We had to drop off my youngest daughter in Chattanooga. You probably don’t need to glance at Google Maps on your iPhone to know Scenic City is not on the way from Florida to Texas. We hunkered down in the rental and headed toward Georgia. By the time we got to Atlanta, traffic was unusually jammed for a summer Saturday afternoon.
Once we cleared the clogged concrete arteries, it was smooth sailing as the mountains of North Georgia and Tennessee began to rise in the distance on I-75. We met my dad and stepmom in downtown Chattanooga for a late lunch, said our goodbyes, and hit the road toward Huntsville, where we would spend the night.
On trips like these, a willing road warrior is a necessity for a good time, and 13-year-old Timmy proved up for the journey. All he knew was that he wanted to taste some of the Texas barbecue I had mentioned over the years. According to my taste buds, you haven’t had barbecue until you chomp into a beef rib from Pinkerton’s in San Antonio or brisket from the Pecan Lodge in Dallas. As a devout reader of Texas Monthly magazine and its barbecue coverage, I get hungry by flipping the pages.
As we stopped in Huntsville to explore where Gators head coach Jon Sumrall grew up and starred at Grissom High School, we ate light knowing what was ahead. The next day was going to be a long one as we mapped out the drive from Huntsville to New Orleans, where Sumrall lived until this year when he left Tulane to take the Florida job.
This is where another detour popped into my mind. We would pass through Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, so why not stop and show Timmy where some of college football’s most famous moments have taken place. He was game.
As we pulled off I-20 and drove toward Legion Field, I attempted to dust off the pages of history and tell him this is where the Gators played Alabama in the first two Southeastern Conference Championship Games and mentioned the famous Alabama-USC game in 1970 that altered the landscape of college football.
“Cool. This place is old,” he said.
Undeterred, the baseball fan in me buzzed as we drove to nearby Rickwood Field, the oldest working ballpark in the country and once the place a young Willie Mays roamed center field for the Birmingham Black Barons. It so happened the stadium was being used that Sunday morning for a Perfect Game tournament, so we walked around and learned about the updates the ballpark underwent before the 2024 game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals.
To prove that not everything in Birmingham is as ancient as his dad, I took Timmy for a quick drive around downtown past Protective Stadium, which opened in 2021 and is home to UAB’s football team, and Regions Field, the minor league baseball stadium that opened in 2013.
From there, it was on to Tuscaloosa and home of the Crimson Tide. While I’ve covered a few games at Bryant-Denny Stadium, I had never taken the time to walk around campus and into history. We stopped by the Bear Bryant and Nick Saban statues, and marveled at the majestic sorority houses that flank the east side of the stadium.
By this time, I could tell Timmy was taking in the sights and making his own assessments, so I became more of a fellow traveler and less of a history teacher.
“This is a big stadium,” he said. “When are we going to get barbecue?”
From Tuscaloosa, we ventured deep into the Mississippi countryside to visit Sumrall, the tiny town connected to Florida’s new coach’s family roots, before ending a long day in New Orleans, where bowls of gumbo and plates of Cajun seafood capped another perfect day.
The next morning, after beignets and coffee and Café du Monde, we crisscrossed downtown New Orleans, past the Superdome and over to Tulane University’s Yulman Stadium, where I first met Sumrall in December after his Tulane team beat North Texas in the American Conference Championship Game.
With Houston in our sights, we pulled away from the Big Easy and planned a stop in Baton Rouge. Much like Tuscaloosa, I have covered several games there but had only made one visit to Mike the Tiger’s office. We checked out the campus, strolled around Tiger Stadium, and, having read John Ed Bradley’s poetic memoir “It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium” recently, the soupy history of the place resonated as we stopped by the Billy Cannon and Pete Maravich statues.
Following lunch, it was off to Houston and a night of rest after a meal at The Original Ninfa’s, a popular Houston Tex-Mex joint I remembered from my days covering MLB. With torrential downpours in our first couple of days in Texas, we stayed in the car more than usual as we drove around downtown and over to Rice Stadium, where Super Bowl VIII was played in 1974.
“They played a Super Bowl here?” Timmy asked.
“Yeah, I know, hard to imagine,” I responded. “It was a different time. Once upon a time, college football was a lot more popular than the NFL.”
Thankfully, our drives became shorter each day as we hopped between Texas cities, and we looked forward to barbecue and a night touring River Walk in San Antonio. I showed Timmy the Alamodome where the Gators men’s basketball team won the 2024 national championship, and, of course, the actual Alamo.
The next day in pouring rain, we paid a visit to Austin and the University of Texas, where we stopped by Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and the LBJ Presidential Library. Next, a stop at McLane Stadium at Baylor University in Waco and the Magnolia Market to purchase a souvenir for the boss of the house.
And before anyone asks, no, I did not see former Gators quarterback DJ Lagway riding a scooter around campus.
We both looked forward to our next stop in Dallas. Two nights in the same hotel! We also had a lot we wanted to see, such as Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum. We knocked them out the next morning, and in between barbecue, we made stops at SMU’s Gerald J. Ford Stadium, the Cotton Bowl, AT&T Stadium (the day after Spain beat France in the World Cup), TCU’s beautiful Amon G. Carter Stadium, and the Fort Worth Stockyards.
With our stop-and-bop journey nearly at an end, we prepared for the long drive home as we mingled with Spanish tourists in town for the World Cup at our hotel. I told Timmy we weren’t done yet.
On our drive home, I would show him the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson – the former home of the Egg Bowl between Ole Miss and Mississippi State – and while we were on our way, we would visit Southern Miss University’s M.M. Roberts Stadium, where gunslinger Brett Favre first surfaced in the game’s lore.
We made it to Mobile on the first day home, and that meant a quick stop by Ladd-Peebles Stadium the following morning. That’s where Elvis Presley once played live and where the Gators faced Auburn a long time ago. Today, it’s best known as the home of the Senior Bowl.
Somewhere between Chattanooga and Mobile, the trip had become less about showing Timmy places I’d been and more about discovering them together.
As we departed the parking lot after more than 3,000 miles, we both knew what time it was. The only stops between Mobile and Gainesville would be for gas and food. But we also realized something else.
By the time we pulled back into Gainesville, we were ready for college football season. The trip to nowhere was fun, but walking around empty stadiums is not nearly as exciting as packed ones in the fall.
