There was the 14-hour plus drive from Baton Rouge back to Ohio after Texas A&M-LSU because an ice storm was going to close DFW and dad didn’t want to get trapped just days before Thanksgiving. There were the shoeless & toothless degenerates rummaging around the West Virginia parking lot looking to loot tailgates before the LSU game.
There was the family from Columbus who shared a bottle of Crown with us under beautiful blue skies before Ohio State got destroyed by USC. There were the drunken bodies hitting the ground at The Grove before Ole Miss shocked Alabama. There was the time we ate gator bites and drank some sort of liquor that nearly made me blackout in apartments that have since been torn down just outside Bryant-Denny.
We’ve covered 6,000+ miles. We’ve seen Alabama-LSU on a Saturday Night in Death Valley. We saw Johnny Manziel play at LSU on a Saturday night. We saw Mark Sanchez destroy Ohio State with four touchdown passes. We followed Ole Miss students in the dark as they marched the goal posts from Vaught–Hemingway Stadium to the Grove after beating Bama.
We paid off an Ole Miss ticket taker to get into Bama-Ole Miss in 2014. I went first and paid her $40. Dad gave her $20. We sat outside and drank beer at the Houndstooth in Tuscaloosa while watching a parade of SEC before a game against the Gators. We watched grown West Virginia adults pass out against cars. We’ve seen so many great Gameday signs I’ve lost count. We’ve met so many incredible people that open their tailgates, coolers and grills.
There was the time we battled New Orleans a day after battling the best tailgating in America at the LSU Parade Ground. There was Venice Beach. There was the CBS camera guy we drank with in a hotel bar the night before Florida-Bama. He told story after story of life on the road.
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That was the purpose of it all eight years ago when Busted Coverage was starting to take off. I suggested to my dad that we should jump on planes and meet in Los Angeles for a football weekend. The purpose was to actually have a purpose to do some bonding. The idea was to see a great football game but to also see the country and visit places we would never visit without football as the catalyst.
He agreed to that first trip to Los Angeles. I’ll never forget standing in the baggage claim as he came down the escalator at LAX: random t-shirt he’s had for years, stone washed jorts, white ankle socks, scuffed up white gym shoes. That’s my dad. It’s comfort over style 100% of the time, even though I can’t image the jorts are comfortable.
Dad with West Virginia’s finest before LSU game. She wasn’t wearing shoes.
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Things have never exactly been easy between my father and I. He’s definitely from the old school where your children shouldn’t be your best friends. There have been many battles. There have been warts. My parents were kids having kids. They were 16 & Pregnant before it was a Saturday marathon on MTV. There was the divorce when I was a teenager. Life happens, right?
Even with the madness, there used to be father-son-son (my brother) trips here and there. Then there were the Vegas trips in the 20s where you run into dad once or twice a day to eat a meal and figure out who had a better day of gambling. That got old.
At some point in 2008 the father-son college football weekend idea was hatched. The goal was to hit one or a couple of these benchmarks: see the best possible game of the year; try to hit a GameDay stop for content purposes; try to see a new city that would also include stops in cities along the way we’d never visit without catching a football game.
The games:
2008: #5 Ohio State – #1 USC
2009: #3 Alabama – #20 Ole Miss
2010: #7 Florida – #1 Alabama
2011: #2 LSU – # 16 West Virginia
2012: #1 Alabama – #5 LSU
2013: #12 Texas A&M – #22 LSU
2014: #3 Alabama – #11 Ole Miss
2015: #9 Michigan State – #2 Ohio State
The keys to successful father-son college football trips
Your dad better be up for whatever. Period. Bud Light should sponsor our father-son trips and put my father’s face on special tailgating cans. He turned 60 this year so we’ll have to see if he’s lost a step, but over the last seven years he’s put in some serious work.
Don’t be homers. It’s one week of college football. Get outside of your comfort zone. The only reason we’re going to Michigan State-Ohio State this weekend is because the SEC has been a dumpster fire. Either the weather has been a disaster or the matchups just suck. There’s also a lack of iconic stars right now.
Embed. Use your connections to get a real experience. If you see a cool tailgate setup, start a conversation. There’s a guy outside Tiger Stadium (LSU) that has a casket tailgate setup. You could drink beer & talk to the guy for hours. And I guarantee you’ll meet someone standing there who’ll invite you to eat gumbo at another tailgate. That’s how this stuff works.
with Bunkie Perkins
Look like you belong. Go to the student bookstore and get gear. Again, quit acting like the world’s going to end if you wear West Virginia gear. There’s nothing more father-son than walking around the LSU student bookstore looking at hoodies & drinking beers during a torrential downpour.
Don’t be a jerkoff. Your dad is going to say something dumb and it might be to a hot chick. Just laugh it off. He has quirks. You have quirks.
Don’t be cheap. That’s just going to lead to arguments with dad and that defeats the purpose of these trips. Get a room as close as possible to the action. Don’t bother flying if at all possible. See the country.
Have fun. Life and time is limited, right? My father had quad bypass in 2009, and I didn’t think he’d be cleared to travel. He soldiered on. Then I had physical issues in 2013 that could’ve ended these trips. But, here we are in 2015 still rolling along. Maybe this is the last one. Let’s hope not. We’re having too much fun.
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So tomorrow morning I will make the two-hour drive to dad’s house. We’ll drive the hour and a half east to Columbus where we’ll connect with our GameDay buddies. We’ll catch up on how they’re doing, hear road stories and talk about life. Then we’ll head an hour and a half back west for an Ohio high school state playoff game and then go back to Columbus to sleep & get ready for what should be another memorable Saturday.
Sound like fun? You should try it. You might just build some memories.
