Mississippi Football Games

You know how some email jokes come back around, every year or so? In sort of the same way you used to get jokes faxed to you? You know the kind - there's one about Memphis drivers and roadways. (There really is an intersection about a mile from me. All four ways to turn have different road names, and there's only 2 streets intersecting. Or the one about 'midtown directions could say 'go to East Parkway and drive until you get to North Parkway, go West on North Parkway until you get to West Parkway. True, it exists).

Anyway, there's this one about football games at a particular Mississippi college. It talks about how the women dress up, how the boys where khaki's, how they hide whiskey in flaks versus . . . I suppose yankee's going to football games in old jeans and t-shirts drinking cheap beer. I haven't read it in a while, but it's out there.

Yesterday, in all my 39 years, was my first time to go to a game at this college, just over an hour away. All the rumors? They're true.

Tents all in the grassy areas with people set up like they are catering meals. It's all family, so if you don't know someone, you don't get none. I swear to you, CABLE DISHES and FLAT SCREEN TV's set up. Chafing trays (the expensive ones, not the cheap, throw-away aluminum ones). Girls in high heels. Men in khaki's. It was. . . . unique, to say the least. Take the concept of tail-gating, throw it away, and just start with "hosting a lawn party." Lots of them. One after one after one, row after row, after row.

Last home game? Someone cut the rope marking off the band's practice area to set up more tents. (Not that they wouldn't KNOW the band practiced there before the game, mind you.) So the band director sent someone out to buy yards and yards of chain metal, painted security yellow. Ha, cut that!

To be normally expected, lots of college pride colors, logo's, emblems, etc. But this is how invasive they are - the college paints rows in the grass and puts up signs that say something like "EMERGENCY PATH - DO NOT FILL" and "STAY OFF THIS GRASS" because if you didn't, there would be no paths. They just pop up next to each other into infinity. All over the place.

And booze? Well, they said last year and years before you could smell it on the breeze. This year there's a new mandate that you can't have it. But security can't sip your cup or open your cooler if there's a lock on it. So just don't show it. Kind of funny.

The whole thing was kind of funny, really. I'll see if I can find that email joke somewhere. Too True.