Without a doubt, the hottest issue on the Ole Miss Campus at the moment is the selection of a new mascot and the seven years our university has taken to find a new representation of all the great things going on around campus.
Maybe we’re looking a bit too hard.
Enter into the conversation rising senior Jonathan Randolph – a first team All-American that is much more capable of representing what it means to be an Ole Miss Rebel than any foam-headed sideline space taker we could draw up.
Randolph is worthy of the title “student-athlete” – he excels in the classroom and also happens to double as one of the best collegiate golfers in the country. In addition, when his name does make the paper, it’s for all the right reasons and none of the wrong ones.
Regretfully, college golfers who do all the right things cannot be sensationalized quite like a wide receiver that caught a total of 12 passes last season being dismissed from the football team can (Rick Comegy 1, SWAC 0). Let’s give credit where credit is due.
The finance major from Brandon, MS, has earned a place on the All-SEC Academic Honor Roll in each of his first three years and has found his way onto the UMAA Honor Roll and the Dean’s Honor Roll three times each.
That’s impressive when you consider how much time he’s spent on the golf course.
He captured his first collegiate title in what he considers his best performance of last season by winning Vanderbilt’s Mason Rudolph Championship. He shot a career best 64 in the first round and finished eleven under par to win the tournament by five strokes.
More recently, Randolph traveled to Northern Ireland, home of this year’s Palmer Cup. The event, named after who you think it’s named after, is a marquee matchup similar to the Ryder Cup that pits eight of the best college players in America against eight of Europe’s best. (Teams are selected according to player’s nationality, not the location of their respective universities.)
Randolph was an integral part of the United States’ first Palmer Cup victory on European soil by earning the team three of the points it scored in a 13-11 victory.
He says the Cup had a lot of highlights, but the one that sticks out to him the most was getting to meet Northern Irish golf pro Graeme McDowell just one week removed from his U.S. Open Championship.
So what helped Ole Miss sign such a talented player out of high school?
“I chose Ole Miss because Coach Ross had just taken the (head coaching) job back, and I knew that he was going to do everything in his power to help Ole Miss get back to winning SEC Championships like it was before he left,” Randolph said.
“Coach Ross has definitely helped me the most since I’ve been here. He has worked tirelessly to make sure that the facilities keep improving and that I have everything as a player I need to help myself improve.”
While he’s already accomplished a great deal, Randolph says he and the rest of the team are already focused on what lies ahead.
“As a team I expect us to be much more consistent this year with all of the experience we’re bringing back, and then make some serious noise in the post-season when it rolls around,” he said. “Individually, I would just like to keep improving on what I’ve been doing.”
Randolph says he is working on improving his overall consistency on the course, but he was as consistent as they come in the SEC last year when he led the conference with a 70.08 stroke average.
Randolph is hoping that continuing to develop a strong mental game will pay dividends once he exhausts his eligibility and begins his quest for a PGA Tour card. Until then, he hopes the Ole Miss program continues to take large steps forward.
“We finished second at SEC’s last year and we have our goals set even higher for this year,” he said.
“We want to thank everyone for the continued support and know that we will work tirelessly over the next year to bring back as many trophies to Oxford as we can.”
Can a black bear or a blues musician represent you? Or will a crusty old man with a handlebar moustache forever be your mascot? Or, are you as fed up with adults arguing over the likeness of a cartoon character as I am?
Regardless of how that petty seven-year squabble ends, Jonathan Randolph will be a great representative for Ole Miss on some of the PGA Tour’s biggest stages for years to come.
Thank God.