Southern Miss, the small college football program that has, for a century, dared to dream big, is having the worst time of its life.

The school had eighteen winning seasons in a row; it has now lost its eighteenth game in a row. It has had three coaches in three years, three athletic directors in the same amount of time, and a pair of university presidents too.

I graduated from Southern Miss in 2009. In 2008, the team started 2-6 and my friends and I knew, entering a game against UAB, that we had to make a stand.

We found motivational things on the Internet, watched them all week, and then watched Southern Miss beat UAB 70-14. We didn’t lose another game that year.

A new day is coming, Southern Miss. We can’t surrender to apathy. We have to believe. We have to decide how far we will let this grand underrated and unappreciated university fall before we give back to it the most important thing we can: Passion.

Care with me. Defeat apathy with this list of awesome Southern Miss facts and badass Internet motivational things.

I admit I had become numb. But I’m back. I’m all in.

Are you with me?

1. The St Crispin’s Day Speech

Southern Miss is one of only a handful of American universities accredited in all areas of the arts (music, dance, art, theatre), so we have a lot of students who can appreciate Shakespeare.

Also, our line of demarcation is this week, our homecoming game, which falls on the day after St. Crispin’s Day.

So it’s fitting that we start with Henry V.

“Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones!”

2. The Great Internet Collection of Motivational Speeches

Time is too precious to waste hunting down every motivational speech on the Internet. We need to feel now.

Do I have your interest yet?

No?

3. The 80s Training Montage

There are about 13,000 undergraduate business schools on planet earth, and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business only ranks the top 655. Southern Miss is one of the top 30% of the schools ranked by the AACSB–making it one of the top 1.5% globally.

What does this have to do with the awesome training montage from Rocky IV? Who cares.

Rocky IV not doing it for you? Then here’s Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow in an 80s training montage of his own.

4. Damion Fletcher and the Underdogs

Southern Miss football has only had 17 losing seasons in its entire history. That basically means Southern Miss is eligible to go to a bowl game 84% of the time.

This school wins. A lot. More than it has a right to. Because of the effort and compensatory talents of guys who are too small and too slow to be as good as they are–like Damion Fletcher, who did stuff like this:

5. The Giant Killer

Southern Miss has played a lot of games against Alabama. You think that game was always a gimme for the Crimson Tide? Uh, no.

Southern Miss has more wins (6) vs Alabama than any opponent of the Tide who has never been in the SEC, with the exception of the University of Texas (7).

You should also see this video of Southern Miss beating Florida State 58-14, or fourteen other great Southern Miss wins.

Learn where you came from before, this week, we begin our journey to the top again.

Still not proud? Still not pumped?

6. JMASS

Jonathan Massey played tight end for Southern Miss between 2007 and 2010. Southern Miss won a lot. Now he makes songs like this one:

Need more?

7. Chaucer

Along with a lot of my Southern Miss friends, I was in the Honors College–the Southern Miss Honors College, by the way, is one of the best in the United States, and it’s enjoying record enrollment these days.

This is a roundabout way of saying we were endlessly amused by Paul Bettany’s take on Chaucer, because we’re geeks.

Get pumped:

Need something more physically intimidating? Okay.

8. The All-Blacks

In 2008, when things looked really bad for our football team, my roommate discovered videos of the famous All-Blacks rugby squad doing its traditional pre-match Haka. That is all the introduction this requires.

Here’s a Haka from 2011:

9. The New Age

This absolutely has been a new age–a departure from our tradition of success. But the guys who play football for our university haven’t given up despite how bad things have gotten. They know Southern Miss is about winning.

Here they are at work, preparing for 2013 despite everything they’ve faced:

10. The 2011 Championship

Houston was a game away from a Sugar Bowl when Southern Miss–not so very long ago–did this:

11. The Scianna Eagle

Come on. How amazing is this thing?

12. This is YOUR School

Nothing comes easy for your school. It’s not rich. It’s not famous. It doesn’t get the notoriety of many schools that surround it, even when its competing programs are better.

But Southern Miss doesn’t give up.

If you are going to war and if you get to pick first, choose Southern Mississippi. Always choose Southern Mississippi. No matter how hard you fight, these folks will fight harder. Mickey Spagnola

Nobody at Southern Miss is born on third base. We get there on our own. Treasure that. It’s more meaningful to build something on your own than it is to take the easy route and enjoy fast success.

So show up on homecoming believing we will win, and that this Saturday will be the start of a new great era in Southern Miss football.