The Oxford Square

At the first sighting of larva-sized rumors bound to grow into nasty, monster-sized speculation that Ole Miss and Texas have inked a home/home season opening deal for 2009 and 2010 (Oxford/Austin, or Austin/Oxford, or both on a rec center field at an undisclosed location, it won’t affect the outcome), I can’t help but think one thing:

Memphis State sucks so, so, so bad.

Because if said rumors are ultimately legit, and the Rebels schedule their first non-conference national power in like… a lot of years (ed: Yes, I’m too lazy to look it up. Leave me alone, I’m not paid to do this anymore.), it will only serve to show how truly awful our never ending series with the University of Tennessee-Memphis at Memphis has been for Ole Miss, its athletic revenue, national exposure, the fans, the SEC, God in heaven and basically anyone involved except for the other team and the Rebel contingency outside of Shelby and Desoto Counties.

Surely you could pose positive reasons for the long standing season-opener against Memphis. Market exposure for recruiting, distance for fans to travel on away years (provided you’re willing to spin the wheel-of-violent-offenders-database as you scoot past Orange Mound) and some ill-begotten media creation that the two teams share some kind of “football rivalry.”

A note to Memphschizzle State fans – Rivalry? Seriously? I mean, come on – in lieu of “coaching up” our own depleted roster, we decided to “read up” your area’s learning disabled and then sidestep them into D1 football, and Mississippi State seems more pissed off about it than you guys. If you can’t combine that outrage with a little residual guilt over not figuring out that scheme in your own backyard and sell out the Liberty Bowl when we come calling, what the hell is gonna take? Racial slurs?

The truth is that most of those arguments are exaggerated assumptions, invalid or just plain wrong. Last I checked, Delta State was about as close by for the Rebs, and they would almost certainly abstain from charging $50 a ticket.

Yet I find it hard to sway people away from the idea of playing Memphis. I have no idea why. The only thing more inexorable than the general logic of the Tiger fans are the thought patterns of a small sect of our own fans who deem Memphis worth anything more than flat-out ignoring until basketball.

I won’t waste time with the usual rant about UMemphdawgState’s piss-poor fan base, their lack of any tradition outside of a mens basketball team and coaching staff that could fit seamlessly into the next straight-to-video Master P “Scarface” homage, their shitty, war-torn campus with all the Old South charm of a Cincinnati shopping center, their self-delusion about deserving to belong in southern football pantheon (and not in that cute Southern Miss way either) or the invisible appeal of why someone would actually want to attend their institution, as in actually elect to spend four years there without some sort of major incentive (or hostage situation).

I can get why certain sects of society would go to a LSU or Mississippi State, but the gaping hole where “advantage to students” would be found in UMStizate’s marketing campaign prompts me to think that the average answer as to why some kid decided to go Tiger High would be something along the lines of “Gas money’s a bitch these days” or “This way I can keep my weekend job at Tropical Tans in Nesbit.”

There’s no history at Uni-in-the-hizzy-MState. Nothing at all, save for the zombified dregs of suburban America. You know of whom I speak, the same mediocre culture whores who drift effortlessly into a glorified commuter school on a bumble-fucked path into adulthood, all the while only concerned with which ’22s would look best on their Accord or when Hollister is having a sale, or picking up “bitchez” in the Galleria food court, or needlessly tacking on “z” to words in an effort to toughen up their vanilla existence with some Xeroxed hip-hop culture. Sorry, “cultuaz.” (That one’s for Scoop Jackson.)

Damnit, I just wasted time ranting.

If you’re looking for proof of insurmountable inferiority, look no further than the Commercial Appeal, or in this case, the Desoto Appeal, an offshoot “community publication” designed to make white suburbanites regain interest in a print media company still prioritizing race relations and urban nostalgia over, well, actual news. Alas, that’s another rant for another day, one I’ve been intellectually prairie-dogging for years.

So the gist here is that the Tigaz got their own personalized tags in the state of Mississippi, something I can only assume that their Southaven fan base considers to be either some sort of coup against the SEC regime, a stab at legitimacy, or both, or worse, neither, because I just used words like “coup” and “legitimacy” and they’re currently burning down the door of Dictionary.com in frantic confusion to form a retort (that means comeback, home-dawg).

Just the fact that this dictated a story of such length and perspective – wow, UM got car tags like the big boys! – in what should be the university’s backyard of Desoto County goes to prove how not ready for Saturday afternoon these kids are. To the newspaper we go:

The rear window was plastered with six University of Memphis stickers, and the license plate’s magnolia logo had been replaced by a leaping blue Tiger.

The white SUV pulled off bustling Goodman Road into the parking lot of John Daly’s Bar and Grill on Saturday, and out stepped Fred and Dottie Tucker of Olive Branch, covered head to toe in Memphis blue. Their destination: the distribution point for Mississippi’s first license plates honoring an out-of-state school.

Score one for the Univ. of Memphtabulous, take two away for the state of Mississippi. Why don’t they print out-of-state college tags? It’s tax revenue, stupid! Go to a Tennessee DMV and you can order your own Purdue tag. Then again, the Magnolia State did lock down NASCAR, allowing gang members to affiliate through driver colors (seriously).

Viva bureaucracy!

Twenty minutes later, the Tuckers drove away with his Ford sporting University of Memphis license plate No. 10. “This is just a great way to extend Tiger pride down into Mississippi,” said Bobby Prince, an assistant vice president of development who represented the university at the event. Inside the eatery, Desoto County Tax Collector’s office supervisors Tammie Rhoda and Tracie Riley handed out new plates and collected old ones, including a goodly number with Tiger stickers hiding the state flower.

Ooooh you bitch-slapped the Magnolia! Them’s fighting words.

“Many of us have done that, because that’s all we could do,” said Harold Alexander, a Nesbit resident who led a three-year drive to win state approval of a U of M tag.

And for that, we consider you a beacon of light, standing against oppression for all these years.

The Tuckers bleed Memphis Tiger blue. A 65-year-old retiree from the freight business, he is a native Memphian who has bought season football tickets for 40 years. His wife, a 67-year-old Texas transplant and retired hospital counselor, said Tiger football is the only thing standing between them and retirement in Arizona, near her sister.

Really? Memphis football is keeping you from Arizona? And you didn’t even GO to the SCHOOL? Folks, that’s a level of idiocy you’ll never see again in your life, unless one day you overhear someone saying “Shit, I’d leave the Buffalo winter in a heartbeat and head back home to Florida if the local minor league baseball wasn’t so damn compelling!”

Fred Tucker said they were proud to buy tags, because “It’s the first school that’s not a Mississippi school to have one.” The U of M’s success reportedly has boosters of Alabama, Auburn and other schools salivating over their own Magnolia State tags. UofM supporters had to collect 200 advance payments of a $51 vanity license fee before the plates could be manufactured.

If it only takes a little over 10 grand to earn your own license tag, I’m a few wary investors shy of a “NAFOOM” tag, manatee and all…

The collector’s staff and Alexander’s wife, Mary Frances Alexander, handed out prepaid tags Saturday.
Tags also can be ordered at tax collectors’ offices in Hernando, Olive Branch, Southaven and elsewhere in the state.

Thank God, that way the booming legions of U of Memtastic fans in Biloxi can scoop up their very own way to tell their friends “I’m trashier than Southern Miss fans, and I paid fifty bucks to let you know it.”

While blue-clad men and women congratulated Harold Alexander, the football booster club board member talked excitedly of new ways to give glory to the U of M.

Pave the parking lot of the Liberty Bowl and watch the glory flow. I promise.

He has put out feelers about similar tags in Arkansas.

God knows they’ll approve it. They covet being 49th in everything.

He talked to another booster about an old fire tanker they’re painting Tiger blue and decorating for display at Fan Fest, the Kickoff Banquet and other occasions.

SHIT! So much for the national attention bestowed upon the Grove, Toomer’s Corner, the Hedges, the Vol Navy and the Denny Chimes. They’ve got repainted municipal property, damnit!

Plates Nos. 1 through 10 were reserved for people deserving special recognition. Alexander’s wife got No. 1. The widow of former football player Bobby Russell in Pontotoc County got a low number. Tunica County resident Bill Gidden received No. 24, his number during the Tigers’ undefeated 1963 campaign when the Tigers finished 9-0-1. The tie? Ole Miss.

HA! Eat it! Actually I have no idea that happened. Nor do I care. I’m sure that story annually makes the rounds as Memphis fans simultaneously tailgate and provide cover fire for the guy running the Coleman stove on gameday, but I covered Ole Miss football and that’s not even a footnote. (We prefer to relish losing to LSU to tying anyone.)

Alexander took No. 71, the year he graduated. A tall, burly man making his way across the restaurant’s crowded patio clutched No. 77. Luis Fernandez was a defensive lineman in the late 1960s. Fernandez, 59, who works in a trucking business, moved to Desoto County from Memphis several years ago. “You see more and more (Tigers) down here,” Fernandez said.

I blame the Mexicans.

Tricia Whitley and her daughter, Laura Whitley, both of Hernando, waited in line to receive tags. Laura, 19, will be a sophomore at U of M in the fall. She said her family is full of Tigers. “You see more and more Tigers down here,” added Tricia Whitley, 56. “It used to be Ole Miss and Mississippi State. There are a lot of kids down here who go to the University of Memphis, but you just don’t hear about it.”

Shame, Tricia. You don’t hear about it because of shame. It’s like the subject matter of an after school special.

“Bobby gets abused.”

“Jenny gets herpes.”

“Laura contracts Tigaz Blue.”

Steven Godfrey wouldn’t piss on Elvis to put out a fire. Cash left for Nashville, and so did he. Post hate mail at TheGodfreyShow.com