JACKSON - Longtime readers will understand this bit of fatherly reflection on the eve of the 2003 Egg Bowl.
As always, someone at my house will be unhappy when the game is over. State wins and wife Paula - twice a graduate of Ole Miss who still likes to remind me that 21 years ago back in Philadelphia she once helped his Aunt Mickie Williams baby sit Eli Manning - will mourn.
Ole Miss wins and it will be me that's kicking the cat and cussing.
Our cat, Clyde, knows the odds are long for my Bulldogs this year, and he's hiding until normalcy returns to 201 Dogwood.
But the cat's got it easy compared to our daughter, Kate - a high school senior and now a Bulldog defector.
In an Egg Bowl house divided, an only child is in a world of hurt when it comes to making a college choice. Kate has been at the center of a recruiting war among family and friends that has been rather remarkable in its abiding silliness.
She's handled it well. Her Bulldog and Rebel roots both run pretty deep.
Both grandfathers, one grandmother, two aunts, two uncles and her father all are State graduates. Her mother, uncle and several loudmouth cousins are Ole Miss grads.
When Kate was about 6, Dr. Donald Zacharias and wife Tommie presented her a faux certificate of admission to MSU after a dinner party at their home. There were football bowl trips to Memphis, Atlanta and Dallas over the years.
Kate was in the sea of humanity on Scott Field after State won in the last seconds in the 1999 miracle comeback.
Growing up, her room was a mix of Bulldog maroon and Rebel blue. Both sides in the battle for her allegiance tried plying her with T-shirts, banner and other trinkets. Me, I'm a serial MSU briber.
But during the time I was teaching at Ole Miss in the mid-1990s, she accompanied me on trips to the campus and I could see then her appreciation of the beauty of the campus and the charms of Oxford. She asked to visit Rowan Oak.
As we drove to the Neshoba County Fairgrounds back in the summer, she began a halting, tearful conversation with the words: "I don't want to disappoint you, Dad, but … ."
Seems she had decided for a myriad of reasons - some sensible and some fanciful - to go to Ole Miss. I tried every underhanded trick in the book to turn her head during the fall as we went to MSU football games, but to no avail.
MSU's Dr. Jimmy Abraham, the world's best college recruiter and student affairs administrator, took a crack at it. She loved Jimmy but wouldn't budge. Charles and Pat Lee rolled out the Maroon carpet, but Kate stuck to her newfound Ole Miss guns.
About mid-season this fall, I finally accepted the fact that the little girl I'd dressed in MSU cheerleader dresses all those years was going to attend Ole Miss. And I began to think about the last State-Ole Miss game we'd attend together before her seat moved from beside me to the student section in Oxford.
Kate and I will be in Starkville together on Thanksgiving to watch the renewal of the rivalry as Eli and Jackie Sherrill compete for the headlines. She's humoring the old man by wearing maroon one last time. Smart cookie, my girl.
Said she'd ring the illegal cowbell, but wouldn't yell against her soon-to-be Rebels. I can live with that. I have to.
I don't know what we'll do next year when I'm a State alum with a kid in the Ole Miss student section. I suppose I'll do what I did when Kate's Ole Miss momma was still going to the games - keep my mouth shut and hope for the best. And bear down on that cowbell.
