Ole Miss took on Mercer and pretty much Cobra Kai’d the Bears in a 73-7 whooping.
I’m just wondering how many high school kids were sitting in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for their first ever Division 1 SEC game?
There had to be a few and they may have had a life-changing moment in the blowout. That’s what happened for me in September of 1980.
But let’s backtrack a bit, give a little history. My daddy, Bill Stowers matriculated at Mississippi State University for three years before Uncle Sam needed him in the US Army to serve in peace time in Germany between wars – The Big One and Korea. He may or may not have had some shenanigans at Old Main that included a very long dynamite fuse and other needed paraphernalia under some bushes that quieted the highly decibelled dorm. My daddy was a bulldog. Then my oldest brother John got his Ag Econ degree there after the required two years as a Trojan. As did my middle brother Paul on the same course. My older sister Beth would go down the road from Starkville – or is it up the road? – to Mississippi University for Women in Columbus and then got her master’s in elementary education (I hope that’s right) back where the only color that matters is maroon.
I was on the same maroon trajectory but didn’t have the prerequisite green thumb and always had a hankering for the stage and bright lights and trying to finagle a laugh out of folks. It was my senior year at Indianola Academy and Johnny Weathersby asked if I wanted to go to Oxford and see the Memphis State game. I said sure and we loaded up his brown Camaro and headed north for a life-changing weekend. You see, even with all that maroon in my heritage, I’d never been on the MSU campus. Never been to a game of any kind there. My brothers worked the farm and came home on weekends mostly and dodged cows on 82 to get back on Sunday nights. One Sunday night John wasn’t so lucky though. But that’s another story. Having only seen MDJC Trojans and a few Delta State Statesmen football games I had no idea what was in store for me in Oxford.
I don’t recall where we stayed but I do remember two things. John Fourcade ran all over Memphis State and led the Rebels to a blowout 61-7 win. The adrenaline rush and excitement of SEC football washed over me. Johnny was already a Rebel legacy through and through and now I’d drunk the Kool Aid and was hooked. After the game, I remember walking up and down fraternity row and seeing band after band that played everything from Motown funk to rock and roll. I couldn’t imagine myself in any other color than Red and Blue for my college years.
We eventually made it home and I talked about changing my course but didn’t have a major in mind. My daddy somehow knew being a Rebel was the fit for me and didn’t argue or try to sway me back to maroon. I reckon he knew it would cost him more to pay for my farming mistakes under his payroll than it would for me to figure out my course of life on my own.
Sitting in Vaught-Hemingway, watching the Rebels put a hurting on those Memphis State Tigers changed my life and made me a Rebel.
I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m sure there was some high school senior having the course of his or her life swung in favor of Rebel red and blue in the Mercer blowout. I thank my dad because I always tell folks it was his Bulldog education that paid for my Rebel one.
Hotty Toddy and Hail State and I can’t wait for the Egg Bowl!
