This is an awesome picture our photographer, Luke Hansen, got of Kyle Van Noy forcing the game-winning fumble. It was a great play to end a great game and even greater trip. I've already posted my three stories I wrote for The Daily Universe — this is a more detailed account of my trip as a whole.
So the genesis of this trip began a month ago. I was staying late, helping put together some Education Week stuff, when I got a call from Professor Carter, asking me if I'd be interested in going to the Ole Miss game. Later I found out I was chosen to go because the sports editor here has never really shown much passion for writing stories, and since I couldn't be the sports editor, this was kind of my consolation prize. And I'll admit, it was a pretty darn nice consolation prize, especially since this is the only away game we get to send anybody to.
The actual trip began early Friday morning. Professor Carter picked me up at 4:45 a.m. to catch our 7:05 flight to Atlanta. Along with me and Prof. Carter was his 14-year-old son, Joshua, and our photographer, Luke Hansen. They were good travel buddies.
The flight to Atlanta was smooth and quick. I got to watch some Sports Center and SpongeBob on the way. From the plane, I was amazed at how many trees there were in the South. Now I know why so many non-Utahns complain that Utah doesn't have any trees.
Atlanta was a nice airport, and I got to eat at Popeye's for the first time. It was like a casual KFC staffed with friendly, sassy black women — just like in the commercials. After that, we caught an 18-minute flight to Birmingham, Alabama.
At Birmingham, we rented a car, which was fancy hybrid. It was key-less, and we had a hard time figuring out how to start the car, so we found a worker, a black guy with shoulder-length dreadlocks. He came out and said, "Oh, that's a hai-bred" in a really sweet Southern accent. Apparently we were starting the car, it just didn't make any noise.
The drive through Alabama was nice. In Utah, if you go driving anywhere for more than an hour, you quickly run into a whole lot of nothing. But not there. Everywhere we went was decorated with large, beautiful trees and rolling, green hills. We did go past some areas that were hit with a tornado a year ago, and they were still pretty beat up.
When we crossed over into Mississippi, we began playing Elvis songs to prepare ourselves for our stay in the town of his birth, Tupelo. Strangely enough, the songs seemed to have more impact out there. I think I appreciate the King a little bit more now.
Our hotel was small, but nice. Right next door to it was an authentic Southern diner called Huddle House, where we quickly ate before heading to the fireside. I had a very messy and very tasty hamburger and the waitress was a bit surprised when none of us ordered an ice tea. In the parking lot, an old guy got a little perturbed with our New York license plate (I'm not sure why it was New York). When we told him we're not from New York, he said, "Alright, that's OK. We don't mind Yankees coming through here, but we don't want 'em to stay."
We got to the fireside a little late, but we were lucky to find a parking spot. The entire building was jam-packed. I've never seen so many people crammed into a stake center. The fireside itself was actually really good and uplifting.
When it ended, they asked everybody to help put the chairs away, so they could mingle with the football players. It was nothing less than a miracle how quickly that happened. We're Mormons, and we can move a lot of chairs in a hurry when we need to! After the mingling, I quickly interviewed Bryan Kariya before he had to board the bus, and a little girl asked me for my autograph. I declined, but I can see why she thought I was a football player. :)
After that, we went back to the hotel and I began writing my story. I wanted to use a lead about Elvis, but was worried it might be cheesy. I tested it out with my travel buddies, and they liked it, so I went for it. The next day, a communications professor I don't normally associate with, sent me an email out of the blue, telling me I had a nice lead. So I guess that means it wasn't too cheesy.
The next morning, we woke up early, had a nice breakfast in the hotel, and went to the Elvis Presley Birthplace Museum. We didn't pay the $12 to go inside the museum, so we just took the free walking tour. I will be writing a full story on this later for The Daily Universe, so I'll just say that it was a relaxing and interesting way to start the day. It's fun to remember that all larger-than-life celebrities were once just ordinary people.
Driving to Oxford, we listened to the local sports radio. They picked BYU to lose, saying maybe Ty Detmer's team could have won in Ole Miss, but this one won't. At the end of his segment, he said, "Now remember, whatever happens to your team today, make sure you get up and go to church on Sunday."
We first went to Oxford, which is beautiful little town that reminded me a lot of my mission. In the town center is a large, classical courthouse with columns and everything. Around the courthouse are a lot of small shops with banners saying, "Go Rebels!" "Are you ready?!?" and "Hotty Toddy!" Playing up the Oxford angle, there is also a red double-decker bus and a red British phone booth. Everyone we met was very nice and welcoming. I can never say enough about the wonderful hospitality of Oxford.
When we got to the campus, we were completely overwhelmed. There was so many people and tents and tables and grills and TVs and satellite dishes and candlesticks and chandeliers! Luke didn't know where to start taking pictures and I didn't know who to talk to first. Luckily for me, most people would just walk right up to us and start talking. We weren't the enemy in their eyes, we were guests and they wanted to treat us right. After a while, it became perfectly natural to just walk up to somebody and start talking with them, or join someone watching the Utah State game. (Most Ole Miss fans wanted Auburn to lose, but a few didn't want the SEC to be embarrassed.) The only bad thing with talking to people was that I couldn't quote a lot of them because of their mild profanity. They never said anything offensive, it's just how they talk.
All the pictures and words in the world do not adequately describe what it was like to walk around the Grove. We wandered around for hours and still didn't see everything. The Grove is a large park at the entrance of the campus, and it serves as the heart of the tailgating party, but for every tent in the Grove, there is another one off it on some patch of grass on campus. But despite the sheer volume of people, it was very organized. There were emergency lanes running through the Grove and a few other areas that have NO TENTS sings. These few free spots were usually occupied with kids playing football.
Like I said in my story, the Grove is a major social event. Everybody wants to look their best, especially the ladies. They have to have the best spread, the best centerpieces and wear the best clothes. The only bad thing about the Grove, one fan told me, is that too many people don't want to leave it and forget about the football game. I guess that's what happens when your team only wins one conference game a year.
Some neat things I got to see include the family from the Blindside movie and the school's journalism building. The building itself was beautiful (like all the other buildings on campus). I especially liked one hall that had six TVs showing different news channels and front pages of the paper. However, I do have to say that their student newspaper is of a lot lower quality than ours. Just saying.
The highlight of the Grove was the Walk of Champions. Dedicated by the 1962 team that went 10-0 and won the national title, the Walk of Champions is a brick walkway through the middle of the Grove. A couple of hours before the game, the football team walks down it in single file, just wearing warmup gear, so you can see their faces. I've seen BYU fans get excited to see football players, but never anything like this. During the Walk of Champions, I could feel a tremendous amount of love and adoration for the players. It's really hard to describe.
The marching band was also there, but they seemed kind of sloppy to me. I guess it is the first game of the season, after all.
For lunch, Prof. Carter got us tickets to the BYU tailgating party. Apparently they had fans from 23 different states and Canada buy tickets. They also had to cap the number at 1,000, just to give you an idea of how many BYU fans were there. We had barbecue chicken sandwiches, coleslaw, pork & beans, very tasty lemonade and homemade ice cream. It was pretty nice, but I tried not to eat too much because I knew I'd be fed in the press box.
Heading up to the stadium, we met former Cougars Austin Collie and Dennis Pitta, both now in the NFL. The stadium at Ole Miss is just a little smaller than BYU's, but it's more impressive, knowing that Ole Miss the school is considerably smaller than BYU. The stadium has one huge video screen, a nice scoreboard bar running around the top (kind of like at the EnergySolutions Arena) and they even have some nice bushes and shruberies on the edge of the field. It is a very nice stadium.
The game started with clips of School of Rock and Kung Fu Panda 2 being played on the screen, followed by Jack Black appearing and saying, "Ole Miss fans, you might know me from School of Rock and Kung Fu Panda, but I have just one question for you: Are you ready?!?" This question starts the Hotty Toddy chant, which I couldn't print in the paper, but will put it here.
Hotty Toddy, gosh almighty
who the hell are we? Yeah
Flim-fam, bim-bam
Ole Miss, by damn!
Ole Miss fans yell this so loud and so fast. It really is quite powerful when the whole stadium does it. We heard it a lot in the Grove, but 55,000 people yelling it is something else. I kind of wish I wasn't in the press box so I truly could have experienced it.
Being in the press box was rather odd. I think I enjoy covering basketball games a lot more — you feel more part of the crowd. I was also expecting to have a TV in view, but I didn't. However, I was right on the 45-yard line and could see exactly how many yards were gained on each play. Sitting on my left was Dick Harmon and Jeff Call of the Deseret News, on my right was supposed to be someone from KSL.com, but they never showed up, which was great because we were rather cramped. Dinner was lasagna, which was rather nice.
At the start of the game, they reminded us that we weren't supposed to cheer in the press box. I thought this was rather odd, but sure enough, somebody started cheering when Ole Miss had a 44-yard punt return in the first quarter. He was quickly quieted and there was no further issues during the game.
The game started slow and ugly. At halftime, Jeff Call said, "We sure came a long way for one field goal." However, things did improve in the fourth quarter, and we escaped with a win. While I was getting quotes and whatnot, Prof. Carter and his son went back to the Grove, where they said one drunk fan did go after them a little, but everyone else was very nice and gracious in defeat.
We woke up early on Sunday and drove to church in Jasper, Alabama, which is just outside of Birmingham. Just like in almost every other church in the world, the walls here are covered in that scratchy brown stuff. The branch there was really small, maybe 20 or 30 people, which also reminded me of my mission. Everybody there was really happy to see us and treated us like royalty. We missed sacrament meeting, but they let the four of us take it in the branch president's office.
We then rushed to Birmingham, flew back to Atlanta, had a four-hour layover (which gave me some time to work on my stories), then had about another hour delay on the plane because the navigation computer or something was broken. So I didn't get home until midnight on Sunday, and it took a while to recover from not sleeping for so long, but it was entirely worth it. I can't wait to go back!
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