Satire, people. Save us the emails.–ed.

While NC State may be catching flak for their “Mexi-cam” feature, one similar in-game feature continues to be a runaway crowd favorite at another Southern institution: Ole Miss’ wildly popular and controversial fourth quarter feature, the Yella Wood-sponsored “Negro-scope.”

The feature, begun on a lark in 1983 by some mischievous Delta Chi fraternity members, has been a staple of Ole Miss games for 22 years. A camera located in the press box scans the crowd, locates a couple at random, and then zooms in on them for a tight scoreboard shot broadcast to the whole stadium. Beneath their image, a graphic flashes the words “NEGROES!”, usually to gales of laughter from the crowd.

“It’s an honah to get put on the Negro-scope,” explains Ole Miss junior Britton Locksley. “My daddy was Negro-scoped in 1986, and during last year’s Arkansas game my girlfriend Brianna and I got on in the fourth quarter. I proposed to her on the spot–it was a Negro-scope first, and the whole crowd was screaming ‘Negro-love! Negro-love!’ ”

“We’d like to point out that we’re not even negroes,” says Brianna Lockmondley. “That’s why it’s so funny. ” The young blonde smooths the pleats of her sundress and pauses for an instant. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

The Negro-scope has not been without its moments of controversy. Despite careful selection, African-Americans have been selected to appear on the Negro-scope, leading to some awkward moments in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

“So we’re just hanging out, and the Rebels are getting killed in the third quarter, and the clock winds down and all of a sudden everyone starts going crazy and patting my head and shit. I look up on the scoreboard and there’s me on the Negro-scope. Sick thing was, I got happy for a second. I actually went there. Like, excited, like you know, ”Damn, I just got negro-scoped.’ Everyone kinda got real quiet, though, once they realized it was a real live black dude–not just some guy in blackface or a Samoan student like they sometimes get. Everyone just got queasy and no one talked to me for a week. All in all, it sucked to be the first actual negro to go under the Negro-scope.”

Awkward moments in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Despite the controversy over NC State’s Mexi-cam, the Ole Miss Athletic Department has stated that there are no plans to scrap the popular feature, citing other ethnic-themed features at university athletic events including Grambling’s “Cracker-matic,” BYU’s “Melanin-spection Section,” Brandeis’ “Goyim-spotter,” Cal-Berkeley’s “Gwailo-HO!” feature, and West Virginia’s “Auslander Gander.”