The Weekend I Went Home: From Sigma Pi to the LSU-Ole Miss Grudge Match

In the fall of 1983, I made a decision that seemed insignificant at the time: I left Oxford just as a fraternity weekend was about to explode. Forty-three years later, with LSU coming to town and former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin on the opposite sideline, I find myself if I lived in Oxford, Miss., now, I would make the same choice again. There are some weekends when you know you ought to be somewhere else. For me, the first came when I was a 21-year-old sophomore at the University of Mississippi, living in the old Sigma Pi house on Fraternity Row. Word had spread that another Sigma Pi chapter from Arkansas was planning a pledge walkout, with somewhere between 20 and 30 pledges expected in Oxford. Some college guys would have heard that and thought, This is going to be one hell of a weekend. I thought, I think I'll go home.

So I headed back to Hernando and my dad's lake house in Eudora, Mississippi, looking for peace and quiet. I wasn't interested in the partying or whatever fraternity circus was about to descend on Oxford. Apparently, I missed quite a weekend. When I returned Sunday night, I heard that the Arkansas chapter had packed a couple dozen pledges into the back of a U-Haul truck and headed for Oxford. Even now, I can't imagine that trip: 20-some people crowded into a dark, hot truck with little ventilation, no cell phones and no easy way to communicate with the drivers. I'm somewhat claustrophobic, and that would not have been my idea of a good time. But this was 1983. There were no smartphones, GPS devices or instant calls. You were simply along for the ride. Once the pledges arrived, the party was on. The two chapters joined forces, and Oxford became their playground. There were scavenger hunts, drinking, running around campus and, depending on whose story you believed, somewhere between 10 and 20 kegs consumed over the weekend. When I came back, I saw the evidence: Empty beer kegs were stacked behind the fraternity house. One of our brothers was a Stroh's beer representative and had gotten us old beer lights and neon signs for the fraternity-house windows. I had one myself, and I wish I still did. Those pieces of college memorabilia become more valuable with time—not because they're worth money, but because they carry memories. That beer light would take me right back to Fraternity Row, the old Sigma Pi house and the weekend I decided to go home. Forty-three years later. Now it's 2026. I'm 64, living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Ole Miss is preparing to play LSU in Oxford. This time, the commotion isn't coming from a fraternity house. It's coming from the football stadium, on campus and a small deep south college town of 28,000 citizens. Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU at the end of the previous season, just as Ole Miss was entering the College Football Playoff picture. He took a lucrative opportunity in Baton Rouge, and Ole Miss fans have had plenty to say about how he left. Some understand the decision. Others don't. For many, the wound is still fresh. I understand that feeling. Lane Kiffin was the coach of my alma mater, and he left at the most emotionally charged point imaginable. So when LSU comes into Oxford with Kiffin on the other sideline, it's easy to understand why the atmosphere will be intense. But I won't be there. I'll be in my comfortable living room in Bowling Green, with Mr. Jude nearby, a television, some popcorn and my memories. I'll have a front-row seat to the madness without being anywhere near it. Because I've learned something since 1983: Sometimes the smartest seat in the stadium is the one in your living room. I remember what it felt like. That is what connects this game to the old fraternity weekend. In 1983, I wasn't making a statement or afraid of anybody. I simply knew I didn't want to spend the weekend in a fraternity party that was likely to get out of hand. So I went home and returned to the stories: the kegs, scavenger hunts, trouble with campus police and everything else that happened while I was gone. I got the best part: The memories without the hangover. More than four decades later, I'm doing essentially the same thing. The difference is that I'm no longer a sophomore escaping a fraternity party. I'm a 64-year-old Ole Miss alumnus in Bowling Green, watching thousands of football fans descend on Oxford for one of the most emotionally charged games Ole Miss has played in years. I hope nobody gets hurt. I hope the rivalry stays a rivalry and doesn't turn ugly. I hope people remember it's a football game—and that nobody throws a bottle or anything else into a crowd. At my age, I have no desire to be the innocent person standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'll take my recliner, my television, Mr. Jude at my feet and my memories of Oxford—especially that Sunday night in 1983, when I walked into the Sigma Pi house and saw all those empty kegs stacked behind the building. I wasn't there when the party happened, but somehow I can still see it. Maybe that's what getting older does. You realize that the places you once thought you'd never leave become the places you remember most. Ole Miss was one of those places for me. So were Oxford and Fraternity Row. I went to Ole Miss as a young man and left with a journalism degree, lifelong memories, friendships and stories. Every once in a while, decades later, something takes me right back. So when the crowd roars this weekend, I'll raise a glass from Kentucky—to the young man I was, the university that shaped him and the places that taught me home is wherever memory, gratitude and love meet. Hotty Toddy. See less