Hey, South Panola football team, this one’s just for you. I am borrowing an idea from Clarion-Ledger’s Rod Walker.

Dear South Panola Tiger football team:

I was listening to Rebel radio the other day and according to them South Panola football is done for the season.

Hmmm, I thought.

So, other teams are allowed to get better throughout the season but South Panola is not?

Then I wondered, are we going to stand for that type of thinking for the rest of the season or are we going to do something about it?

I, for one, am not willing to accept that sort of debilitating, mind-game sort of thinking. If the players and coaches start thinking like that, they may as well refund season tickets and hang up their cleats and shoulder pads until next season.

There is no “one and done” thinking allowed around the football programs in this county. You keep plugging away, correcting mistakes and trying to get better.

You know now that you cannot ride the coattail of those teams that have gone before you.

You are the 2011 Tiger team and you have to make your own mark in history. Whether it is a good mark or a bad mark is up to you and you alone as a team.

If you let the wrong people and words get in your head, you will turn on your own teammates and you are headed for a downfall. However, if you bond together as a team and block out all the negatives, you can do whatever you want to do this year.

Do you want to beat Horn Lake and Olive Branch and all the rest of the district teams? Do you want to make the playoffs and head back to Jackson for the state championship?

Or do you want to be known as the team who quit four games into the season?

I am not saying anything that the coaches have not said.

Now, Brad Greer looked up some scoring history and South Panola has not done so bad. So this is just a little blip in the road. Get over the hump and get back to work.

Now, the last time we (I said we) did not score a touchdown was to Clinton, November 17, 2000 in a second round playoff shutout.

In 2001, the team went 5-6 which prompted a coaching change.

Since then South Panola has amassed a 234-5 record, nine straight trips to the state championship bringing home seven trophies and a national championship. Some of you on the team have been part of that. All of you are part of the legacy of the South Panola team.

So stop snivelling and blaming everybody but yourselves and get out there and play South Panola football. If necessary, we will break out the cowbells.

(Mississippi State would have found a way to get what it needed against Auburn if some fans had sneaked in a few bells, but that’s another letter.)

Go, Tigers!!