The Grove

On my list of all-time top twenty-five (I smell another dcat list brewing!) sports trips I would like to take, a football weekend at Ole Miss would have to claim a spot. I love the gorgeous Ole Miss campus in Oxford with its stately buildings and ancient trees. Although it is the state's premier university, Ole Miss maintains a small feel, like a big liberal arts college. I've spent a great deal of time there on various research trips, and any time I get the opportunity I will pass through, even if only for an afternoon, to wander campus, spend a few hours in the Square (including browsing at Square Books) and soak in the atmosphere.

On college football Saturdays, Ole Miss becomes a profusion of tradition and excess and collegiality. Thousands tailgate in the grove, a sprawling wooded area in the Circle in front of the Lyceum, the emblematic building at Ole Miss. The Grove, Circle, and Lyceum contained the scene of the riots when James Meredith integrated the school in 1962. Before game time the team walks through the Grove and the tailgaters -- women in new sundresses and pearls, gents in khakis and an Oxford, all gently besotted -- on their way to homey Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium. This week's New York Times travel section featured the Ole Miss tailgating tradition in an article, "At Ole Miss, the Tailgaters Never Lose," which evokes the age-old saying at Ole Miss, at least since the years in the 1950s and 1960s when the school was a major national college football power, "we may lose the game, but we never lose the party."