Courtesy of Mary Phillips Neyman
On Oct. 11, 1975, the Ole Miss football team was 1-4. It was a less-than-impressive start to the season, but that didn’t matter at all to two-year-old Mary Phillips Neyman. That day was the beginning of what would grow into a life-long tradition – her first experience tailgating in the Grove and attending an Ole Miss football game.
On that particular game day, her parents, Robert and Sara Margaret Johnson, were unable to find someone to watch their daughter while they went to the game. This left them no choice; they had to take young Neyman with them.
As they journeyed north from Jackson, Mississippi, the Johnsons worried about taking their toddler to a football game. People could then drive their cars in the Grove and tailgate right out of the trunk. Neyman’s parents figured she would run off during tailgating or not be able to sit still during the fentire game. Once they got to Hemingway Stadium, the reality wasn’t what they expected.
“I would not leave the game and wanted to sit right by my daddy,” Neyman recalled. “When he cheered, I cheered, and when he sat down, I sat down. I enjoyed it so much they kept taking me back.”
Neyman’s father remembers his daughter’s first game just as vividly as when Ole Miss defeated Georgia with a comeback in the fourth quarter. He reminisced about how his daughter was just as happy as he was at that game, because they were staying at the same motel as the Georgia team, and they were sick of hearing them talk.
As for Neyman’s mother, she was astonished that her daughter was so well-behaved during the football game.
“When she went to the game she would never leave for any reason,” Neyman’s mother said. “She sat there right by her daddy and did exactly what he did. I remember I looked at her and said, ‘Mary Phillips, don’t you want to go downstairs?’ and she said, ‘No.’”
After that first Ole Miss game, Neymnan’s Saturdays consisted of red and navy smock dresses, college football, eating fried chicken out of the back of a tailgate and “Groving” with family and some of her closest family friends.
Once Neyman’s little brother Bo came along two years after her first game, he joined the family on game days. Bo was a little more eager to run around and throw a football than to sit and watch the game. She didn’t mind because she loved having her brother there to run around with and look after.
Neyman knew from day one that she was going to one day attend college at The University of Mississippi. Once she became a student, gamedays were no longer filled with looking after her little brother. They were now filled with new excitements, like attending as someone’s date.
There was one game date she specifically remembered. In 1991 Ole Miss played Vanderbilt for Homecoming. Neyman, a sophomore at the time, was asked to go to the game as a junior boy’s date. The Rebels ended up losing 27-30 to Vandy that day, and her date was furious. To Neyman it didn’t matter, because she had a lot of fun with him and knew there was something different about him than her other dates.
“We instantly connected, had a lot to talk about and we both loved Ole Miss football,” she said. “I told my best friend I had met the man I was going to marry.”
Six years after watching Ole Miss lose to Vandy on Homecoming, she married the young man who took her as his date. Jody Neyman.
Today Neyman lives in Hernando with her husband and two children, Sara Frances, 10, and Joseph, 5. Neyman and her husband are raising their children as Ole Miss fans and couldn’t see them doing anything else. The children are always anticipating gamedays and always make sure before heading to the Grove that they are wearing the right color.
“They don’t know any different. When they hear we are going to the Grove, they say, ‘Oh great,’” Neyman said. “It is a natural part of their life. I think they think everybody goes to the Grove.”
Neyman always looks forward to the first game of the season. For this Saturday, she’s prepared to walk around with her children as they look at all the elaborate tent decorations, mingle with family and friends and support the Ole Miss football team.
“The first game feels like we are going back home,” she said. “Even though there have been so many changes, it just feels like the right thing to do. It just feels like I am going to something that is so familiar.”
