We wrote the hell out of what you’re about to read, and the premise has become pretty commonplace at this point. You know how this works! Let’s get into it!
Max’s Rushmore
England 2 - Sweden - 0 - July 7, 2018 - London, England
Ok. I’m admittedly kind of cheating with this one because I wasn’t actually there live. I did not attend the World Cup in Russia. However, I did watch this match in a London pub. It was one of the coolest sports experiences of my life and the inspiration for posing this question to Kyle and Ricky.
Jill and I were on a European vacation and had ourselves one hell of a London day. For starters, it was London’s Pride Parade, which was a fantastic party. Pride parades are a blast. Music and floats and colors. It was awesome.
But here’s the thing: When it was time for the soccer match to begin, Pride stopped. Everybody piled into the nearest pubs. We were like sardines. Legit could not move. There was no air conditioning. It was unseasonably hot in London the whole time we were there. Nobody cared.
It was everything I had hoped for. They were playing Sweden, so people in the pubs kept singing, “You’re shit/but your birds are fit.” It’s still the most amazing chant I’ve ever heard.
When England scored their second goal, we got a beer shower. We had many cheeky pints throughout the match.
When the match ended, though, everyone just poured back out into the streets and picked Pride back up where it left off. It was a long party. We had so. much. beer.
Then we walked to the Globe to see Hamlet. Two English teachers were highly, highly looking forward to this part of our trip.
We fell asleep and left at intermission.
New York Knicks 117 - Washington Wizards 124 - December 23, 2021 - New York, New York
When we decided that we were entering our last year in New York before moving to St. Charles, Mizzurah, I knew I wanted to go to one final Knick game at The Mecca. My plan was to get good seats for an exciting game. I had penciled in November 23rd against the Los Angeles Lakers. Let me get good seats to go see LeBron in person.
Tickets in the lower bowl for that game were over $1000 bucks. For one seat. For one game. That wasn’t in the cards. (This worked out for me because LeBron ended up being suspended for the game in NYC for this wild night.)
I was able to spend about $800 on a weeknight package, though. It got me in the building (barely) for 11 games against pretty ho-hum teams. Not great seats, but I got to go a bunch.
Before one of my games (December 21st against the Pistons), the rep who helped me buy my package told me to stop by a desk before going to my seat because he had something for me. I visited a desk and got a swag bag. It was nice of him. The Knicks won that night, which they didn’t do much across my 11 games.
My rep called me frantically the following day. He was like, “They didn’t give you what I wanted them to give you. Stop by that table again the next time you’re in the building, and come early.” I did precisely that a day later.
What did he have for me? A free seat upgrade. Courtside. Courtside at Madison Square Garden. When I say courtside, I mean it.
It was amazing. The Knicks lost a close one, but Kemba Walker went nuts, and I got to say high to Daniel Gafford during pregame warmups.
Arkansas Razorbacks 21 - LSU 20 - November 29, 2002
This should have been the last game Arkansas played at War Memorial Stadium. There is no way this one would ever be topped.
“Jones to Birmingham to Atlanta” is what the Democrat-Gazette headline read the next day. This would have been the first one I thought of had the other two wild, once-in-a-lifetime experiences hadn’t happened. (Though Arkansas earning the right to play for the SEC Title kinda feels once-in-a-lifetime these days.)
I went with my cousin Brian, and we screamed our heads off when Jones completed the pass to Birmingham. It was the loudest thing I’ve maybe ever experienced.
Arkansas Razorbacks 85 - Florida Gators 81 - February 18, 2006 - Fayetteville, Arkansas
This one is an all-timer. If my memory serves, there was a huge ice storm that came through the state on Friday night into Saturday. We had to ice skate down the Hill to Bud Walton Arena. The Palace was packed with students, but not many other people.
Ronnie Brewer led the team to a major upset win over the then-tenth-ranked and future National Champions.
I did the Gator chomp in Joakim Noah’s face as he left the court in a loss. It was awesome.
Kyle’s Rushmore
Arkansas 50 - LSU 48 - November 23, 2007 - Baton Rouge, Louisiana
When Max pitched the idea for this article, this was the first game that came to mind. Hogs fans will remember that 7-4 Arkansas rolled into Baton Rouge the day after Thanksgiving to take on the #1 ranked and eventual National Championship-winning LSU Tigers.
It’s the “Better put him in the Heisman” and “Got that wood” game.
You can read plenty of professional recaps of the game to relive the drama of the triple-overtime upset, but the stories within an event make them such epic tales.
Over Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house, my brother pitched the idea of driving down to the game. It was 6 o’clock. If we left then, it would be midnight before we arrived. I’m always down for a good time, so by seven, we were on the road, headed toward Hammond, LA, where a college friend’s dad lived, and offered to put us up for the night.
We arrived around 2 AM and were told to be ready to head to the tailgate at 5 AM. I’m all for a good time, but I thought this was a little extreme for a 1:30 PM kickoff. But sure enough, when we arrived at Tigers’ Stadium, the glow from a mix of taillights, cigarettes, and embers flying off of charcoal grills was present for as far as you could see.
We were served incredible food for hours (whole hog BBQ, homemade boudin, and the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever eaten*). We were greeted by tons of “Tiger Bait” chants and lots of name-calling, but once we stuck around, we were treated like family.
Time was flying by, and we were having a blast, but we were still missing something: tickets. We had made a few laps around the stadium looking for scalpers, but we couldn’t find anyone willing to sell us tickets.
We were back at the tailgate around 12:45 when a guy came walking up from a neighboring tailgate, “I heard you Hogs fans need tickets.”
“Yes, sir. We need two. We are here to see a national championship team. Y’all are good.”
“Well, I’ve got two extras right beside mine. You can have them for free under one condition: You both only get to say ‘WooPigSooie’ once a piece the whole game.”
Sold! And even better, they ended up being on the 50-yard line. We were surrounded by a sea of yellow and purple. I stuck out like a sore thumb in red. My brother had started out in red but ended up putting on a tan Columbia pullover as the game progressed and the temperature started dropping.
“Hey Tan Fan! Are you too good for your team?” We got heckled the whole game, but we never really felt threatened because there was no way we were going to win.
Until we did, when Arkansas’ Matterral Richardson intercepted LSU’s Matt Flynn’s two-point conversion attempt in the 3rd overtime to seal the Hogs victory, my brother looked at me and said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Everyone was standing on the bleachers so we hopped down the aisle and ducked and moved as quickly as possible to get out of the stadium. More obscenities than bottles were thrown at us, but all bounced off like water on a freshly waxed car. We were on cloud 9. We couldn’t be hurt.
A few hours later, while still celebrating our massive win at the campus bar, Walk-ons (this was before they franchised and truly was a hole-in-the-wall joint run by former LSU walk-on players that hosted the coach’s radio shows each week like the Catfish Hole does for Arkansas), our lucky streak finally came to an end. We were stirring up a riot by calling the Hogs in an LSU bar because the handful of Razorbacks fans there were all kicked out and escorted to our cars by the police.
*I have the recipe for that sandwich scratched on the back of a receipt. It’s titled “Tommy Jackson’s Death Valley Chicken”. I knew our host for the tailgate was not named Tommy Jackson so I asked him why that name was written in black sharpie on all of his coolers. “Oh, that’s my tailgate name. I can’t have people showing up at my work talking about what happened at the tailgate.”
Maybe we all need a tailgating alter ego.
Oklahoma City 124 - Denver 118 - February 19, 2012 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
I worked for Chesapeake Energy in Oklahoma City. They were a corporate sponsor for the city’s NBA team and had the naming rights to the team’s arena. They were the largest corporate ticket holder for any professional sports franchise. So, while I worked there, I got spoiled, getting to go to great basketball games.
I could see as many games as I wanted, and the seats were great. Sometimes courtside, but always lower-level within the first 20 rows. But this game was extra special.
It was Kevin Durant’s first 50-point game (scoring 51), Russell Westbrook was starting to show he had star power and scored 40 points, and James Harden was on his way to winning the 6th Man of the Year award and scoring ten off the bench. All three would go on to win NBA MVP awards. Oh, and fan favorite Serge Ibaka had his only career triple-double (14 points, 15 boards, 11 blocks). It was awesome!
Shiloh Christian 47 - Wynn 47 - 2001 Hotten’s Kickoff Classic - Little Rock, Arkansas
This is another one of those games Dad took me to so we could watch some up-and-comers. Shiloh Christian was a tiny private school in Northwest Arkansas, tearing up the national scene with its unorthodox offense. It was at times like the Oopty-Oop in Varsity Blues, “Overload the defense on one side, burn them one-on-one on the other.” Sometimes, there would only be a center and quarterback in the middle of the field, with the other down lineman split out to block for receivers catching screen passes. And sometimes, they simply ran the Wildcat. This was prime Gus Malzahn, developing his offensive philosophy as a head coach.
Malzahn would go on to coach at Arkansas, Tulsa, Arkansas State, Auburn, and Central Florida. His quarterback that year was Rhett Lashlee, the current head coach of SMU.
The other sideline had plenty of other participants, but everyone was there to see Wynn’s DeAngelo Williams. He rushed for a then-state-record 2,204 yards in a single season and would go on to play college ball for the Memphis Tigers. He ended his NCAA career ranking 6th all-time in rushing (6,026 yards), 4th all-time in all-purpose yards (7,573 yards), and 1st in 100-yard rushing games (34). He then went on to have a very successful 11-year NFL career.
The day I saw him, he was spectacular. He scored multiple rushing and receiving touchdowns but also added a punt return touchdown and a pick-six. He could do it all.
The game was a complete shootout, ending in a 47-47 tie. What a game to see.
The Masters Tournament - 2017 - Augusta, Georgia
This was just one of those bucket list items. Tickets are hard to get and expensive. We were living in Birmingham, Alabama, at the time and had a three-week-old baby. A buddy of mine called and said he had been drawn in the lottery and had an extra ticket if I could join him.
A special shout-out goes to my mother-in-law, who came to help with the kids and made the trip possible.
Augusta National is everything it’s hyped up to be. Stunningly beautiful. Manicured. True Southern hospitality. No detail was overlooked. Oh, and the best golfers in the world are there too.
Sergio Garcia beat Justin Rose in a sudden death playoff that year, but these are the things I’ll remember most about the day:
Watching a golf course attendant dressed in all white sprint from seemingly out of nowhere to scoop up a loose pine cone that had fallen on the rough near the edge of a fairway to ensure the course always looked pristine.
The fact that the Masters brand is so valuable they need no sponsorships and there are no logos anywhere on the property for any brands. The grand stands don’t say Rolex or Cadillac, they simply say “Masters”. The chip bags say “Masters”. You can’t order a Coke, Sprite, Gatorade, or Bud Light. You instead order a soda, lemon-lime soda, sports drink, or domestic light beer.
Enjoying 12+ hours with zero interruptions. You can’t take your cell phone in and there are no video boards around the course to watch live golf like most modern tournaments. Someone hit a hole-in-one the day we were there, which has only happened 34 times in the tournament's history, but we had no idea until we got home that night and saw the replay. All we knew was a loud roar at one point during the day. It was so nice to be unplugged.
The bathrooms. Yes, I’m doing bathroom reviews now. There wasn’t a stack of porta potties hidden in some inconvenient location or even nicer trailers they have at some outdoor concerts. These were real buildings. Giant, air-conditioned structures, built to only be used one week per year. An attendant is present to clean each toilet and urinal between each use. A gentleman even greeted you out front and asked if you needed to go number 1 or number 2 and escorted you to the correct place in the facility. It was incredible, like Chick-fil-A service on steroids.
The concessions were so cheap, it was dangerous. There’s really no telling what my total consumption was on the day, but I think every time I went to the concessions barn (yes, also a physical structure since nothing about Augusta is temporary) I purchased a pimento cheese sandwich, a Georgia peach ice cream sandwich, and a beer. But with each item on the menu being priced between $1-2.50, it was basically free. This truly is a tradition unlike any other.
—Under Construction—
Mount Rushmore was built over the course of 14 years beginning in 1927. It was commissioned to recognize the United States 150th anniversary. That’s picking a great president every 37.5 years. An update to the monument would thus include an additional 2.5 Presidents. Maybe we’ll get an addition one day with Bill Clinton, Donal Trump and JFK (since he only served half a term).
With that in mind, I wanted to add one more to the mix that might be added to the original four.
Arkansas 66 - Kentucky 73 - January 18, 2020 - Fayetteville, Arkansas
So, it’s my first year back in Arkansas after living away for about a decade. We have a 5-month-old with us. It’s Eric Musselman’s first season. Expectations are low, but we’ve had a pretty good start and are 14-3 and hosting #8 Kentucky. In less than 2 months, the whole world would shut down from the COVID-19 pandemic, but on that day, fans knew no better than to yell at the top of their lugs, high-five, hug, and eventually wipe each other t’s tears.
The crowd was electric. The game was tied 44 to 44 with 8:19 to play in the game when Kentucky forward EJ Montgomery was called for a foul on an illegal screen. Kentucky Coach John Calipari was fired up and got a technical. Arkansas’ fans got louder. Calipari got hotter.
Calipari was called for a second technical foul resulting in an ejection, and the building went bonkers. This is why I’ve chosen a quasi-Rushmore game as an Arkansas home loss. It’s the loudest sound I’ve ever experienced.
I shoot guns. I’ve been to Talladega. I’ve been to Death Valley at night and a game at Arrow Head (the two loudest football stadiums in the country). But nothing compared to what I experienced that day. It was so loud I couldn’t think, and I could actually see the sound.
Rapper and producer Pharrell Williams has talked about experiencing synesthesia. It’s an involuntary perceptions that crosses over between senses (tasting shapes, hearing colors, etc.) sensory triggers that consistently and predictably cause interplay between senses. This game was my only time experiencing such a thing.
The sound waves were reverberating off the concrete structures and physically moving my body. As I tried to look down at the court, I could see space and time bending as it was moved by the sound too. It was like looking at the heat coming off a Walmart parking lot in late July got zapped in the microwave for 30 seconds. Hold on. Are we talking about life-changing events or just sports?
Ricky’s Rushmore
Arkansas 87, Kentucky 85 - January 14, 2014 - Bud Walton Arena, Fayetteville, Arkansas
This game was after my wife Haley and I were season ticket holders for basketball season and I honestly still can’t remember how we got the tickets we did. We were about 15 rows up behind the basket that the Qualls dunk happened on. The game was close the whole way, we are in OT with a 3 point lead. Kentucky guard James Young absolutely quieted the crowd draining a game tying 3 pointer with about 10 seconds to go.
Mike Anderson doesn’t call a timeout, so the hogs are pushing. Ky Madden throws up a prayer with a couple of seconds left on the clock that hit the front rim and hung up long enough for Michael Qualls to fly in from the corner and slam it home right before 0.0. To this day, I have never experienced a louder moment at an Arkansas game. I was screaming, Haley was screaming, we were high-fiving and hugging people we didn’t know. It was pure joy. And this was before the review, not even knowing if this basket would hold.
Spoiler alert: it counted, and it was one of the best sporting events I’ve been to.
UCA 52, Presbyterian College 28 - November 19, 2005 - Clinton, South Carolina
I had several cool sports experiences in my time at the University of Central Arkansas due to my participation in the UCA Band. The first actually happened a week before this game, November 12th, 2005. UCA has always had a solid football program and we were in our 2nd to last year in Division II. At this time, DII had a 24 team playoff with 4 pods of 6 teams. The first 2 teams in each pod received a bye. UCA was ranked 5th in our pod and were matched up against Albany State. They were the higher seed so the game was at their place. I was chosen to join about a 50 person pep band who traveled by tour bus 10 hours to Albany, Georgia. It was a great bonding experience and had the added bonus of UCA winning 28-20 and advancing to face the number 1 seed in our pod, Presbyterian College.
We had such a great time traveling to Albany, Georgia and winning that we decided to do it all again, but time an 11 hour tour bus ride to Clinton, South Carolina. For those who don’t know, Presbyterian College sports teams are known as the Presbyterian Blue Hose, blue hose for the color of stockings they wore when they first started playing football.
The atmosphere was electric. Walking into the stadium, you pass a statue of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace from the award winning movie, Braveheart. The pregame hype video featured a clip from the movie. That was about the only positive the Blue Hose fans saw that day as UCA destroyed Presbyterian College 52-28 to advance to the championship game of our pod and 1 game away from playing in the final four of the DII playoffs.
I’ll spare all of the details of the following week due the disappointment I still feel, but UCA played the 6 seed North Alabama the following week and lost in an OT heartbreaker. Future Florida State football coach Mike Norvell finished the 2005 playoffs with 12 catches for 327 yards and a TD.
Washburn 69, UCA 67 - March 24, 2005 - Hot Springs, Arkansas
I will start by saying…to this day, I’m not sure I’ve experienced an event like before. As good as the UCA football team was, the UCA women’s basketball team was even better. Here we are in the year 2005 again, just 8 months before UCA’s football team made the final 8. UCA had already cruised through first 3 games of the tourney, all at home, including beating Henderson State University (the year’s host of the Women’s DII Elite 8) 76-61 to advance to the Elite 8. The University decided to bring a small pep band to the Hot Springs Convention Center to cheer on and play for the Sugar Bears.
The first game in the Elite 8 was against Shaw University, a women’s basketball powerhouse at the time and UCA easily defeated them. The final four game vs. Washburn University (Topeka, KS) was the best sporting event I’ve been to. It was a back and forth affair. Washburn took a 7 point lead with less than a minute to. UCA’s GOAT Carone Harris, an athlete also on my personal Mt Rushmore, drained a 3 to make it a 4 point game. The Sugar Bears got a steal and then Harris banged in a 3 pointer and got fouled to tie the game with under 20 seconds left. Unfortunately, Washburn went coast-to-coast for a layup with about 10 seconds to go and UCA missed a game winner at the buzzer. Still one of my favorite events over the years.
New York Knicks 110, Memphis Grizzlies 108 - March 9, 2011 - FedEx Forum
This was a pretty special game for me. My dad, a lifelong Knicks fan, decided to buy 2 front row tickets behind the basket to a Knicks-Grizzlies game for my birthday in 2011. The Grizz had become my favorite team over the last few years as I went to several games when I was attending UCA. This was peak Grit N Grind Grizzlies with guys like Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, Mike Conley, Shane Battier, Tony Allen and OJ Mayo. This was also a Knicks team who featured Melo and Amare Stoudamire.
We started the night by eating at BB Kings on Beale Street before making it over to FedEx Forum. Before the game started, Mike Breen was walking by our seats, he stopped and we actually got to talk to him for a few minutes and shake his hand. BANG! The game itself was great. It was close all game. The Knicks went on a run and took a 12 point lead into the 4th quarter. The Grizz clawed their way back and in similar fashion to my previous entry on this Mt Rushmore, Zach Randolph drained a 3 and got fouled to tie the game with under 20 seconds remaining.
What happened next was more heartbreak for me. Melo, in the heart of his prime, took the ball with about 5 seconds left, faked right, faked left, faked left again, took one dribble, stepped left and drained a shot over Tony Allen with 0.5 seconds left on the clock. The Grizzlies didn’t even get a shot off to try and tie or win the game. Still was a GOAT game to attend and with it just being my dad and I made it even more special.