The tailgate parties, where football aficionados swarm with a passion, which have become centerpieces of campus scenes, don’t just take place near the confines of a stadium — the imposing edifice that originated with the Colosseum in Rome in 80 A.D.
You can’t score a dinner reservation at an Athens restaurant for the fall unless you make a booking six months in advance — but you can always cook out at home, which many residents do.
We should never forget that the remarkable handiwork of Kirby Smart has brought about this circumstance. His passion is not to win games just for his professional resume but for his alma mater. He enjoys seeing Bulldog alumni celebrate on fall Saturdays.
His ability to recruit the best talent and then coach ‘em up makes Athens a venue where elite on-the-field performance is the best in college football. That means local merchants are happy, restaurateurs are so glad, the fan base is happy, and Red and Black partisans across the state flock to the Classic City like never before.
We have always had weekend guests during the football season, dating back to the ’60s when the Vince Dooley era took root and brought Georgia and Athens back to prominence in college football.
For the Ole Miss weekend, we hosted longtime friends Julie and Rob Moran, who have sparkling resumes from the entertainment business. Her television credits are longer than those of a World War II documentary. Rob is an actor and a movie producer.
Most of all, they are a happy family and dote on their two daughters, Makayla and Maiya, the latter of whom joined them for the Ole Miss game along with her boyfriend, Dominik Rados.
Our guest list also included Julie’s mother, Barbara Dupree Bryan Dixon, and her brother, Duke Bryan, who drove up from Thomasville. Barbara, the daughter of Sterling Dupree, Vince Dooley’s first recruiter at UGA, would have been a star female athlete if women’s competition in her day were akin to what it is today.
She was a talented athlete with the looks of a beauty queen. She was a star on the tennis court and at home in the kitchen. Julie, America’s Junior Miss in 1980, was the first female to solo-host ABC’s Wide World of Sports and has enjoyed other signature career highlights, including becoming an anchor and correspondent for Entertainment Tonight. She was ABC’s first college football sideline announcer. She was recently inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame, winning the Curt Gowdy Award and receiving a beautiful ring for that signature honor.
Rob — with countless movie credits such as Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, and Hall Pass — also starred in the History Channel’s three-part miniseries, “The Hatfields and McCoys.” He played the role of John B. Floyd, governor of Virginia.
They are the best guests we have ever hosted. Last weekend, they brought such staples as steak, condiments, salads, and dessert. Most of all, they enlivened the atmosphere with reminiscing and storytelling that reminded Southerners of the traditions they hold dear. Holding hands before a thoughtful blessing, they are all about love and laughter.
Dinner was pretty much Rob and Julie’s domain, but Duke got our mornings started with the best breakfast you could ask for, mainly because he brought sausage from Stripling’s General Store in Cordele.
If the folks at Stripling’s don’t produce the best pork sausage this side of Mount Rushmore, I would like to meet the pretenders and do my own taste test. I am confident the Stripling family would claim the prize.
I would also like to suggest that the best hospitality of the Ole Miss weekend took place at our house, where our principal contribution was opening the front door and showing the Morans and the Bryans our kitchen.
For the record, I opened the wine.