The Ole Miss Rebels football program represents the University of Mississippi, also known as "Ole Miss". The Rebels compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as members of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The Rebels play their home games at Vaught–Hemingway Stadium on the university's campus in University, Mississippi.
Founded in 1893, Ole Miss has won 6 Southeastern Conference titles, in 1947, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1962, 1963. Ole Miss has been recognized as a national champion three times by NCAA-designated major selectors in 1959, 1960, and 1962, and the university claims all three championships. With a record of 28–16, Ole Miss has the second-highest postseason winning percentage of schools with 30 or more bowl appearances.
Pete Golding, the program's head coach, succeeded Lane Kiffin in November 2025.
History
The Ole Miss football team played its first season in 1893 and have since fielded a team every year except for 1897 (due to a yellow fever epidemic) and 1943 (due to World War II). In that first season, the team compiled a 4–1 record under head coach Alexander Bondurant. In 1899, Ole Miss became a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA). The program joined the Southern Conference in 1922 and the Southeastern Conference in 1933.
Johnny Vaught era (1947–1970, 1973)
The modern era of Ole Miss football began in 1947, when Harold Drew was ousted in favor of his line coach, Johnny Vaught. A former All-American at Texas Christian University (TCU), Vaught led the Ole Miss program to national prominence over the next 24 years, posting 23 winning records and making the team a fixture in the national polls.
Just 2–7 in 1946, the Rebels went 9–2 in Vaught's first season at the helm, winning the first of his six SEC titles (1947, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1962, 1963). To date, Vaught is the only coach in Ole Miss history to win an SEC football championship. He also dominated the Egg Bowl rivalry with Mississippi State, going 19–2–4 against the Bulldogs. The 1947 season also saw Ole Miss great Charlie Conerly become the first Rebel player to seriously contend for the Heisman Trophy, placing fourth in the voting.
The Rebels were among the winningest programs in the country during the 1950s. From 1950 to 1959, Ole Miss posted an 80–21–5 record (.778 winning percentage), third only to Oklahoma and Miami (OH) during that decade. Vaught's 1959 squad was honored as the "SEC Team of the Decade."
In the 1960s, Vaught guided the Rebels to a 77–25–6 record and a .740 winning percentage, which was the ninth-best during that decade. The Rebels were ranked atop the Associated Press poll for three weeks during the 1960 season and one week during the 1961 campaign. The 1960 unit finished 10–0–1; the only blemish was a 6–6 tie against LSU. Ole Miss was presented with the Grantland Rice Trophy by the Football Writers Association of America after its Sugar Bowl victory, though that did not carry the same weight of the wire service voting (AP and Coaches' Poll) which selected Minnesota as the national champion.
The Rebels' 1962 season is Ole Miss' only undefeated and untied season: 10–0. They capped off the season with a victory in the Sugar Bowl, but finished No. 3 in both major polls. In 1964, Ole Miss was ranked preseason No. 1 in the Associated Press poll, but finished with a dismal 5–5–1 record at season's end.
Vaught also made going to postseason play the norm rather than the exception for the Rebel football program. Ole Miss played in 15 consecutive bowl games from 1957 to 1971, a national record at the time. In all, Vaught led Ole Miss to 18 bowl games, posting a 10–8 record. For his efforts, Vaught was named SEC Coach of the Year six times (1947, 1948, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1962).
Vaught coached some of the best players in Ole Miss football history. and produced 26 All-America first-teamers. He also coached four players who finished in the top five in the Heisman Trophy voting: Conerly in 1947, Charlie Flowers (5th in 1959), Jake Gibbs (3rd in 1960), and Archie Manning (4th in 1969, 3rd in 1970).
Failing health forced Vaught to resign his position in 1970. He was succeeded by Billy Kinard.
No Ole Miss coach has since matched Vaught's longevity or winning percentage.
Billy R. Kinard era (1971–1973) Billy Kinard, the first Ole Miss alumnus to head up the football program, won 10 games in 1971, fourth-most by a first-year head coach in NCAA Division I history, but was fired after going 5–5 in 1972 and starting the 1973 season 1–2.
Vaught was rehired to finish out the 1973 season, then resigned once again as head coach. As of 2022, his final record of 190–61–12 still ranks him in the top 25 winningest coaches in NCAA Division I history.
Kinard's tenure saw the team's first Black player, 79 years after the team started and a decade after the university admitted its first Black student. Ben Williams, a defensive tackle, recruited out of a small school in the Delta region of Mississippi, eventually claimed All-SEC honors and had a long and successful NFL career following his stint at Ole Miss.
Ken Cooper era (1974–1977) Ken Cooper, an assistant under Kinard since 1971, was named head coach on January 17, 1974, and took Ole Miss through the 1977 season. Cooper compiled a 21–23 record, and his tenure is probably best remembered for the September 1977 upset of Notre Dame, who finished the season 11–1 and AP and UPI national champion.
Steve Sloan era (1978–1982) Steve Sloan, the former All-American quarterback at Alabama under Paul "Bear" Bryant, posted a 20–34 record from 1978 to 1982.
Billy Brewer era (1983–1993) After stepping outside the Ole Miss family football tree the previous nine seasons, former Rebel star player Billy Brewer took over as head coach in December 1982. In his 11 seasons as head coach, Brewer led the Rebels to five winning seasons and four bowls, including Ole Miss' 1990 New Year's Day Gator Bowl appearance, which was the program's first January bowl game since 1969. He was named SEC Coach of the Year in 1986 (8–3–1 record) and 1990 (9–3 record), and in 1986, the Rebels returned to the national rankings for the first time in over a decade. He compiled a 68–55–3 record and led Ole Miss to eight Egg Bowl victories over rival Mississippi State.
Brewer was dismissed just before the 1994 season after the NCAA infractions committee found him guilty of "unethical conduct," Ole Miss defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn finished the season as interim coach.
Tommy Tuberville era (1995–1998) Hired on December 2, 1994, Tommy Tuberville led the 1995 Rebels to a 6–5 record and an Egg Bowl victory over Mississippi State. In 1997, Ole Miss recorded its best season in five years with an 8–4 record, a 15–14 Egg Bowl victory over Mississippi State and a Motor City Bowl win over Marshall University. The bowl appearance was the program's first since 1992, and the Rebels earned a final national ranking of No. 22 in both polls.
During the 1998 season, Tuberville repeatedly said he would not leave Ole Miss. With a month to go before the team's bowl game, he told alumni, "They'll have to take me out of here in a pine box". Two days later, he accepted the job of head coach at SEC West rival Auburn University.
David Cutcliffe era (1998–2004) David Cutcliffe took over as head coach on December 2, 1998, just 29 days before the Rebels met Texas Tech in the Sanford Independence Bowl. They prevailed, 35–18, in arguably the biggest upset of the 1998 bowl season.
Instilling a high-powered offensive style, Cutcliffe had four winning seasons in his first five seasons at Ole Miss, in 1999 (8–4), 2000 (7–5), 2001 (7–4) and 2002 (7–6), becoming the first Rebel mentor since Harry Mehre (1938–41) to post winning marks in his first five years. From 1997 to 2003, the Rebels played in six bowl games, tied with Arkansas for the most bowl appearances among SEC Western Division schools during that span. In 2003, Cutcliffe guided the Rebels to a 10–3 overall mark and a share of the SEC West title with eventual BCS National Champion LSU.
Despite his 44–29 record, five straight winning seasons, and guiding the team to its first 10 win season in over 30 years, Cutcliffe was fired by Ole Miss's Athletic Director Pete Boone in December 2004 after the team posted a disappointing 4–7 record and a third consecutive loss to LSU.
Ed Orgeron era (2005–2007)
Ed Orgeron took over on December 16, 2004. Named the 2004 National Recruiter of the Year by The Sporting News and Rivals.com, he compiled two of the best-ranking signing classes in 2006 and 2007. This did not lead to on-the-field success. In 2007, Ole Miss was last in the SEC in scoring offense, turnover margin, rushing offense, rushing defense, punt returns, opponent first downs, red-zone offense, opponent third-down conversions, field goal percentage, time of possession and kickoff coverage.
In 2007, the Rebels went winless in the SEC for the first time since 1982 and ended the season at 3–9 (0–8 in SEC play). Orgeron was fired on November 24, 2007, one day after Ole Miss blew a 14-0 fourth quarter lead in the Egg Bowl at Starkville and lost 17-14.
Houston Nutt era (2008–2011)
Three days later, Houston Nutt was hired as the next head football coach, just five weeks after he had defeated Ole Miss as the head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.
In Nutt's first season, he guided the Ole Miss Rebels to a 9–4 record with marquee victories over the eventual BCS National Champion Florida Gators, the reigning BCS National Champion LSU Tigers, and the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the 2009 Cotton Bowl Classic. The Rebels posted their 600th win on September 27, 2008, when they defeated the Gators 31–30. At season's end, the Rebels were ranked in the Top 15 in both major polls.
But in the 2010 and 2011 seasons, the Rebels won a total of six games, and in the latter season, went winless in SEC play. On November 7, 2011, athletic director Pete Boone forced Nutt to resign, effective at the end of the season, citing what ESPN called the program's "total decline".
NCAA investigators later concluded that Nutt had allowed athletes to play while ineligible. In 2019, the NCAA punished Ole Miss for these violations and others committed by his successor, Hugh Freeze, by stripping the team of 33 wins over six seasons. This included all four wins in 2010 and two wins in 2011, making those season the Rebels' first official winless ones in more than a century.
Hugh Freeze era (2012–2017)
On December 5, 2011, Hugh Freeze became the new head coach. The team went 7–6 with a 38–17 victory over Pitt in the BBVA Compass Bowl.
In Freeze's second year, the Rebels went 8–5 (3–5), defeating then-sixth-ranked LSU on a last-second field goal in Oxford, then beating Georgia Tech, 25–17, in the Music City Bowl.
In 2014, Freeze led Ole Miss to one of its strongest seasons in four decades. The Rebels spent most of the season in the top 10, rising as high as third in October—their highest ranking at that late stage in the season in almost half a century. They ultimately finished 9–3, only the third time since Vaught's tenure that a Rebel team has won as many as nine games. This garnered them a berth in the 2014 Peach Bowl, their first major-bowl appearance since 1969, where the Rebels lost 42–3 to TCU.
In 2015, Freeze led to the Rebels to perhaps the program's strongest season since 1962, when the team went undefeated and untied, with wins over ranked SEC West Rivals LSU and Mississippi State, and was headlined by a road victory over No. 2-ranked Alabama, their first win in Tuscaloosa since 1988 and the first time they had beaten the Tide in back-to-back seasons. The Rebels earned a trip to the 2016 Sugar Bowl, their first appearance in this bowl game since 1970, where they beat Oklahoma State 48–20. Freeze led the Rebels to their first 10-win season since 2003, and only the third since the Vaught era.