Ole Miss football – Memphis Flyer

Do you know about Nextdoor.com? It’s a social media site that links you with your neighbors, providing an online forum for discussing common concerns: garage sales, lost and found pets, garbage and recycling, criminal activity, references for chimney sweeps and handymen, and curb alerts, where someone announces they’re putting, say, an old couch on the curb. First come, first served.

Last Sunday, the greatest curb alert of all time was posted on the Central Gardens Nextdoor.com site. It read:

Curb Alert – Ole Miss Football Season

The Ole Miss football season is on the curb by the Liberty Bowl.

Frankly, it was a rare example of wit on the site. Most posts are pretty mundane and some are borderline paranoid. “Suspicious” is perhaps the most-used word on Nextdoor.com. As in, “suspicious-looking teens walking down alley behind my house on Vinton at 4:45 p.m. Be aware.” I leave it to you to guess what usually constitutes a suspicious-looking teen. But, occasional paranoia aside, the site is pretty useful.

As is a big win over that SEC team from Oxford.

I was out Friday night, listening to the City Champs at the Buccaneer. During a break, I got into a conversation with a couple of Ole Miss fans from Nashville. I could tell they were Ole Miss fans because they were dressed entirely in red and white, and they were a little drunk and a little loud. But they were raving about Memphis. Seriously.

“There’s no music like this in Nashville,” they said. “There are no little clubs like this. It’s all that country shit.” They’d just had a large time earlier in the evening in Cooper-Young, and then in Overton Square, where someone had told them that they’d hear the best music in town at the Buc.

Then talk turned, as it must when talking to people dressed in garish school colors, to football. The Rebel fans conceded that Memphis had a nice offense and that Paxton Lynch was a “good college quarterback.” But, they explained, helpfully, Memphis was not ready for SEC competition. “Y’all’s defense won’t know what hit them,” they said. “SEC football is on a different level. It might be a game for a quarter or so,” they said, “but our depth will wear y’all down.”

I blush to admit now that I sort of agreed with them. Like most Memphians, I was hoping the Tigers could score enough to make the game interesting, but I had few illusions that Memphis could actually beat Ole Miss.

I’ve never been happier to be wrong about something in my life. And I’m happy the Ole Miss fans at least had a great night in Memphis before their team got kicked to the curb.

They were right about one thing: It was a game for a quarter or so.

Notes from a heavy sports weekend:

Time required to watch a professional tennis match in a major tournament: Four hours. Time required to watch a major-college or pro football game from start to finish: Four hours. Time to watch a football game, tailgate, and drive to and from: Eight hours.

Tennis first. The Novak Djokovic semifinal Saturday went five sets and tested the stamina of the fans as well as the players. Today’s U.S. Open final between Djokovic and Rafael Nadal looks like a potential four-hour affair because the players are evenly matched, they hang tough in long rallies, and they take their time when it is their serve. I preferred the Serena Williams match in the women’s final Sunday because it was best of three instead of best of five. It went the distance, and was over in about two and a half hours, including a close tiebreaker in the second set and some face time for lean-and-grey Bill Clinton who got the biggest celebrity ovation of the day. The second set was suspenseful because it was a potential decider with multiple match points. In a five-setter, the early sets are often just building blocks to the good stuff in the fourth or fifth sets — like the first three quarters of an NBA game. Walk the dog time, make a sandwich time, get a life time.

Now for football. A week ago I was in Nashville to visit a friend who went to the Vanderbilt-Ole Miss game. The game was a thriller, with hot action in the last few minutes, but all my friend could talk about was how long it took to get to that point: an 8:15 p.m. kickoff dictated by ESPN, a game crammed with television timeouts, and a conclusion well after midnight.

Four hour games are the norm. Super Bowls used to be completed in less time. I watched part of the Michigan-Notre Dame game at Jack Magoo’s sports bar Saturday. Another screen was showing other, lesser games at the same time, and I would swear there was twice as much action in the lesser games and twice as many commercials in the big game. What a pay day it was for Michigan and Notre Dame, with 115,000 people in the stands in Ann Arbor and a national television audience. And what a late night for fans who sat through the whole thing and had to drive home after it was over.

There was a very good crowd, by recent University of Memphis standards, at the Liberty Bowl Saturday for the opener against Duke. In fact, it seemed to overwhelm the parking lot attendants on Central Avenue and the concessions in the stadium, where at least one of them ran out of cold soft drinks at half time. You can see why Memphis football boosters keep giving it a go. The upside is considerable, and the infrastructure is already there — the big stadium, the jumbo scoreboard, the parking lots, the access streets. If there were 35,000 people there Saturday, that’s 25,000 more than most games drew the last few years, at roughly $50 a head for tickets, parking, and concessions including $7 beers. Lot of money changing hands. If Memphis ever uncovers another DeAngelo Williams . . .

It’s water under the bridge, but the stadium renovation mandated by the U.S. Department of Justice to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) looks so unnecessary. ADA seating now basically encircles the stands at the middle level. Most in evidence within my view on the west sideline were, in order, empty spaces, fans in portable companion chairs, fans in walkers, and fans in wheelchairs. The DOJ, which strong-armed Memphis into compliance and expansion, should take a more scientific survey.