SEC Stadium Tour: Vols @ Ole Miss: October 18, 2014

Ben and I have been talking for years about trying to visit all of the SEC stadiums, and this year we finally got started on our quest.  It's difficult with me having season tickets at Auburn and him having them at Tennessee to find a week that allows both of us to travel to a different stadium, but this year it worked out that Auburn had a bye week when Tennessee was playing at Ole Miss, so off we went. 

 

Dad has some good friends in the Senatobia/Como area, so we invited him and Mom to tag along with us and visit them for the weekend.  Actually, we suggested that they go visit William and Frank and invited ourselves to tag along with them.  Ha!  We all piled in the motor home Friday morning and set up camp at Frank's race shop for the weekend. 

We left Senatobia around 8:00 Saturday morning to head to Oxford.  Yes, it was a 6:00 game.  No, we didn't think 8:00 was too early.  Do you even SEC, bro? 

Anyway, we were invited to a brunch at this lovely home in Oxford:

No, the home wasn't decorated for Christmas.  This is a photo I found online because I didn't get a chance to get a pic of the whole house without 40 people standing in front of it.

 

The brunch started at 10:00, but we got to town around 9:00, so we walked down to the Square beforehand.  I was afraid not much would be open that early, but pretty much everything was.   I guess that's what gameday will do for you.  Then we went to  brunch at this beautiful historic home with some of our friends from Knoxville and about 40 of their closest friends.  :-)  The spread was fantastic; the atmosphere was great; and we couldn't have asked for a better way to start our day in Oxford. 

Check me out in the UT orange, y'all!

After brunch, we headed over to the Grove to catch up with some friends who were tailgating.  People have always said that the Grove on gameday is like nothing you've ever seen.  Well, let me tell you.  It's like nothing I've ever seen.  Tents upon tents upon tents, packed side by side with little to no space in between (I eventually got over feeling rude when I walked through someone else's tent to get where I was going - that's just what you have to do).  People everywhere.  It was insane.

 

The friends my Dad was visiting in Senatobia have daughters who went to Ole Miss, and they graciously invited us to crash their tailgate.  We were stumbling through tents in the general vicinity of where they told us they would be, and thankfully one of them saw us and yelled at us.  Otherwise, we may never have found them.  There are just so many people, it's hard to pick out one or two people you know in the crowd.   We had a great time at their tailgate, especially laughing at this guy at the tailgate next door:

Seriously, this fratty male short-short thing is a trend that should just die.  Quickly.  The guy started dancing and was in serious danger of a wardrobe malfunction.

We left that tailgate about 2.5 hours before game time and began searching for some friends of mine from work.  We weren't able to find their tent, so one of them met us at a nearby portable toilet facility and escorted us back to the tent.  We had actually been standing about 20 feet from the tent a few minutes earlier, but again, it's really hard to pick out a few specific people in a crowd like that.  I was just proud we were able to navigate to the general vicinity of two different tailgates on opposite sides of the Grove on our first trip to town.  We had a great time with my work friends for an hour or so (I'm pretty sure their tailgate was the most appreciative of my host/hostess gift - a bottle of Woodford - out of the three places we crashed that day, as the bottle was mostly gone by the time we left).  We then headed to the stadium to get ready for the game.

 



As for the game itself, well, it didn't have the ending we hoped for.  The Vols' defense was pretty dang stellar, at least through most of the first half.  The offense just could not do anything, though, and eventually the defense wore down and started being less effective.  Although the defense was never really terrible, it's hard to win a game when your offense can't score any points.  The offense was truly horrid.  I typically defend Justin Worley because he is usually able to make some decent plays in spite of the absolute void of protection from his offensive line, but he didn't play well at all in this game.  It was just really, really bad.   

My biggest takeaway from Oxford is that the people there are extremely nice and welcoming.  It's a lot like how I've seen opposing fans treated in Auburn.  When we were walking in the Square, almost everyone we passed welcomed us to Oxford and said they hoped we enjoyed ourselves.  Even a couple of people stopped in traffic rolled down their windows to welcome us.  There were a couple of snarky comments from what is probably Ole Miss's 85% (to the extent they have an 85%), but every team has at least a few fans who should just crawl back into their holes and stop embarrassing everyone else.  Overall, we were treated very well, and we really enjoyed the trip.  

This weekend I'm back with my people in Auburn, though, and I can't wait.  There's really no place like [my second] home.