Thoughts and ramblings on my trip to the Ole Miss game: ASPIRIN A much needed item for any roadtrip. BILLY JOE MacALLISTER On Route 7 about halfway from Holly Springs to Oxford there's a bridge that crosses the Tallahatchie River. My brother-in-law swears this is the bridge made famous in the old Bobby Gentry song. I have my doubts. The bridge is only about 20 feet above the river. If Billy Joe did indeed jump off the bridge I think all he would've got for his troubles would be a sprained ankle. Regardless, I took a picture of it. COCA-COLA One of my only complaints with Ole Miss was lack of decent concession stands in the north endzone of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Getting a soda was a pain in the ass. They only had four registers for a couple of thousand people. DADDY MANNING What trip to Oxford wouldn't be complete without an Archie Manning sighting. I saw him twice on Friday afternoon while I walked around downtown Oxford. As a special bonus I also saw his oldest son Cooper. ELEVEN A.M. KICKOFF I don't want to experience anymore of these. FEMALES No disrespect towards Eve. She seemed cool. You know, running around the garden naked and being easily tempted, but the true origin of women (at least beautiful women) is Oxford, MS. If you'd walked across campus swinging a dead possum, you'd have hit a gorgeous female with every swing. It was unbelievable. No strike that. It was FREAKIN' UNBELIEVABLE!!! I've never seen that kind of assembly of womankind. GOALPOSTS I'm tired of "Goalpost Games". I travel to one away Gator game each year and it seems that I'm always "lucky" enough to pick a game where the opposing fans storm their field, tear it up, fight with rent-a-cops and then rip down the goalposts. About an hour after the game I left my tailgate party so I could return to my car to put my camera, game program, souvenir cups, etc... away. I'd just put the items back in the car when I heard a loud commotion down the street. I turned and here were the damn goalposts being paraded by a group of frat boys. In actuality it was kind of a funny scene until they came dangerously close to dropping one end on my rent-a-car. I don't know what would've been worse, suffering the indignity of having the goalposts dumped on my car or trying to explain to Hertz why the top of their car was crushed. HOLLY SPRINGS This is the small town about halfway between Memphis and Oxford where are motel was. ICE COLD BEER You can't buy it in Oxford. You can buy beer and you can buy booze. Hell, you can even buy chilled wine, but you can't buy a cold brew to go anywhere in Oxford. JACK DANIELS What I would've drank more of during the game if it wasn't so damn hard to get a Coca-Cola. KIPER JR. ESPN Radio was in town for the game and I got to see Mel Kiper Jr interview Eli Manning after the game. I don't know what was more disturbing the actual sight of seeing Mel's hair live and in person. Or seeing Mel jam his head so far up Eli's butt that hair gel was actually flowing from Manning's eyes like teardrops. LILI Not a really a factor. What was left of the storm blew through early Friday morning while I slept. MEMPHIS Flew in to Memphis on Thursday afternoon and had just enough time to swing by Graceland before heading back to the airport to pick up my sister, her Ole Miss husband and their two kids. Important safety tip for anybody heading to Graceland: Don't just walk through the main gates. The guards don't take kindly to it. I didn't realize that you need to buy tickets across the street and then are bused into the place. I got the guards back by sneaking onto the tour of Elvis' airplane "The Lisa Marie". On the way back to the airport I stopped at a pay phone to call my sister and make sure their plane had landed. While on the payphone I was solicited by a streetwalker. After politely turning down her offer and picking up everyone at the airport we headed to downtown Memphis for a drink at the Peabody Hotel and a dinner of ribs at the Rendezvous. NASTY The pregame fight between the UF and Ole Miss male cheerleaders. OPERATOR The operator of the scoreboard at Vaught-Hemingway needs to find a new profession. Rarely did they have the down and distance correct and when they did they posted it about two seconds before the play was snapped. PEABODY HOTEL Memphis' grand old hotel. Don't pass up the chance to have a drink in their wonderfully ornate hotel bar. QUAGMIRE Friday night we headed out to a restaurant about 10 miles east of Oxford. It was a place that once was a filling station, but recently had been turned into an upscale restaurant that was featured in Southern Living magazine. I understood that the food was delicious. In fact, I still understand that the food is delicious. We never made it in. We got lost getting there and once we did find it there were 130 people in line ahead of us. You don't need to be Carl Sagan to figure out that what was once a filling station in the middle of nowhere Mississippi ain't going to be too large. I think some of those 130 people are just getting a table now. The worst part about the evening was getting stuck in the mud in the parking lot and having to get towed out. (On a sidenote: This place did touch upon what might be the next great American idea, "Tailgating prior to dinner". The restaurant didn't serve liquor, but you could bring you own. So many of the people there while waiting on a table, just popped open their trunk and stood around drinking until their name was called.) REBELS The Ole Miss fans were great. With the exception of drunken students running over to the UF section and flipping us the bird with one hand and grabbing their crotch with their other, the Rebel fans were fine. After the game nobody jumped in my face and fed me a bit of crap. Everyone just seemed so happy that their team had won, that they felt no need to harass Gators. SQUARE The heart of downtown Oxford. Great food. Great drinks. Great looking women. Bad parking. TAILGATING IN THE GROVE Unbelievable. What a tailgate experience. It was like a well-dressed tent city. As far as one could see portable tents were everywhere. Some were just plain white, but many were decorated to the hilt with "Hotty Toddy!", Colonel Reb or the Confederate Battle Flag. The most amazing part of the Grove is, when everyone leaves to enter the game, they just leave their food, coolers, tables, etc... where they are and nobody comes by at halftime and steals them. I was told that I could leave my cooler where it was during the game and nobody would touch it. I still hid it under a table when I left (Too many tailgate trips to Knoxville, Baton Rouge and Gainesville have left me leery). UNLOCKED The front gates at Graceland. VOMIT What I almost stepped in as I was walking back to my car at the end of the day. WEATHER The weather for Saturday's game was beautiful. It was a little nippy early in the morning, but by game time it was sunny and a little on the warm side. X-RATED My thoughts while I watched the Ole Miss cheerleaders during their pregame pep rally. YES The answer to "Would I do it all over again?". Despite the loss, it was college football at it's finest. ZOO The scene on the field after the game. Between the students flipping me off and the rent-a-cops punching anyone trying to tear down the goalpost, it was a madhouse. Stats