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Epic Road Trips: Ole Miss 2011

(Story contributed by Joseph Scoresby. To contribute to this series, email your epic road trip story to stories@loyalcougars.com. Please include a picture if possible.)

I went to the game at Ole Miss with two ward members. My wife was pregnant with our third child (she went into labor while watching the Utah game three weeks later; our son is either going to redeem BYU football or enjoy its demise, and I’m not sure which one yet.)

We drove down from the D.C. suburbs and stayed the night in Memphis. In hindsight, this was not the smartest move. The neighborhood was sketchy, and the hotel was sketchy. That probably explains why it was so cheap. Game day, we woke up, got out of there, ate breakfast at a Steak and Shake (why are all the best restaurants southern chains?) and drove to the game. After finding a parking spot, we explored campus and the tailgating scene at The Grove, which was awesome. It seemed that the older the Ole Miss fans were, the more polite and gracious they were about having us as guests.  When we said that we had driven down from D.C., they all got really impressed. The Utah State game was on a lot of TVs, and both Ole Miss fans and BYU fans were gathered around rooting for USU.

The game itself was also great. We had seats in the north endzone bleachers, the cheap seats, which were a separate structure from the rest of the stadium. Much to our delight, we found that they resonated nicely when all of us BYU fans who bought cheap tickets online started stomping our feet.

The Jake Heaps-led drive that ended in an interception happened while I was getting some pulled pork nachos, so I missed the entire thing, but I didn’t feel surprised by it. In fact, I remember hearing some Ole Miss fans expressing anxiety during the drive, then suddenly becoming elated at the turnover.  I, on the other hand, was eating barbeque and nacho cheese, so I was happy the whole time.

I also never really felt we were out of the game. I remember sitting there into the fourth quarter, thinking. “That’s okay, the defense can still pull this off.”  What a change from my childhood memories of BYU.  Thankfully, we had KVN playing and he did his thing, forcing a fumble and recovering it in the end zone.

It was a great trip, made even better by the win.
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2 Comments

  1. Ken Reed

    June 23, 2015 at 7:10 am

    I was there with six friends. We’re from SoCal, flew to Memphis, stayed at Marriott near Beale Street. One of the desk played for Ole Miss, huge guy, looked like the Blindside actor. His name is Hugh, so I called him Big Huey. He was great! On game day, we spent about 5 hours in the Grove, walking around in our BYU gear. We had a blast.

    So say that Ole Miss fans were friendly is an understatement. They even had a “Free Beer for BYU Fans, sign on of the booths!

    We allowed time to sight-see, spent time on Beale Street listening to the great music and mingling with the crowd there. Visited Shiloh Battlefield, ate a ton of the world’s best BBQ and catfish.

    The game was good, but even then we saw signs that Jake Heaps was different. When he threw the pick, he made no attempt to tackle the runner. After the game, while all his team-mates were back in the locker room, Jake was outside high-fiveing the fans. We saw similar behavior after the Texas loss when the sought out the Texas coach and shook his hand.

    Clearly he was a prima-donna.

    Anyway, that was a great trip, and we BYU fans will have lots of opportunities to repeat that experience thanks to independence.

    I love it.

  2. Nathan

    June 30, 2015 at 7:55 am

    I went down to this game with about a dozen or so folks from Madison, WI. It was a pretty serious road-trip, but you really cant beat the game-day experience in Oxford. We had a good time spending time in Memphis and a great time at the game.