OXFORD -- Ben Craddock wants to see Ole Miss do well.

He believes it should.

Craddock isn’t much on lip service. To the contrary, when Craddock believes something, he springs to action.

I’ve seen that personally over the past several years.

Today is about Ben Craddock, David Craddock and the Craddock family, as Ole Miss revealed Craddock Court at The Pavilion at Ole Miss prior to Saturday’s game against No. 6 Baylor. I don’t want to sabotage this column and make it about anything else, but this is a story worth sharing and one that seems appropriate to tell today.

It was November 2013, and Ben Craddock requested a meeting with Chase Parham and me. Our relationship had begun a month earlier when the Craddocks assisted us with a golf tournament to honor former Ole Miss offensive lineman Park Stevens, who had died in a car accident on Independence Day weekend earlier that year. The Craddocks sponsored and paid for the T-shirts we distributed to the golfers that day.

About a month after that tournament, we sat down on a Friday afternoon, if I recall correctly, and talked for hours about RebelGrove.com and the daily podcast Parham and I had started. The podcast had a following at that point, sure, but it was a bit of an afterthought for us, something we did to provide some content and something that we were already questioning as a worthwhile endeavor.

Ben Craddock, it turned out, was a loyal listener. He liked it. He believed in it. He wanted to invest in it. He saw opportunity and promise in something and in people he really didn’t know.

By the end of that meeting, we had a deal. On Nov. 26, 2013, the Oxford Exxon Podcast debuted. It’s never again been an afterthought over the past 3 1/2 years. Instead, it has flourished. When it’s needed something technologically, the Craddocks have stepped up. When we wanted to branch out a bit and add a different type of podcast to our “network” of podcasts, the Craddocks stepped up again, thus the birth of the Oxford Krystal Beer Garden Podcast.

The relationship, I’d like to think, has been mutually beneficial. The podcast has grown into something neither Parham or I ever imagined it could be, creating a life-altering revenue stream in an era that has seen media entities struggle for mere solvency and our loyal listeners have made it a point to make the Oxford Exxon a part of their trips to and from their trips to Ole Miss.

The friendship we’ve developed over the years has been priceless. You won’t meet a better man than Ben Craddock. He’s fun-loving and he can be gregarious, but he’s loyal beyond description, immensely supportive and all about family. That’s probably Craddock’s favorite word — family. He’s all about family, and his definition of family isn’t limited to blood. Friends are family to Craddock. People and places he loves are family.

Andy Kennedy learned that a few years ago when Craddock started to become a fixture around the Ole Miss basketball program. Craddock, a former Ole Miss football player, knew former Rebel guard/then-Ole Miss assistant coach Mike White.

“That’s when Ben started coming around initially,” Kennedy said Friday morning. “We struck up a friendship. He’s been a big supporter just by his mere presence and things that he tries to do to help our program. Now he’s stepping up in the way in which he is with the naming of the court. He’s always had great pride in his family and the company his dad has built and he’s always looked for a way, because they’ve always loved Ole Miss so much, to honor that name.

“When the Pavilion came online, it’s obviously a magnificent facility and I think they’ve been working for some time to figure out the best way to do what he’s doing.”

Getting the Craddock name on or in The Pavilion has been something Craddock has talked about for a while. We knew he was in conversations with the university, and we knew earlier this season, when Ole Miss traveled to the Virgin Islands for a tournament, that negotiations were coming to a head.

“I was aware they’d had a number of conversations — he and Ross and Stephen Ponder and Keith Carter and their group — about the semantics of this for some time,” Kennedy said. “I was aware that they had come to a conclusion about what they were going to do.”

I remember congratulating Ben days later on the news Ole Miss revealed Saturday. He was so proud, so happy. He was bubbly.

Ole Miss fans should have those same emotions today. They should be proud, happy and bubbly. I don’t know all of the terms of the deal, obviously, but I know the Craddock family and, because of their success within the company, the Exxon Corporation stepped up in a big way to make today’s announcement a reality. Ole Miss basketball has needed champions to help its basketball program reach new level. Craddock saw that need, believed in that cause and then acted upon it.

“We’ve got a lot of things in common, one of which is wanting to see Ole Miss do well,” Kennedy said. “Obviously in my job, I’m directly connected with something that’s pretty tangible and I’m trying to do the best I can so our basketball program can represent the university in the fashion that it deserves. He, although not a coach and not directly working for the university, he’s obviously got a great love for Ole Miss and Oxford and he wants to do what he can to see it succeed. He’s doing it in a way that not only helps the university and the program and the department but also honors his father and his family name. It’s really a win-win.”

Truer words haven’t been spoken. The Craddock family will receive plenty of congratulations in the coming days and weeks, and those salutations are certainly deserved. However, Ole Miss is the winner today, thanks to a man who has made a life habit out of seeing something he believes in, wanting to help and investing with a giant, full heart.