I can tell you this, it was some kind of hot in Starkville, Mississippi Saturday afternoon during the Florida Gators bashing of the Bulldogs. Plainly put, it was too hot.
Obviously age must play into the sweaty metrics of when one gets moist, damp, damper...dripping. We were dripping under the tailgate tents, and losing another ballgame which made it even more miserable.
I can’t imagine it ever being any hotter, but wife, Danny, says oh yes it has been. I don’t know.
We didn’t go into the game, but I heard that folks were dropping left and right beneath the stadium overcome by the heat. We gave up our season tickets after the Covid pandemic. I guess missing a whole year sweating in the stands, or getting rained on in the stands, or freezing in the stands, got us to thinking that doing those same things out on the hill where we can see the play by play action on the JumboTron, or watch it on our own tailgate television worked just as well, or better.
It is certainly cheaper, and from the looks of our record, 1-3, and the difficulty of the schedule from here on out, we’re probably not going to regret not having purchased tickets again this year.
This past weekend kickoff was at 11:00 a.m. which is good and bad at the same time. It’s bad because we can’t get there early enough to drop off our supplies at the spot we’ve been hanging out at for about 15 years with a whole host of some really great friends, where we have an eight tent spread, because the roads close five hours before the game.
So we have to pull a buggy with ice chest, food, and other gear a pretty good piece and then up a steep incline at the very end. It can be tough at times going up that hill, especially if it is 95 degrees out.
The plus side of the 11:00 a.m. kickoff is that after the game we can hang out for a while, help clean up and pack everything back into the trailer we keep our tents, chairs, and tub after tub after tub of supplies in and still get home at a decent hour.
The later the games the harder the drive back is. Most certainly those times when we don’t get home until the wee hours of the morning. We’ll probably skip those this year or head out before the final whistle blows and catch the end on the radio.
Won’t even do that if the Dawgs don’t start playing a little better on both sides of the ball. That could be a problem on the offense with our starting quarterback out for the season following a shoulder injury on Saturday.
Times have certainly changed since the Dak Prescott era when we would never have missed a game, or even left the stadium prior to the end, because it was just so much fun and exciting. Being ranked number one in the nation for four or five weeks in a row was the icing on the cake.
Yes, times have changed.
They’ll probably change back one day, though, and I hope we are still sitting under a tent on our hill, and perhaps parking in the parking lot across the street from our site — the handicap parking lot!
In the end we’re still Bulldogs, win or lose, but life is just better when we are winning.
Even though Sunday was the first day of fall, it didn’t really feel like it, but we’ve got three weeks until the next home game and surely to goodness there will be a cold front, or just a cool front roll in by then.
Honestly it is still fun, even when it is as hot and humid as it was Saturday. It is fun when it is raining, and it is fun when it is freezing cold. The people make the party anyway, and our group, the core group that is, that has been gathering on Creelman Corner right in the middle of the campus at Mississippi State University on Saturdays for all these years certainly knows how to put on a show.
I admit I no longer know half of the hundreds that come and go in a day’s time because there is a lot of new blood — young blood. Friends of friends, and friends of families, and friends of the kids — some of which were not even born yet when this all began — are now sitting in our seats and telling tall tales just as we did, do, and hopefully will do for many more years to come.
Hail State!
