Katy Perry, Snoop Dogg and Betty White are all celebrities who have graced the jumbotron at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium to deliver the famous “Are You Ready?” videos before each home game.
Michael Thompson, senior associate athletics director for communications and market for the university, said the idea for the videos came from a fan’s suggestion and has been a tradition ever since it started in 1997.
Katy Perry cheers during an NCAA college football game against Alabama in Oxford, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014. Ole Miss won 23-17. (DM Photo | Cady Herring )
“After the first season of doing it, it probably became one of those things like, ‘We are really on to something … We have to continue it.’ Obviously, it stood the test of time,” Thompson said. “Here we are in 2016 and it’s a big, big tradition that people look forward to.”
Thompson testified that trying to guess who may pop up on the screen is a big part of the tradition, leading to anticipation from fans, students and university staff.
“I really look forward to seeing who they have lined up for the videos,” Caleb Castillo, senior English major, said. “I think it pumps people up for the games. It’s just interesting to see who they are going to have each week.”
This places a large emphasis on the confidentiality of each video, only revealing the coveted information to a select group of staffers within the athletics department and commonly not even playing the video for the pre-game run through at the stadium each Friday before a home matchup.
“We never tell,” Thompson said. “It’s a lot more fun if it is a surprise … People like to guess. They like to look forward to who it might be. Even the people in the [athletics] office who don’t know.”
This means The Daily Mississippian is not privy to any insider information regarding who may be popping up on the screen this Saturday when the Rebels take on Alabama.
“It just seems like every year we get the number of people we need. They just kind of fall into place each year,” Thompson said. “We’ve been doing it for almost 20 years. That’s a lot. At seven games a year, that’s 140 of these. There are new celebrities each and every year that we try to get … a lot of them we have great connections with.”
Since the tradition’s inception, each and every speaker has had some tie to Ole Miss.
“I can’t think about anybody who has just been a straight up cold call with no connection,” Thompson said. “Even if it is not massive, there is some sort of connection with all of them.”
