By Alexander Myrick
Hottytoddy.com intern
In the academic world, it has long been the standard that the classroom is the medium professors use to reach their primary audience—students—with the information necessary to successfully progress in their academic career. However, David Case, a respected and distinguished faculty member in the University of Mississippi School of Law, has found a new medium to reach an audience with a new type of content.
His use of Twitter to connect with others and provide comedic relief with an Ole Miss bias is what has allowed Case to grow his audience to be more than just a student.
Case’s collegiate story began in East Tennessee where he attended a small school called Carson Newman University for the first two years of college. There, he worked full time in the school’s athletic department full time as the sports information director, a career he previously thought was his calling. However, Oxford called him his junior year when Case’s father Ron, a defensive backs coach, was hired as a part of the Rebels staff, prompting the younger Case to make the move to Mississippi as well.
“I had never heard anything about Oxford or Ole Miss before I came here,” Case said, “I fell hard in love with the place, I felt like I had been cheated only going to Ole Miss for two years.”
It was this deep devotion that moved him to attend the University of Mississippi School of Law to extend his stay in Oxford. After his graduation from the Ole Miss Law School, Case took the long route on his way back to Ole Miss. He earned further degrees from Columbia, Vanderbilt, practiced environmental law in Jackson, and taught at the University of Memphis School of Law, before landing his dream job of teaching law back at his proud alma mater, the University of Mississippi in 2007.
Since his return to Oxford, Case has been a staple at Ole Miss sporting events and developed a moniker as the “crazy Ole Miss guy” in the Law school because of his passion for all things Ole Miss Rebels.
More recently though, the legend of Case grew as he started to reach an audience outside of his traditional environmental law classrooms. The tenured Law professor has more than 21,000 Tweets and close to 2,000 avid followers on Twitter who check in routinely for Ole Miss Sports updates, send their condolences for Rebel the Blackbear, or aid in the prayers for the sports gods to shine favor on all of the Ole Miss squads.
Case’s unique, welcoming, but most of all relatable personality, on Twitter has made it a must-follow page, and even now regularly includes interactions with some of the most notable Ole Miss Sports bloggers.
“I resisted Twitter for years because it sounded like a place to waste a lot of time”, Case said. “I was in that wave of old people that got on Facebook that made all the kids leave, so I followed them to Twitter.”
Case’s new following hasn’t changed his philosophy on Twitter from his original goal, which is “just to make me laugh.” One thing Case did appreciate from his Twitter stardom is that it allowed him to interact with people he very much liked but would otherwise have had no reason to interact with, such as various Ole Miss fans across the nation.
The Ole Miss ties run deep in Case’s family, which is apparent seeing his office adorned with game footballs from his father’s coaching days, tickets of big games past, and many other trinkets that complete his office as a shrine to his Ole Miss-ness. The Case family has more than 10 Ole Miss degrees between family members with more to come, he said.
“This isn’t just where I work. This University is mine. I own it. It is where my heart is,” he said.
Case said although the University issues diplomas, one never really graduates from Ole Miss.
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