Let me be upfront with you, I did attend the Southern Miss vs. Mississippi State game in Hattiesburg this past Saturday night, so I will not need the help of someone else to give my accounts as to what I experienced that day. If this ever begins to sound like a secondhand experience, forgive me because it’s not.

The traffic at USM that day was quite backed up. I would credit that to the fact that Southern Miss is located in the center of a city that could function just fine without the college and provides more jobs than most others, so forgive us if you were not able to park in a cow pasture near our football stadium. Nevertheless, I found a not so bad parking spot in the middle of campus without having to bribe anyone and began to make my way to The District to begin tailgating. Upon entering The District I was greeted by The Student Eagle Club that was offering FREE Buffalo Wild Wings to every person that passed by, whether they were wearing maroon or gold.

Once I arrived to my fraternities tailgating spot I was mesmerized by the amount of MSU fans and students that arrived to help our “athletic department turn the lights on at our dump,” so we happily obliged them with food, drinks, a place to watch the current games on TV, and just an overall good time. The tailgating experience was nothing short of what I expected and honestly didn’t stray too far from any other times I have tailgated in the district, except for the overzealous MSU fan that rang his cowbell just a little too loud right in my ear or tried to get the “maroon/white” chant started, but other than that it was just a good time that was shared with two sets of fans from two in-state teams.

Getting into the stadium was chaos since it was the first time we played Mississippi State at home since 1989. So like most entrances to big college football games, it was quite a cluster, but we broke the stadium record by the way, thanks MSU fans for making that dream come true. We did not allow cowbells into the stadium because well…. we’re a “classy joint,” and they are against campus policy. Luckily, there were trashcans outside of stadium entrances to collect them. Do not let this make you too mad though, we did not discard them into a waste bucket, all of the cowbells we collected were taken outside of the city limits to help poor dairy farmers keep from losing their cows.

The Golden Eagle Band, more commonly referred to as The Pride of Mississippi, put on an outstanding performance that had the entire crowd singing and dancing along. This comes as a shock to me since someone claimed they were “about the quality of a good high school band.” Dang, then why were they crowned the overall winner of the International Band Parade in Ireland? The Student Section, which I sat in and experienced first hand, was getting quite rowdy when MSU took the field, as they should. Different obscenities and derogatory things may or may not have been said, not saying I agree with that but I just want it understood that my fellow students are not ignorant enough to shout “over rated” at MSU, they’re picked to finish last in their division, we’ve been there before. Of course, what we scream in the student section can easily be misinterpreted by someone that is sitting on the opposite end of the stadium.

The whole experience for my friends and I wasn’t a total disappoint because even though we lost, we fought hard, and we still had a blast hosting about 30 to 40 Mississippi State students at our house to finish up the night. We were even commended by MSU head coach Dan Mullen on our major improvements from last year and how we gave it everything we had! Funny how that makes everything a little better. For that reason I give USM an A+ for our outstanding efforts. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to give Andy, the author of “Grading Gameday @ USM,” a D- for his less than mediocre efforts of trying to illustrate a secondhand experience at game day at Southern Miss.