Colonel Reb: Difference between revisions

Former athletic mascot of University of Mississippi

Colonel Reb
Ole Miss “Colonel Rebel” logo
University	University of Mississippi
Conference	SEC
First seen	1937
Last seen	2010

Colonel Reb was the official mascot of Ole Miss Rebels, the collegiate athletic teams of the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”) in Oxford, Mississippi. Designed in 1936,^[1] the Colonel served as the teams’ official sideline mascot from 1979 until 2003. The university replaced him in 2010 with a new on-field mascot, the Black Bear, who was replaced with Tony the Landshark in 2018.

Several theories exist as to who originally designed Colonel Reb, a cartoonish, older-aged colonel.^[2] One theory proposes that Billy Hix, the art editor for the 1936-1937 Ole Miss yearbook in which the Colonel first appeared, created the image as an illustration for the university’s new athletics sobriquet. Another theory postulates that the student group responsible for publishing The Rebel humor magazine designed the Colonel, as this group–known as the “Rebel Club”–was founded in 1937 shortly after the University adopted the “Rebels” nickname and featured on the magazine’s masthead an illustration of the Colonel was identical to the one found in the 1937 annual.^[3] Still others maintain that the printing company that published the Ole Miss annual was responsible for the design.

University of Mississippi historian David Sansing has noted that “Blind Jim [Ivy] may have been the model for Colonel Rebel,”^[4] citing the late Frank Everett, Jr., a Mississippi historian and prominent alumnus (B.A. ’32, LLB ’34)^[5] of the university.

Ivy, blinded as a teenager while working with tar on the Tallahatchie Bridge, originally made his way to Oxford in 1896 and became a peanut vendor. During a baseball game between Ole Miss and the University of Texas, a student told Ivy that Mississippi was losing badly. At that point, “Ivy began cheering the home team on in his famous loud booming voice. The team was strangely inspired by Mr. Ivy’s enthusiastic cheering, and won the game decisively.”^[6][7] From that point on, “Blind Jim” became a campus fixture at the University for the next sixty years and was regarded as one of the most passionate fans of its sports teams, known to proudly tell others that he had “never seen Ole Miss lose.”

Ivy was very much a part of the university scene when the editor of the school newspaper, The Mississippian, proposed a contest in April 1936 to produce a new nickname for the Ole Miss athletic teams. Prior to this, the teams had been called by various names–the Red and Blue, the Oxfords, the Mighty Mississippians, the Southerners, the Crimson and Blue–and most recently and most popularly up until 1936, the Flood. The Mississippian received many entries and subsequently placed several names–including Rebels, Raiders, Confederates, Stonewalls, and Ole Miss (without a nickname appendage)–in the hands of 21 sportswriters.^[8] Ultimately, “Rebels” was the choice of 18 out of the 21 sportswriters, a nickname alluding to the University Greys. After five months of contest and polling, the university’s athletics committee formally approved the name, and its sports teams have been known as the Rebels ever since.
The look of the Colonel has been modified several times since those early years, however. The 1941-1942 Ole Miss features a depiction of Colonel Reb that looks much more like the well-known image that is used to this day. The earliest and most widely recognized version of the “modern” Colonel, however, appeared on the 1946-1947 Ole Miss, adorning the cover in full color and in much more detail. Ole Miss campus bookstore owner Carl Coers and famous New Orleans cartoonist John Churchill Chase may have also had a hand in revising and modifying the Colonel image during those early years.^[9] The California company Angelus Pacific also claims that it designed the Colonel; during this era, ex-Disney artist Art C. Evans illustrated dozens of collegiate mascots that became hugely popular across America and are still widely recognizable today.^[10][11]

Colonel Reb on Campus[edit]

Honorary Title[edit]

In 1940, Ole Miss students began voting for “Colonel Rebel” as the highest honorary position for male students on campus (not to be confused with the mascot). This title had previously been called “The King of Mardi Gras,” but this name was changed by the Associated Student Body executive council in the fall of 1939.^[12] This distinction was made in addition to the female equivalent (“Miss Ole Miss”), which had been bestowed upon female students on campus for over a decade. Several distinguished Ole Miss alumni have been elected to one of these two positions, including former University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat. In 1975, former National Football League standout Ben Williams became the first black student to be elected “Colonel…