Happy New Year.

Here's hoping 2018 brings you prosperity, health and happiness.

We'll turn our attention to 2018 somewhere in this final 10 Weekend Thoughts of 2017, but we'll spend most of it looking back at the year that was 2017.

For better or worse, I use this space each week as a creative outlet of sorts. It's my place to write what's on my mind, so some of what you'll read today is what comes to my mind when I think of my life in 2017.

I'll also try to remember you're here to read about Ole Miss, so I'll focus on the stories that shaped Ole Miss athletics in 2017. Goodness knows there was plenty to write about.

I remember this time last year. Laura and I had taken the kids to Chicago for a few days. We went shopping for the girls' formal dresses, took the kids to some of my favorite places in the city, went to a play and braved the cold before returning on New Year's Eve.

One morning while we were there, I went downstairs in the Embassy Suites, fully intending to get a morning run in on one of the hotel treadmills. However, they were soaked. Some kids had climbed out of the pool, eschewed the towels needed to dry off and gotten on the exercise equipment soaking wet.

At first, I was irritated. Then this sense came over me. I remember thinking (Chase Parham can vouch for this), "Go get a coffee and relax. It's going to be a crazy year. Recharge your mind." I'm rarely clairvoyant, but I was that morning in Chicago.

2017 was certainly eventful in Oxford and at Ole Miss. Here's my look back at 2017, scattered with some personal stories that shaped my experience, and a quick look ahead to 2018. Again, Happy New Year.

1. The first half of 2017 was all about Hugh Freeze. After Ole Miss’ 2016 Egg Bowl loss to Mississippi State, rumors about Freeze’s personal life became unavoidable (funny how that works). Those rumors simmered in the spring before dying down in April/May.

I was in Birmingham for SEC Media Days when we first got a call about a call on Freeze’s phone records causing problems. We checked with Ole Miss sources, who assured us it was a single call and it was almost assuredly a misdial.

Ole Miss’ appearance at SEC Media Days was Thursday. On that Wednesday, the rumor mill was on fire. Sources insisted to us that there was more than one call. Freeze made the trip to Hoover, but there’s no doubt Ole Miss officials were concerned that appearance had a chance to be disastrous.

It wasn’t. Freeze did fine, and he made the rounds without a hitch. One week later, Freeze was out as Ole Miss’ coach. I had taken Carson to see a movie (Planet of the Apes, if I recall correctly), promising him I'd get off my phone and enjoy it with him. I keep most promises to my son, but I failed him that day. The popcorn was still warm when Barrett Sallee texted me with a cryptic question. Within minutes, my phone was blowing up. I worked in the lobby while Carson watched the apes and humans sort things out.

You know the rest. Ole Miss officials dug into Freeze’s phones and found a disturbing pattern of calls to massage parlors and/escort services that seemed to match his recruiting itineraries. Freeze resigned, walking away from more than $16 million dollars. Ole Miss held a press conference in The Pavilion. I thought it was Ross Bjork's best hour at Ole Miss. I thought it was Jeffery Vitter's worst.

Many, I discovered soon thereafter, shared my sentiment.

Anyway, Freeze publicly apologized to Ole Miss fans a couple of months later and he avoided major sanctions from the NCAA. As of this writing, Freeze remains unemployed. It’s my opinion the SEC has let it be known around the league Freeze’s hiring as an offensive coordinator would be frowned upon.

I’ve given Freeze a lot of thought over the past few months. It’s no secret he and I had a complicated relationship, one that I often found frustrating. His role in #TunsilQuestionGate was ridiculous and childish. It changed the way I live in the town my kids call home. However, I can’t help but like the guy.

He’s become the butt of jokes, and he set up all those jokes by acting like someone none of us could possibly ever be. Freeze is a good football coach; he led Ole Miss to consecutive New Year's Six games, for goodness sake. I suspect he’ll get another opportunity down the road. Hopefully, for his sake, he’ll focus on football, get off Twitter and not get caught up in the celebrity that accompanies winning.

Hopefully, he won't consider himself a victim. He ignored a lot of solid advice at Ole Miss and dug his own hole. Most of the damage was done early, by the way. It's funny. When I think of Freeze, I think of a day in the spring of 2012. Freeze was still new, and he wasn't used to so much media coverage of spring practices. So one day, after practice ended and he'd done his media obligations, Freeze had some staffers bring out a box of Ole Miss football gear. Freeze said to us, the assembled media, "If you're going to be out here every day, you ought to at least look good."

He meant it as a kind gesture; I know that. But, with a couple of exceptions, most of us were appalled. That box would've been better received if it had contained cobras and rattlesnakes. I wondered then if he was in over his head, if he truly understood the dynamics of his job. Did he really think all of the beat writers were going to decorate themselves with Ole Miss gear and cover his program like fans? Was there no one who was willing to raise his or her hand and say, "Hugh, this is a bad idea."

The answer, I learned over the subsequent years, was Freeze made two very common mistakes. One, he surrounded himself with yes men. Two, he didn't take advice well. That cost him dearly.

2. Through it all, 2017 was dominated by the NCAA investigation into Ole Miss’ football program. From receiving a second notice of allegations in February to finally receiving sanctions in early December, the program was consumed by the fifth and final year of a probe that began early in 2013.

The final damage, once it was finally dispensed in December, was odd. Ole Miss was hit with a second bowl ban _ the school self-imposed a bowl ban for 2016 when it received the second NOA _ but the COI accepted the school’s self-imposed scholarship reductions. It hit former assistant Chris Kiffin with a two-year show cause but essentially left Freeze unscathed. Again, weird.

The real penalties, however, were incurred over five years. The unknown, combined with very poor handling of the first notice of allegations in January 2016, killed two recruiting classes. It’s fair to at least wonder if Ole Miss lost five-star offensive tackle Walker Little and five-star running back Cam Akers to an NCAA investigation. There were others as well who would have given Ole Miss serious consideration had it not been for the unknown hanging over the program's future.

Speaking of, a cloud hung over the program for almost all of Freeze’s tenure. Ole Miss allowed a national narrative to form that the program cheated like wild. It wasn’t true, as the school’s network proved to be far too small and far too unsophisticated to cheat at the level of some of its SEC brethren. However, perception is reality, and Ole Miss will wear the proverbial scarlet letter for years to come. The legal strategy was flawed. Ole Miss should've fought back from Day One and should have expressed its anger at the shift in the NCAA's behavior and disposition in the spring of 2016. The school's public relations strategy was equally flawed.

It's my opinion the fix was always in. The case was personal to investigators. They wanted blood, and they were going to get it. Ole Miss brought boxing gloves to a knife fight.

There are appeals to be heard, and the Rebel Rags civil lawsuit could have real implications down the road. Still, for Ole Miss, the best news is the investigation, as remarkably flawed and poisonous as it was, is over. I’ve never been more tired of writing about a topic, with the possible exception of #TunsilQuestionGate, than I am the NCAA’s colonoscopy of Ole Miss football.

3. The year 2017 will also always be associated with Matt Luke.

Ole Miss’ former offensive line coach was promoted to interim head coach in July when Freeze resigned. At the time, sources inside the Ole Miss program gave Luke no real shot at the full-time gig. Luke, a former Ole Miss center who grew up going to Rebel games to see his brother, former Ole Miss quarterback Tom Luke, play at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, never let that perception bother him — at least not publicly.

Instead, Luke went about the job of preparing for the 2017 season, one rife with distractions and potential potholes. Luke spent two days in September in Covington, Kentucky, required by bylaws to represent the program despite not being named in either NOA. Four days later, the Rebels struggled at California, the first of three straight losses.

After a disastrous first half at Auburn, the Rebels appeared to find their stride a bit. Ole Miss beat Vanderbilt, were respectful in a loss to LSU and then appeared to have Arkansas beaten — only to suffer a second-half collapse against the Hogs.

Luke’s team never quit. Instead, the Rebels won in the final seconds at Kentucky, whipped Louisiana-Lafayette and then, following a home loss to Texas A&M, upset Mississippi State in Starkville.

In the days leading up to the Egg Bowl, sources indicated to RebelGrove.com that Luke wasn’t a top candidate for the gig. Honestly, we had reasons to believe Ole Miss had targeted North Carolina State coach Dave Doeren, and we had reason to believe that interest was mutual.

However, in the hours following the win in Starkville, momentum turned in Luke’s favor. Ole Miss sources said Luke crushed a Friday interview and then did more of the same on that Saturday. By Saturday night, we were hearing Luke was the guy, though we couldn’t confirm that. By Sunday morning, there was no doubt; Luke has ascended from offensive line coach on a somewhat embattled staff to the head coaching position in just over four months.

So far, Luke has made Jeffery Vitter, Ross Bjork and the people who trusted in Luke look smart. Luke has recruited extremely well over the past 5-6 weeks and appears to be on the verge of salvaging the 2018 recruiting class. Luke will be judged on the 2019 class, and the early returns are very positive for Ole Miss.

4. In August, no one on the Ole Miss campus was more popular than Shea Patterson.

Today, he'd lose a race for mayor of Oxford to almost anyone, self included.

His fall from grace is a complicated story. Patterson, as you all remember, was a five-star quarterback, the headliner of Ole Miss' highly-acclaimed 2016 signing class. He was the ringleader, the guy who said all the right things, the face of a program that already had plenty of marketable faces.

Patterson shouldn't have played in 2016. I can't second-guess it, for I ultimately wrote a column supporting Freeze's decision to play Patterson in the season's final three games after Chad Kelly was injured. However, those who steadfastly said it was a bad move were right. Patterson was brilliant at times against a Texas A&M team that was playing without its quarterback and with a questionable amount of motivation, but he was pedestrian at Vanderbilt a week later and average in the finale, a blowout loss at home to Mississippi State.

Then Freeze fired Dan Werner and replaced him with Phil Longo. Then the bowl ban hit. The Freeze's escapades with massage parlors become public. The Ole Miss Patterson represented wasn't the program he'd committed to. Get mad if you'd like, but if you go to a Mercedes dealership and drive off with a Honda, you're going to have regrets.

Patterson was OK in 2017. He lit up bad teams and struggled against good ones. His mechanics looked out of whack to my untrained eye. He abandoned the pocket too quickly. In short, he was a mess.

He also had to deal with outside distractions. His father, Sean Patterson, took this site to task in the days following Ole Miss' win over Vanderbilt. We had all picked the Commodores to win in Neal's Picks the previous Thursday. After the game, Patterson took forever to get into the media room. We ran out of patience and left to tape our instant analysis piece. When he arrived, he called us out without naming us.

Days later, the elder Patterson took us to task on Facebook. Chase and I both messaged the elder Patterson privately, but he was not pleased with our explanations, telling me, "If you don't have an emotional attachment to the team that you cover everyday....you didn't feel any emotion with Swinney scored after 2 knee surgeries? You need a new job. Thanks for the explanation now I understand how you could be confused about where I am coming from. These are kids and families your (sic) writing about. Not professional athletes maybe you should go that route where it's all business."

We had fun with Sean Patterson that Thursday, making him the focus of Neal's Picks. That Saturday, Shea Patterson suffered a season-ending injury in a loss to LSU. We'd long heard rumblings that he was going to leave Ole Miss if the Rebels were hit with another bowl ban, and he did just that. In December, Patterson signed with Michigan. If he receives a waiver, he'll compete for the Wolverines' starting job.

If he's smart, he'll tell his dad to back off. We treated Sean Patterson with kid gloves. The Michigan media won't be as kind. We gave Shea Patterson every benefit of the doubt. The Michigan media won't do likewise. It'll be interesting to see how it works out.

5. Patterson's exit would have caused more vitriol had it not been for the emergence of Jordan Ta'amu in his absence.

The junior college transfer stepped in for Patterson and completed 115 of 173 passes for 1,682 yards, 11 touchdowns and four interceptions, adding 165 yards and four TDs on 57 rushes. More importantly, Ta'amu led the Rebels to improbable road wins at Kentucky and Mississippi State. Most impressively, he couldn't have been more humble, more refreshing and, for fans, any easier to cheer for.

Ta'amu might not possess all the skills Patterson does, but he seemed to fit Longo's offense better. He was more patient in the pocket, more composed under pressure and he had a knack for the big play at the big moment.

It's his job now, and opponents will spend the offseason studying him. There will be no element of surprise. He has to become a better decision-maker and he must become more consistent. He won't have to be the face of the program _ A.J. Brown has that covered _ and he won't be asked to win games single-handedly.

But he seems to be a super kid from an amazing family. He's a neat story, too, and for those of us who cover the program every day, his emergence made a season that bordered on the mundane at times fun again.

6. In 2017, Jeffery Vitter put his stamp on Ole Miss athletics, and that likely wasn't a good thing.

That first became obvious when Vitter elected not to roll Andy Kennedy's contract over, turning the 2017-18 season into one that feels like an election year of sorts. Ole Miss basketball had a roller coaster 2016-17, losing momentum in January, closing strong, losing a heartbreaker to Arkansas in the SEC tournament in Nashville and then advancing to the NIT quarterfinals before playing poorly in that game against Georgia Tech.

Conventional wisdom held that Ole Miss would roll over Kennedy's contract as per usual. However, Vitter had a different idea, one that was inspired _ at least in part _ by a PowerPoint sent to/presented to him by former Ole Miss guard Hunter Carpenter. The decision had a negative impact on the Ole Miss program. It cost or helped cost Ole Miss at least one and maybe two signees. It derailed recruiting. It created chaos where it wasn't necessary.

This is published before the Rebels open SEC play tonight against South Carolina. The Rebels are 7-5 in the non-league, having lost overtime home games to South Dakota State, Virginia Tech and Illinois State. A loss to the Gamecocks would only throw fuel on the already burning fire. It would not, at least in my opinion, do anything to justify what I feel was an egregious mistake on Vitter's part.

If he had decided to move on from Kennedy last spring, he should have fired him then. Fair enough. However, hamstringing the coach _ and the program _ was a ridiculous move, especially in light of the clown car that was the Rebels' football program at the time. It merely made the job harder for Kennedy or his successor in the future.

7. There were so many other stories in 2017, too many to chronicle here.

The ones that come to mind are the emergence of superstar wide receiver/fan favorite A.J. Brown, the struggles of Ole Miss' young baseball team to live up to its considerable collective hype, Matt Corral's signing with the Rebels in December, that month when Oxford became a softball town when a charismatic group of girls won the SEC tournament and then dominated an NCAA regional, Braden Thornberry's national title, Mike Hilton's emergence as a star for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the classy way Eli Manning handled his ridiculous one-week benching in New York, Drew Pomeranz's strong season in Boston, the Ole Miss volleyball team bouncing back from missing out on the NCAA tournament by winning the NVIT title and the Ole Miss soccer team earning an NCAA tournament invite.

I'm sure there are more stories I'm forgetting, but it was an eventful year covering the Rebels. 2018 will have a hard time matching it, but I suspect it will give it a shot.

Here's my overriding professional memory of 2017:

Being a beat writer is always a fairly odd job, one that can be full of conflicts, especially in a small town like Oxford. I covered Barney Farrar for five years, and we never had a conversation. Not one. However, we both worked out at the same gym, and our paths crossed frequently.

I don’t remember the occasion, but there was a moment when Farrar passed me in the gym and told me he’d be praying for me. He didn't know it, but he had hit a sore spot. So I took the bait and asked him what would motivate those prayers. Farrar essentially told me not to believe everything I’d heard regarding the allegations involving him in the second notice of allegations filed by the NCAA against the Ole Miss program.

I told Farrar he was pointing his aggression at the wrong person and that I believed he was a fool if he took the fall for Ole Miss and Freeze, as I certainly didn’t believe Freeze would ever, not in a million years, return that favor.

Long story short: That exchange was the beginning of a friendship. He had a preconceived view of me, and I had one of him. As the weeks and months passed, we got to know each other. I developed an understanding of what Farrar did and why he did it, and he developed an understanding of how I do my job and why I do it that way.

Here’s what I learned about Farrar: He’s an old-school guy from a bygone era, one in which there was _ for lack of a better term _ honor among thieves. I also learned Farrar definitely cares about the young people he recruited and coached, and he was most certainly dedicated to Ole Miss during his time in Oxford.

I knew Farrar would get a show cause. I knew his coaching career at the Power-5 level (at the very least) was over. He was recently hired on the staff at Jones County (Miss.) Junior College. I saw him in passing the other day at the gym and congratulated him. I hope things work out for him.

For me, developing a friendship with Farrar resonated internally on multiple levels. It's a flaw of mine. I've become a person who craves solitude, who can be perfectly happy alone. Give me a good book, NBA League Pass and a nice whiskey and I'm fine. That's a good quality, but one of my resolutions this year is to give people a chance. Farrar and I passed each other all the time for years, me assuming he was a jerk and he assuming the same of me. Multiple discussions later, I feel confident we wouldn't use that term to describe the other.

There's a life lesson there somewhere. If you figure it out, let me know.

8. I’ll always think of Henry Miller when I think of 2017. It was March 12, and Laura and I were serving dinner to our kids on a Sunday night when Chase called me to ask if I’d heard about a local boy being injured. He had heard it was Joel Miller’s son, but he didn’t know details.

Minutes later, we heard the news it was Carson’s friend and classmate, Henry, who had died after a freak automotive accident at their home. All death is not equal. I was in the driveway when I heard. I vomited. Then I sobbed.

Just days earlier, Carson had asked if Henry could come over and spend some time and maybe spend a night during their spring break. I had planned to reach out to Joel and Cori that week to see if we could set something up for the boys.

Instead, we broke the news to Carson the next day at lunch. He shook. That’s what I’ll always remember. He just shook. Carson always makes me proud. He’s a wonderful boy, but I’ve never been more proud of him than I was that week. He was such a young man at the visitation and again at the funeral.

We talk about Henry a lot. He was a brilliant little boy with an amazing future. Life is about chance and luck and timing as much as it is about anything. I’ve thought about a January 2015 day at our house. Laura and the girls were in Mobile for a dance event, and Henry and Carson were at our house, eating burgers, playing Wii and just being little boys. Just more than two years later, one of them would be gone.

I’ve spent so many nights thinking of Joel and Cori. I get to tuck Carson into the bed every night, kiss the top of his head and tell him I love him. I get to drive him to soccer and baseball practice, watch the Cubs with him and be a proud dad. They don’t. Life’s not fair. Sometimes, it's agonizingly unfair.

Carson misses his friend. He will remember him always. All of us who crossed paths with him will as well.

10. A new year is just hours away.

A new year always brings renewal and hope, optimism and conviction.

For Ole Miss, a new year opens with the cloud of the NCAA investigation gone. There might not be a bowl game, but there won't be questions about the future of the program. The rebuilding can occur in bright sunshine, and that's a good thing.

At least one media outlet openly campaigned for Luke. That's cool, but I hope they don't build unfair expectations for him. People predicting nine-plus wins for this Ole Miss team are ignoring reality and building expectations that likely can't be met. Texas Tech is a toss-up. Alabama, Auburn and LSU are likely losses. South Carolina is, at best, a toss-up. The same holds true for Arkansas and Mississippi State. Yes, this team can win seven games, but it could lose seven, too. The 2019 season could be even more problematic, especially if guys like Brown and Little leave early for the NFL draft, as expected.

Fans hate the word "rebuild," but Luke is undertaking one. Recruiting is critical for the next two years, and again, Luke is off to a great start in that category.

No one knows what will happen with Ole Miss basketball. Is this the end of the Kennedy era? We shall see. If it is, Ole Miss fans would be wise to not celebrate change for change's sake. And here's a note to Dr. Vitter: Before you make a hire, you'd be advised to make sure those transition lenses are letting you see things just right. Kennedy hasn't been playing with a full set of cards, and if you don't know what I'm implying, you'd be smart to figure it out. Everyone wants to win big in college hoops, but in this part of the country, there's a price to be paid. This isn't Northern Iowa, an example I use for a few reasons, and there are lots of coaches out there who would fare much worse than Kennedy has if the commitment level remains the same moving forward.

It's a big year for Mike Bianco, too. His young team underachieved last season, but the Rebels are talented and now have experience and adversity under their belt. Ole Miss should pitch it as well as anyone in the SEC, and I fully anticipate a return to the NCAA tournament. If that doesn't happen, however, things are going to be awfully testy around here in June.

Personally, I'm excited about sports in 2018. The NFC playoffs promise to be epic. There are compelling storylines developing in the NBA, from the young Milwaukee Bucks and the veteran-laden Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference to a wild Western Conference race that features young teams such as Denver and Minnesota and intriguing teams such as Houston and Oklahoma City chasing the defending champion Warriors. Major League Baseball is chock full of good young teams, and the trade deadline could feature names like Manny Machado and Josh Donaldson on the block.

Personally, 2018 figures to be bittersweet. Our oldest daughter, Campbell, is halfway through her junior year at Oxford High School, so this spring and summer, she and I are going to start the college tour circuit. She's working hard to bump her ACT score even more, and she's leaning toward leaving Mississippi for college. Laura and I are excited for her, but I know we both know a year from now, she'll be turning the page for college. Our lives will change. She's still here for a while, but I catch myself missing her already.

Caroline isn't far behind, and a year from now, she'll be on the cusp of driving. Life goes fast.

Like I said, I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. They seem like creating more opportunities to fail. So I'll do what I always try to do at this time of the year, simply resolve to try to do things a little better -- be a little better husband, a little better dad, a little better son, a little better brother, a little better friend, a little better journalist. I suspect I'll fail more than I succeed, but I'll try.

More than anything, I want to resolve to slow down and enjoy the simple experiences of life. Those living room conversations with the girls are already few and far between; it won't be long until they're just an occasional treat. I'm going to try to resolve to not get frustrated about all the drives to soccer and baseball practices, for deep down, I know the day is coming when I will wish I had a son to drive to a practice.

Maybe I'll train to run another marathon. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll buy that Peloton I've been eyeing for a while. There's a decent chance I'll be adding a podcast to our MPW Digital family of podcasts soon, and if it happens, it's one I think I'll really enjoy. I hope any of you who listen will as well.

I could go all Tim McGraw on you here and pledge to drink a little more lemonade and a little less beer, but I love beer, so I doubt that happens. I don't want to overpromise, so I won't.

I hope you all have a safe celebration to send 2017 out in style and have a healthy, prosperous and happy 2018.

Like I said, I'm going to try to enjoy the ride a little more, so I'll leave you with this video of 2017 highlights from my Cubs. The season didn't end with a title, but the journey was fun, and I got to share it with people I love and care about.

I know you're all here because of a shared affection for Ole Miss, and I pledge to once again chronicle your teams' seasons with an understanding that you care about them the way I do the Cubs.

So, one final time, Happy New Year.