re still spinning! Old School Ole Miss Shots still counts for the total! Let’s increase it to 20k! # CWS2022 #CWSS #RoccosOmaha pic.twitter.com/bHCAWXqeTZ
– CWS Jello Shot Challenge (@CWSShotBoard) June 26, 2022
“I think I can talk about everyone here, about every business around this stadium, when I say we’ve never seen anything like what we’ve seen from the teams this week, but especially from Ole Miss fans,” said the owner. of Rocco Kevin Cooley, who expressed happiness that his newfound friends were approaching a national title, but was no doubt upset that they went and swept the first two games and denied Omaha’s economy another day and night of blue purchasing power.
But on Sunday night, as the sun began to set over Omaha and the sky over the city began to color the unmistakable shade of Ole Miss’s blue, these fans seemed very determined to make that night as long as possible.
“I’ve never been vaccinated with jelly in my 78 years of life,” said Gloria Poplin, a self-identifying “hot todd grandmother” with a piece of shiny red confetti tucked into her gray hair and wearing an oversized T-shirt. “Don’t Let The Rebs Get Hot “. “But I think I’ll go there and see if there are any left. And I won’t go to bed until Wednesday.”
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