LOOK: An early peek inside the revamped Manning Center and new Rebels in their Ole Miss threads
Lane Kiffin and his Ole Miss Rebels will report for fall camp practices a week from tomorrow.
Football is right around the corner.
But the Rebels are already getting in the spirit. Ole Miss this week will officially bring to a close years of renovations when the Rebels open the doors to their new and improved Manning Center — the team’s indoor practice and training facility.
“It’s gonna be out of this world,” Denson Hollis, the Chief Development Officer/Associate A.D. for Development at the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation (OMAF), previously told the Ole Miss Spirit.
“It’s so awesome. ICM (Construction) has done a great job with that building. It’s going to be a real difference-maker for the Ole Miss football program.”
Athletics director Keith Carter previously told the Spirit the project should ultimately come in around $45 million. The square footage of the building itself has grown from 181,500 to 221,000. Among the revamped amenities is a new weight room, as well as new and improved coaches offices and team locker room.
“It’ll be state-of-the-art (and) as good as any facility in the country,” Carter said.
But the ramping-up of Ole Miss football news doesn’t stop there.
The program’s final significant recruiting even of the year, ‘Juice Fest,’ is set for this weekend, and Ole Miss is also expected to host its media day with current players and coaches middle of next week. The annual press event has for the last handful of years served as the unofficial precursor to the Rebels opening camp.
The Rebels, presumably, will get practices started at the end of the week.
Ole Miss has 40 new players to help try and rebound from an 8-5 finish a year ago. The Rebels won seven of their first eight games, only to lose four of their last five, including the Texas Bowl to Texas Tech.
“I didn’t do a very good job over the year of keeping our team together,” Kiffin said last week at SEC Media Days. “Not as an excuse, but I said it up here a year ago, you know, the challenges when you have such a roster overhaul and so portal-heavy. And I’ve said I’ve always been concerned about culture issues when you do that because you don’t have kids that have been there very long.”
Let’s take a look at some early preview photos of the new-look Manning Center.
Some additional photos have been included of a handful of Rebels (mostly newcomers) in their Red and Blue threads for the 2023 season.
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