Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

Meanwhile, on the other side of Tennessee, I almost got raped by a hillbilly janitor in the bowels of Neyland Stadium.
Point, Memphis.

Encounters You Wish Would Be Wiped From Your Mind

 

Sorry for you, that's awful. Neyland on TV always had the highest, steepest camera angle and made me dizzy just to watch.

 

My other stadium story: I was friendly with the cheerleaders senior year in college (OK, I was a cheerleader, a mic man specifically, with a concert amp to actually lead cheers and no partner, but that's another story), and half the squad (not me) went to Dallas for the SMU game. Some of the guys went out the night before, got drunk and a) stole a motorcycle b) broke into the Cotton Bowl, and c) pissed on the good seats on the home sideline. Then they went home the end.

 

Well, the "ALMOST" part makes it a good story instead of a horrific one. It did take me a long time to tell anyone about it, though. Where I jumped was, I think, from the first row to the field somewhere inside the 20-yard line. That is not a small drop. But I might have jumped from the upper deck to get away from that dude.

 

We used to break into Tiger Stadium all the time. There are (or were, when I was there) all kinds of doors open that led into the old stadium dorms. They mainly used it for storage and offices, I think, but it was creepy as hell in there after midnight. Flickering fluorescent lights, dead-end hallways, quiet as hell ... it had a real horror movie vibe to it. The slightest noise or shadow made you want to turn around and run the other way if you found yourself alone.
There were also a couple of places where you could squeeze through windows and get into the stadium itself. We did that once and spent an hour or so going all over the stadium. I think we climbed into the second deck at one point, where there was a spot you could go from the lower bowl up with a little effort. I found a football, too. LSU was playing North Texas that weekend and it had "UNT" printed on it. I figure it got kicked up there during their walkthrough and they forgot about it. I still have it somewhere, 25 years later.

 

Only been in Tiger Stadium once, a loss in a cold pouring rain. The least you could have done was break Mike out of his cage!

 

Oxford is a pretty cool little college town. There are three related bookstores on one corner of the downtown square and lots -- LOTS -- of good places to eat.

The family and I were having breakfast at Big Bad Breakfast one morning, and one of the regulars sent over bowls of ice cream to our kids. He does that every time he spots tourists. I went to thank him, and we had a long conversation about people in the Oxford area with my last name, and many of them were descended from enslaved people. That was eye-opening, because I have never met nor heard of anyone of color with my last name.

 

A bunch of us Microville Tech beat writers/columnists got locked into Memorial Stadium at Berkeley once after a game. Some neighborhood homeless guy showed us a hole in the chain-link fence; we were able to get out and he made a quick $20 or so.

A fellow beat writer and I also got locked into the LA Sports Arena one night after a hoops game against USC. Luckily we found some custodians and they unlocked a bunch of chains that were helping keep the doors locked.

That's why I liked Gary Migdol (sp?) @ Stanford. He stayed until the last guy was done, and escorted us out of the stadium and made sure we didn't get locked in, back in the old Stanford Stadium days (I haven't been to the new one).

Got to travel to some pretty good places when on the football/hoops beat. Surprisingly, Pullman was one of my favorite Pac-10/12 trips, in no small part because of SID Rod Commons. Of course, I also had to go to Fresno several times and to Stockton, so it wasn't all strawberries and cream.

 

Remember driving through Logan, Utah, one Saturday in the summer about 30 years ago and, on a whim, decided to check out BYU's Cougar Stadium. Found a gate that was wide open, went down to the bench area and soaked it all in for a few.

 

Meanwhile, there was this somewhat cryptic tweet from the California Interscholastic Federation today. Not looking good at all for high school football in this state.

 

Shoot, Mike lives better than a lot of people do.

 

Not to be an asshole, really, but BYU is in Provo. Utah State is in Logan.