Five Football-Frenzied College Towns Worth Touring
By Robert Reid
Posted Nov 8, 2007, at 1 p.m.
For small and mid-sized university towns nationwide, football is the great transformer. Most days you can cross the brick streets without looking. That all changes on fall Saturdays, when streets get clogged with traffic, manic pedestrians smoke cigars or wave flags and nervous anticipation follows the mass, all heading in the same direction: to the stadium. Markets and open-air meals and much ballyhoo accompany home games – a good time to pull off the road and see how these towns tick. Some college football towns are well known, such as Texas Longhorns’ home in Austin, Texas, or Notre Dame’s in South Bend, Ind. But here are five great college towns many cross-country drivers overlook.
Food stalls at the 17th Annual Delta Jubilee in Clarkville.
© Oliver Strewe. Lonely Planet Images.
Morgantown’s West Virginia Mountaineers
Football and foliage is found in tucked-away valleys 75 miles south of Pittsburgh. Game days in Morgantown, W. Va. – the feisty home of the West Virginia Mountaineers – are roaring spectacles, particularly as the ‘Eers have championship hopes in 2007. Zip around campus on the student’s PRT (aka “purdy”) – the world’s only fully automated transport line – and see hometown-hero Don Knotts’ lone “star” on downtown’s High Street sidewalk, then take in the foliage along the 43-mile Old Route 7, which crosses rivers and mountaintops on its rolling ride to Maryland.
Knoxville’s Volunteers
South of the Mason-Dixon Line, football is even bigger. In Tennessee’s mountainous east, Knoxville booms on Saturdays, as more than 100,000 fans cram into Neyland Stadium (the country’s second biggest) to sing “Rocky Top” at Volunteers games. It’s a sea of a daring orange – the Vol’s distinctive hue that matches daisies found around campus. Much activity lingers downtown, along restaurant-lined Gay Street and the riverfront Volunteer Landing, with a mile-long walkway, a self-guided country-music walking tour, steamboats and the gold-topped 200-foot Sunsphere observatory, a legacy from the World’s Fair held here in 1982. Two hours away by car sits the nations most visited park, the Great Smoky Mountains.
Oxford’s Ole Miss Rebels
Down in Mississippi, the Ole Miss Rebels in Oxford haven’t won a national championship since the year hometown-hero William Faulkner died (1962), but that doesn’t mean the football focus has lost any sound or fury. It’s a gorgeous, and surprisingly literary, town: Magnolias and dogwoods shade antebellum mansions and campus buildings. Before the game, eat some catfish at the old-school Taylor Grocery and see Faulkner’s home at Rowan Oak (both on Old Taylor Road), then go for a drive afterwards. The tree-lined Natchez Trace Parkway follows an old Native American trail north through Tupelo (Elvis’ birthplace), or head to Clarksville, in the Mississippi Delta to the west, which is the hub of delta blues.
Crater Lake and Wizard Island.
© Roberto Gerometta Lonely Planet Images.
Lincoln’s Cornhuskers
If you’re crossing the country, stop for a “cornhead” hat at Lincoln, Neb., home to the beloved Cornhuskers and a superb, walkable center where you can visit the 1932 art deco state capitol, get steaks or vegetarian meals in the Haymarket District, and wander about the University of Nebraska. There are do-it-yourself Cornhusker walking-tour brochures to pick up at the Memorial Stadium (open to the public daily), but Saturday tickets are harder to scrape up (games have been sold out since JFK was president). Before hitting the road, take a look at O Street, supposedly the longest main street in the country, and head west (with a full tank) on two-lane Highway 2 through the 19,000-square-mile belly of Nebraska, the remote Sandhills.
Eugene’s Ducks
Out west, Eugene, Ore., is famously the home of Nike, but its Autzen Stadium is college football’s loudest (its standing-room-only crowd recorded a 125-decibel roar in 2006) – as are the space-age uniforms Nike designed for the Ducks. Fall Saturdays are also a wonderful time in Eugene with its lively downtown Saturday Market, filled with handicrafts, international foods, live bands and a fair share of aged hippies. Afterwards, drop by the Fifth Street Public Market, for food or a look at the waffle iron Nike used for its first sole tread, then ponder a few nearby attractions to take the car to: Old McKenzie Highway (Highway 242), to the east, climbs mountains for volcano views; Crater Lake, a couple hours southeast, is the country’s deepest lake; coastline Highway 101, an hour west, follows sand dunes along the coast.
Bio: Robert Reid is a freelance travel writer who has written a dozen Lonely Planet guidebooks (including "New York City" and "USA & Canada on a shoestring"), as well a free online guide to Vietnam (www.reidontravel.com). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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