Colonel Reb

Colonel Reb
Ole Miss "Colonel Rebel" logo
University	University of Mississippi
Conference	SEC
First seen	1937

Colonel Reb was the mascot of Ole Miss Rebels, the collegiate athletic teams of the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss") in Oxford, Mississippi. Designed in 1936, 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.

Several theories exist as to who originally designed Colonel Reb. 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. 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," citing the late Frank Everett, Jr., a Mississippi historian and prominent alumnus (B.A. '32, LLB '34) 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Ivy, blinded as a teenager while working with tar on the Tallahatchie Bridge, originally made his way to Oxford in 1896 and became a peanut vendor.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.” 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."

Concrete evidence has not yet been found, however, to support the conclusion that Ivy was the basis for Colonel Reb's design.

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. Ultimately, "Rebels" was the choice of 18 out of the 21 sports writers, 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.