Rounsaville Brings “Spirit” to Ole Miss

In the world of college athletics, consistency and continuity are tough to come by. Teams and programs go through constant changes in every area imaginable from coaching staffs, rosters and athletic directors to trainers and equipment managers. However, at Ole Miss, there is one constant fans have come to know every year since 1982, during the days when Steve Sloan roamed the sidelines as the head coach of the Rebel football team. This constant is Chuck Rounsaville, owner of the Ole Miss Spirit and arguably the most well-known sportswriter in Ole Miss history.

Starting as the assistant sports editor at the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Mississippi, Rounsaville’s love of sports and skill as a writer were widely recognized early on. Mac Gordon, owner and publisher of the nearby newspaper, the Leland Progress in Leland, Mississippi, took particular notice, and on a whim, called Rounsaville one day in the early 1980s with a unique opportunity.

“Mac called me one day asking if I wanted to jump off the Mississippi River bridge with him,” Rounsaville said. “He said, ‘let’s start a newspaper that covers nothing but Ole Miss sports,’ and I said, ‘Fine.’ I quit my job at the Delta Democrat Times and moved to Leland, and we started the Ole Miss Spirit.”

Rounsaville would later become the sole owner of this publication, moving to Oxford fulltime in 1986 and buying out Gordon and other part owner Josh Bogen shortly after. He grew the Ole Miss Spirit from around 1,000 subscribers after the first football game of the 1982 season to around 4,000 after taking over full ownership. Today, the Ole Miss Spirit is completely online and is an affiliate of Scout.com. It is the leading publication for anything and everything Ole Miss sports, which is largely a credit to Rounsaville’s leadership and his love of the Rebels.

Throughout the coaching tenures of Sloan, Billy “Dog” Brewer, “Sockless” Joe Lee Dunn, Tommy Tuberville, David Cutcliffe, Ed Orgeron, Houston Nutt and now Hugh Freeze, Rounsaville has covered 433 straight football games, home and away, without missing one. His love of Ole Miss and the program radiates to anyone who knows him or reads his work, especially to Freeze.

Chuck Rounsaville said, “I’m a Rebel, and I love being a Rebel and that’s the whole reason I love what I do so much.”

“Chuck is just an extremely loyal guy and is for Ole Miss,” Freeze said. “You can trust him to always frame things in the best light because he knows the importance of always putting our name in a positive brand. No matter if we’re in good times or difficult times, his intent is always to help.”

Whether it’s the Rebels’ upset of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1988, the years of Deuce McAlister and Romaro Miller, the Eli Manning era, or even most recently the back-to-back years of beating the Crimson Tide, Rounsaville’s memories of Ole Miss athletics are full of great times for the Rebels. Moments like these excite him just like any other Rebel fan, and he makes no bones about where his allegiance lies in his writing.

“A lot of people want to tell me that my writing isn’t totally unbiased and that I’m a homer, and my response to that is, ‘Of course I’m a homer!’” Rounsaville said. “I’m a Rebel, and I love being a Rebel and that’s the whole reason I love what I do so much.”

While so much uncertainty revolves around everything dealing with college sports in today’s age, when it comes to Ole Miss sports there is one thing that could not be more certain. No one exemplifies the “spirit” of Ole Miss quite like Chuck Rounsaville.

Hawtin Buchanan is a senior broadcast journalism student at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. He can be reached at hrbucha1@go.olemiss.edu.