This is a guest post from Sam Stockton of Gulo Gulo Hockey.
“Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn’t matter: that pebble’s watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm.”
Quentin Compson speaks these words at the outset of the final third of William Faulkner’s 1936 masterpiece Absalom, Absalom! He’s speaking to his roommate at Harvard, a mischievous Canadian named Shreve who wants to hear Quentin weave together the threads of the novel’s shadowy protagonist Thomas Sutpen’s life story, but cannot resist adding his own speculative editorializations.
In this moment, the perpetually troubled Quentin tells Shreve the story that defines Sutpen’s life: Being sent to deliver a message from his father to a plantation owner only to be told to use the back door, never the front, by an enslaved butler. Sutpen, 13 at the time of the original story, has just arrived in Mississippi by way of an all-white, poverty-riddled and thus devoid of social class West Virginia. In Mississippi, he learns of race and class, then determines he must spend his life becoming part of the Southern bourgeoisie he has just discovered excludes him.
Sensing the importance of this moment for unraveling the mystery of Sutpen’s life, Quentin offers the above musing to Shreve.
The pebble of happening drops in a pool of water, leaving behind a cascading impact across further pools that could have no means of knowing the pebble was dropped. Happening, the pebble’s drop, is a disruption to the status quo, but it doesn’t leave behind a neat causal chain leading us from one reality to another. Instead, its “watery echo” is more muddled.
In the end, though, whatever disruption the pebble caused syncopates with a melody that preceded it. New chapters are written and new developments have rippling consequences, but the story in the end is ancient and inescapable.
A few weeks ago, I drove from my home in Ann Arbor to Oxford, Mississippi, to witness the Egg Bowl’s “old ineradicable rhythm.”
* * *
I pull out of Memphis not long before 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning. After a brief sojourn to West Memphis to check Arkansas off my “States I’ve Been To” list, I rejoin I-240, return to Tennessee, and head south onto I-55. My GPS is set to Oxford Memorial Cemetery.
A blue, white, and red sign welcomes me to Mississippi, “Birthplace of America’s Music,” as I cross the border and pass the bedroom community of Southaven. As the last vestiges of Memphisian suburbs fade, I-55 is lined by rolling yellow hills, oaks, pines, elms, cedars, and the odd magnolia. I pass exits for Coldwater, Senatobia, and then Sardis.
In Batesville, I bear east onto US-278 for the final 25 miles or so into Oxford, where, for me, there can only be one first stop. I park a third of a mile from the cemetery, uncertain as to whether or where I’ll be allowed to drive once I’ve entered. Walking away from my car, my fears that the grave will take a while to find are alleviated by a green sign, topped with the image of a magnolia flower.
It is not quite noon when I arrive at the graves of William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1867-July 6, 1962) and Estelle Oldham Faulkner (February 19, 1897-May 11, 1972).
After a moment of staring and a second for photography, I’m not sure what else to do. I am not one for prayer, and, despite myself, I don’t want to engage too much in literary idolatry. I walk back to the car.
Having loomed over whatever remains of his bones, I set my course for Faulkner’s home of thirty years: Rowan Oak. Botanically inclined readers might note that the “rowan oak” is not a real tree, but rather a name of Faulkner’s contrivance – meant to unite the Scottish rowan and American live oak. Neither tree has ever grown on the property.
I am not normally one to marvel at George Washington’s desk or wander around a field imagining the Civil War, but here I make an exception. I spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at the phone Faulkner answered and learned he had won the Nobel Prize. I pass into his office, where he inscribed an outline of the 1954 World War I novel A Fable on the walls.
Upon going upstairs, I learn that William loathed air conditioning and that Estelle had a window unit installed the day after her husband’s funeral. On my way back out, I converse with the docent. A woman and her four small children (who seem much too young to be Faulkner readers) are the only visitors besides me, so the docent appears keen on small talk.
Upon learning I wrote my undergraduate thesis about Faulkner, he insists I sign the guest book and hands me a bookmark made from the cedars that line the walkway up to the house. When I tell him I drove in from Michigan for the next day’s game with no apparent connection to either school, he asks me a simple and fair question:
“What are you doing here?”
For weeks, whenever I revealed my Thanksgiving plans, this has been the reaction. Though I’ve heard the question many times by this point, I never seem to find an answer better than “It’s the Egg Bowl, it’s Oxford, I need to see it.”
The docent steers me toward Square Books, located on the town square surrounding a white courthouse at the heart of Oxford. Though Thanksgiving is still a day away, the square is resplendent with Christmas lights and wreaths.
Square Books, prepared for visitors like me, separates Faulkner’s work from the rest of the fiction section. I leave with an armful—a stand-alone volume of his novella “The Bear” (which normally appears in Go Down, Moses), New Orleans Sketches (a collection of some of his earliest work as a professional writer), a copy of Malcolm Cowley’s The Portable Faulkner (critically considered the re-packaging of Faulkner’s work that elevated him to the status of literary genius), and a collection of speeches, interviews, and letters.
It’s a little after one, and my traveling companion – a former coworker turned friend thanks in large part to a shared affinity for college football – has pulled in from Atlanta. I make a short drive down the hill from the square to meet him at our Airbnb. Our host, Walt, ushers us into the compact guest house where we will spend the next two nights. Not long after we meet Walt, we are introduced to his wife Kari – tending to plants around the couple’s garden and stringing up some Christmas decorations of her own.
Kari asks whether we intend to stop by The Grove when we tell her our plans to attend the game. We nod, and she warns us to expect chaos. She mentions that, as the mother of a six-year-old, her Grove days are in the past, and tells the story of a friend who “lost two four-year-olds” on a recent game day. Several minutes later she add that both toddlers were recovered alive and well, which probably should have led the story. She tells us to anticipate cocktail dresses, suits on fraternity pledges, and the most ornate tailgating setups we have ever seen. She also advises footwear we won’t mind muddying.
The logistics out of the way, we ask Kari about the elephant in the room: the specter of Lane Kiffin spurning Ole Miss for the head coaching vacancy at Auburn, which was still a topic of hot debate at the time. She was confident, correctly, that Kiffin’s rumored departure would not come to pass. She felt his social media presence – more specifically that of his dog Juice – reflected a sense of ease and home in Oxford.
Reflecting on the season to date, Kari expresses her disappointment at some officiating “she didn’t agree with” from the Rebels’ six-point loss to Alabama earlier in November. As we part, she assures us she will leave an umbrella out in anticipation of tomorrow’s showers and adds that we should feel no compunction about abandoning it in the Grove.
* * *
After a dinner gorging on shrimp and grits at City Grocery on the Square and a late evening exploring Oxford at a stumble, gameday opens slowly. A breakfast of a fried chicken biscuit drowned in sausage gravy not long before noon proves a rejuvenating force.
As kickoff draws nearer, I realize that I want Ole Miss to win. This was not the plan; I had intended to pull for the underdog Bulldogs. I find something irresistible in running the air raid in the Southeastern Conference, especially given Mike Leach’s background.
For all that could be said about Leach, who passed away at 61 years old only a few weeks after the Egg Bowl, there is no use in doubting his bonafides. He worked in tandem with Hal Mumme to permanently alter the way the sport is played. And unlike most innovators in college football, he was the man to successfully implement his system on the largest stages – not one of his understudies.
More saliently, I didn’t intend to root for a team called the Rebels, representing the flagship university of a state that did not remove the Confederate “Stars and Bars” from its state flag until June of 2020. The definitive essay on succumbing to the charms of Oxford, the Grove, and Ole Miss football despite the obvious objections has already been written, Kiese Laymon’s “How They Do in Oxford.”
Laymon, from Jackson, recounts his experience as the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence in the University of Mississippi’s creative writing program. He recalls a boyhood blunder, in which he unwittingly wore an Ole Miss jersey bearing the Confederate flag and “Colonel Reb” emblem (whom he mistook for a pimp). The choice incurred an immediate lesson from his mother:
“Most of my childhood, Mama talked to me like an adult while disciplining me like a child, but this Ole Miss whupping and the accompanying staccato lesson were made for grown folk.
“Mama explained to me how integral that Confederate flag on the jersey was to lynching, racial terror and multigenerational Black poverty in Mississippi. She talked about how her mother, my grandmama, worked 15 hours a day sometimes for nothing but cornmeal under the watch of white families who flew the Confederate flag.”
Laymon has far more reason to reject everything that Oxford and Ole Miss represent than I do, yet he finds something of home at the Ajax Diner on the Square:
“I’m a long way from Jackson, but the taste, the smell and the rhythm of the names uttered in Ajax remind me of home. I have lived, taught and written at a college in upstate New York for the past 14 years. In those 14 years, I’ve never heard a white man say, ‘Collards pretty good tonight, ain’t they?’ ”
By the end of the essay, Laymon recognizes that he supports Ole Miss. Perhaps more surprising than his being won over by Oxford’s charm though is that his grandmother also expresses allegiance to the team. When he asks her why, she says “Because you live up there. And like I said, they didn’t give up when they could have. They kept on going when that maroon and white team looked so strong. It’s like they were playing on faith. Those boys worked hard and found a way to win that ballgame. That’s why. For all that those boys have been through, and all the work they put in up there in Oxford, they deserve to win it all. They really do deserve that.”
* * *
We make it to the Grove not long after 3 p.m. More than Faulkner and more than the Egg Bowl, the Grove is the reason we are here. Its reputation – outlined in brief in Kari’s words of warning – has piqued our interest, perhaps in the same way Quentin’s stories of the South appeal to Shreve. Sure, we were excited to see Oxford and engage in Faulknography, but the Grove pulled us to this game out of any of Rivalry Week’s offerings.
The Grove is a leafy ten-acre plot of land, abutting Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. By late November, it is not quite verdant, with the trees that lend to the space its name providing an overstory of yellows, oranges, and reds to accent the blues and reds of the tents below them.
We appear to be the last to arrive. Identical red, white, and blue tents are packed on top of one another – like plots of farmland in the old Eastern bloc. Signs denote the journeys assorted parties of denizens made to attend this weekend, that they seem to make every weekend: “East Texas Rebels” or “Kentucky Rebels”. Some parties are dining on a full Thanksgiving meal while others enjoy more standard tailgating fare.
Mercifully, the rain has not yet arrived, and the ground remains dirt rather than mud for now. A bit overwhelmed by it all, we take refuge in one of the few spots that has not been claimed by our fellow Grovers or designated as a walking path.
The reports of formal wear appear overstated. Some people are dressed in coats and ties or dresses (certainly more than at any other tailgate I’ve attended), but it is a small minority. Perhaps the late-season foul weather has discouraged such attire.
If the number of revelers dressed for a fraternity formal are less numerous than I expected, the number of dogs comes as a shock. Within a few tents of our vantage, several dogs – some tethered, others roaming – sniff through fallen leaves and beer cans while sneaking scraps from kindly or oblivious human tailgaters.
The density – of people, of tents, of trash cans – is what distinguishes the Grove from any other tailgate venue I’ve seen. I’m no stranger to elaborate or even ornate setups, but seeing this many of them, packed this tightly together, is novel to me. If the familiar parking lots and golf courses surrounding the Big House are the tailgating equivalent of Los Angeles’ urban sprawl (concealing the enormous population by dispersing it such that you can’t process how many people are present until it’s time to enter the stadium), the Grove is Manhattan.
Having dispensed with most of our rations, we set about perambulating the Grove.
As we draw nearer to the “Walk of Champions,” which Ole Miss will traverse on its way into Vaught-Hemingway with hordes of supporters lining the barriers on either side, we encounter some of the Greek life crowd about which Kari warned us.
One such group lines up just outside a tent reading “DELTA KAPPA EPSILON” to berate anyone bold enough to wear Mississippi State’s maroon and white. When one older goateed Bulldog enthusiast decides he’s had enough of their abuse and strides toward them, the jeers grind to an abrupt halt. When the State fan cracks a smile just as he arrives, the boys resume their mockery, albeit with a less visceral tone.
The frat boys’ vanishing courage evoked a viral “fight” in the student section at Vaught-Hemingway earlier in the season, which must have set some sort of record for most punches thrown without a single one connecting.
Our attention drifts next to the arrival of the Ole Miss Marching Band, self-described as “the Pride of the South.” On an amphitheater stage, the Ole Miss cheerleaders – with the backing of the band – lead the crowd in a round of “Hotty Toddy”:
“Hey! Go Rebs!
We’re gonna beat the hell out of you
Hotty Toddy
Gosh Almighty
Who the hell are we?
Film flam, bim bam
Oleeeeee Miss by damn”
The setting sun provides an occasion for the chandeliers adorning numerous tailgating tents to be lit as we walk toward Vaught-Hemingway with just under an hour until kickoff.
We take our seats and find the gentle slope of Vaught-Hemingway’s lower bowl affords a surprising amount of legroom. With a capacity of 64,000, it is more intimate than imposing, and our twelfth-row seats feel as though they might as well be on the sideline. Even little more than half full, the anticipation of the rivalry is palpable.
Accustomed to the genteel social morays of the Big House, a college stadium serving beer is new to me. More surprising though is the presence of Slrrrp “alcohol-infused gelatin,” available for five dollars. I know I’ve never seen Jell-O shots at a stadium before, and I don’t think I can remember anyone selling or serving them out of formal packaging. “We might not win every game, but we ain’t never lost a party.”
* * *
We are minutes away from kickoff when the lights at Vaught-Hemingway turn off.
Following the light show, the teams take the field, the captains exchange handshakes, and Lane Kiffin’s offense gets the first chance with the ball. In their respective scripted opening possessions, the two teams establish patterns that will prove portentous by evening’s end.
On the first drive of the game, Jaxson Dart leads Ole Miss on a march down the field only to stumble in the red zone, settling for a field goal; meanwhile, the Bulldogs find a way through with their first crack at the Rebel defense, taking a 7-3 lead. The ease with which standout freshman running back Quinshon Judkins bowls through the Bulldog defense is difficult to reconcile with Ole Miss’ inability to move the chains in short yardage.
Meanwhile, Will Rogers’ demeanor in the pocket – straight up and down, feet static, the only movement the occasional pump-fake, which he executes more with his shoulders than his arm – makes it look as though each drop back has been whistled dead for a pre-snap penalty.
The game is littered with moments that feel decisive but prove trivial, watery echoes to the old ineradicable rhythm, moments whose immediate splash give the impression of a vital inflection point only for the ensuing ripples to leave the game no less muddled than before.
The first of these moments comes late in the second quarter. Dart, Judkins and Ole Miss have a fourth-and-goal from the one-yard line. After a play fake to Judkins, Dart flips a pass to JJ Pegues – a three-hundred-fifteen-pound Auburn transfer whose full-time occupation is defensive tackle, lined up on this occasion as a fullback – in the flats. Touchdown Rebels.
While a 16-7 lead with less than a half played is hardly insurmountable, the literal and emotional weight of Pegues’ touchdown makes Ole Miss’ victory feel inevitable. I mark the occasion with a trip to the bathroom, where I find a QR code above the urinal trough allowing me to donate to “The Grove Collective,” the school’s newly minted NIL program, while I use the facilities.
Just before halftime, the night sky breaks and the forecasted rain finally arrives. It starts as a drizzle, but before long it is powerful enough for fans to dig out the disposable ponchos they packed for the occasion.
In a scoreless third quarter, frustration sets in for the home fans at Kiffin and Ole Miss’ increasingly ineffectual RPOs. The Rebels opened the half with consecutive three-and-outs. A strip-sack of Rogers set Ole Miss up with the ball on the Bulldog 36-yard line, but a six-play drive flames out on fourth-and-2, where Dart is forced to scramble after a miscommunication left him without any available receivers following a play fake.
His desperate pass attempt falls incomplete. A man a few rows behind us shouts, ‘Coach your team, Kiffin!’ He looks to be about 40, wearing a neatly coiffed beard well on its way to gray and a powder blue “Ole Miss” trucker hat. He offers this same feedback with increasing rancor throughout the fourth quarter.
The next false turning point comes on the ensuing Bulldog possession. On a third-and-9 just outside the red zone, Rogers scrambles toward the sticks only to be walloped by Ole Miss senior linebacker Troy Brown. The hit sends Rogers helicoptering to the ground, and the ball squirts free. Ole Miss football.
Rather than a decisive turnover deep in Rebel territory though, replay review shows that Rogers was down before the ball came out. The Bulldogs kick a field goal to take a 17-16 lead. On the ensuing drive, Ole Miss loses 16 yards in three plays and has to punt. Mississippi State responds by driving 55 yards for the game’s first touchdown since Pegues’ and an eight-point advantage.
After a touchback, Dart connects with Dayton Wade to move the chains. He looks next for star wideout Jonathan Mingo – who lined up in the backfield before going in motion to gain momentum – on a screen pass that falls incomplete. This time, though, a play that looked innocuous turns into the most controversial of the evening.
Again, instant replay intervenes and determines this time that Dart’s forward pass was actually a backward lateral, recovered by Jett Johnson with enough immediacy to award the ball to the Bulldogs. The pass was clearly backward, and it’s true that Johnson scooped up the football not long after the whistle blew, but he was able to do so by just bending over and reaching with one hand because the two Ole Miss players in the area stopped playing upon hearing the whistle.
A barrage of beer cans sails onto the field from the student section, and it’s hard to dispute the sentiment that triggered their flight. When their ammunition exhausts, much of the Ole Miss faithful makes its way toward the exits. Up eight with the ball in Ole Miss territory and just seven minutes to play, Mississippi State appeared to have a stranglehold on the game.
Rogers guided the Bulldogs within feet of a touchdown that would all but assure a state championship. Instead, on second-and-goal, he fumbles on a zone read keeper, rendering one more apparent turning point (the Dart fumble, this time) moot.
Over the next three-and-a-half minutes, Ole Miss embarks on a 15-play, 99-yard march. Judkins provides essential relief on the ground as Dart guides his team down the field, including a do-or-die fourth-and-7 completion to Jordan Watkins near midfield. After Judkins scampers for 12 on a fourth-and-1 direct snap in Bulldog territory, Dart finds a wide-open Wade in the end zone with a minute-and-a-half to play.
Assuming the ball down eight, the field-length drive has reached its inevitable conclusion: a two-point attempt to tie the game. Ole Miss lined up in the same heavy set from which Pegues scored earlier. Dart motions Judkins out wide, leaving only the meaty defensive tackle in the backfield. Kiffin, perhaps heeding the words of our friend in the stands, calls timeout. We will have to wait another 30 seconds for this pebble to be dropped.
Ole Miss again lines up with a heavy backfield – Judkins trailing Pegues, only for Kiffin to take his second timeout.
After the second pause for reconsideration, Kiffin’s team lines up with four receivers on the field. Dart fakes a toss to Judkins before sending a shovel pass to Mingo, who has lined up in a tight split attempting to slip through the line of scrimmage for a walk-in touchdown. Bulldog Randy Charlton has other ideas, sniffing out the play and batting down Dart’s pass. At last, an ostensible turning point is what it appeared to be.
The man urging Kiffin to attend to his team becomes more succinct: “Fuck you, Lane.” Because Kiffin took two timeouts in the build-up, the game now hinges on an onside kick, which his Rebels don’t recover. Rain still pouring, we head for the exits before seeing Leach and his team lift the golden egg trophy we came to witness.
After 60 minutes of jumping to false conclusions, we finally have a decisive outcome. Despite it all, this chapter of the Egg Bowl unfolded in neat alignment with the rivalry’s familiar rhythms. It was a contest without national stakes – neither team entered with hopes of a New Years’ Six bowl berth, much less a place in Atlanta for the SEC Championship.
The buildup was colored by off-field mud-slinging stemming from the possibility of Auburn athletic director John Cohen (poached earlier this season from Mississippi State) hiring Kiffin away from Oxford. The game itself was a rock fight, one that neither side could ever seize hold of for more than a minute or two at a time, concluding beneath a heavy Mississippi rainstorm.
* * *
The 6 p.m. central kickoff was perfect. The second-half rainstorm arrived at the ideal time for added drama in the game’s closing minutes without putting a damper on an entire day. Despite some brief navigational challenges finding our way out of Vaught-Hemingway, we still make it home not long after 11 p.m.
I consider the possibility that Lane, Juice, and the rest of the Kiffins are going to stay in Oxford. I wonder whether he is only doing so to spite that one reporter from Starkville. I fear that Ole Miss is my favorite team in the SEC.
I confront a 4:30 a.m. alarm to drive back 12 hours (with a one-hour penalty for returning from central to eastern time) to Ann Arbor to cover the next evening’s Michigan-Harvard game at Yost. I set that alarm not to remember time, but to forget about it for a few more hours before the trek back to Michigan.