“Nobody Could Give Me an Answer” - The Mystery Behind Ole Miss’s Hotty Toddy Game Cry

If you're fond of warm alcoholic drinks, then you've heard of a hot toddy, or it's other names from around the globe: hot whiskey in Ireland and Southern Cough Syrup in parts of the US. And if you ever attended or watched an Ole Miss game, you may've been wondering why, throughout the contest, fans of the school's team would reference the beverage.

But that's not what they're referring to when they're shouting "hotty toddy." So what does it mean?

It's origins are puzzling, even for Langston Rogers, who eats, lives, and breathes Ole Miss culture for over forty years. Yahoo! spoke with the school's special assistant in history who was hired by the Oxford, Mississippi university in 1981 as a sports information director.

Since taking on the role, he's been meticulously chronicling and researching Ole Miss's sports history where its compiled in what Yahoo! describes as a "vault." Langston told the outlet that despite all of his reading into Ole Miss's history, he couldn't get a handle on where the school's "hotty toddy" chant originated from.

But that doesn't mean there aren't some theories. One is that the rallying cry is tied to the Virginia Tech Regimental's band name: the Highty-Tighties, as per a 2016 article from The Oxford Eagle. Others believe it might have to do with the spirited hot tea drink mentioned at the top of this article.

Someone else told The Eagle that it might be an old War War II cry that was uttered by soldiers during the conflict. And then there was research that located what could be the first written mention of the phrase, which was then stated as: "Heighty! Tighty!"

Current NY Giants Quarterback Jaxson Dart, who was a senior pigskin slinger for the Ole Miss Rebels at the time, stated that he was caught off guard by the chant after joining the team. "I didn't know anything until I came on my visit. That was the first time I heard the [hotty toddy] chant."

Baffled by the cry, he asked those around him what it meant, but they were just as clueless as he was. "That was one of the first questions I asked was, 'What does this mean?' And nobody could give me an answer."

The website, HottyToddy.com, penned a 2014 piece dedicated to the phrase and its importance to fans of Ole Miss athletics.

"Hotty Toddy is synonymous with Ole Miss and Oxford. Rebel fans shout it any chance they get; it's one of the strongest SEC traditions to date," the blog penned.

And there's no shortage of videos and social media posts featuring enthusiastic spectators implementing the phrase in their rallying game cries.

The Magnolia Tribune also states that the Hotty Toddy game cry can be elicited by asking those watching a game: "Are you Ready?" To which you'll probably get a chorus of folks shouting the response. The Daily Mississippian published a near-identical rallying cry. The only difference is that "Hotty Toddy" is supplanted by the phrase: "Heighty Tighty."

And while there are devotees of the phrase, some college football fans have ridiculed the cry. Like folks on this Reddit post who shared a King of the Hill meme where Hank jokingly says the call sounds akin to something a "drunken sorority girl" would say.