Meet Me Outside the Stadium
3 college towns worth visiting outside of football season
Though the expression “college town” is a common one, it is surprisingly difficult to find a definition among traditional references. The Urban Dictionary provides what we already know: “A college town is any city that’s population is predominantly students attending a four-year college or university.”
By that definition, Baton Rouge—even with Louisiana’s largest university—would be crossed off a “college town” list, as would New Orleans. If LSU, Southern University, Tulane, Loyola, or the University of New Orleans didn’t exist—Louisiana’s two largest cities, with thriving ports and world commerce, would still be functional.
This is perhaps less the case with smaller cities across the South that are famously associated with SEC conference schools and, at first blush, little else. Would these places be ghost-towns without major NCAA athletics, generously-appointed stadiums, and rows of fraternity and sorority mansions? Likely, like Baton Rouge, they’ve got something else to offer.
A visit to a thriving college town outside football season, even in summer when campuses are near deserted, can offer an enlivened experience. Absent the crowds and a pre-ordained football weekend agenda, serendipity awaits.
Here are three SEC college towns worth a visit, with or without the pennant-waving.
Would these places be ghost-towns without major NCAA athletics, generously-appointed stadiums, and rows of fraternity and sorority mansions? Likely, like Baton Rouge, they’ve got something else to offer.
Oxford, Mississippi
The red-clay hills surrounding Oxford, Mississippi are too high and too far east of the Mississippi Delta to be considered part of that storied region. Nonetheless, the city is as genteel and typically Southern as any running down from Memphis to Vicksburg. Its citizens are friendly and eager to tell you about their town, whether you’re visiting its University of Mississippi campus or not.
[Read more about things to do in Oxford in Beth D'Addono's story here.]
Situated within a gently-curved ellipse, the Lafayette County Courthouse presides over a lively downtown. Pristine streets and inviting storefronts seem ready for Hallmark Channel filming crews.
Where to shop
A few blocks north and south of the courthouse are dozens of outlets for fashion, gifts, and sweets—plus a classic department store and art galleries.
Women’s fashion collections line up on the east side of Lamar, south of the courthouse: Indigo’s Clothing & Accessories, Lulu’s Shoes and Accessories, Frock Oxford, and Miss Behavin. Further along, Hemline Oxford, a franchise from the French Quarter, offers breezy, upscale apparel and accessories.
Founded in 1839, Neilson’s is Mississippi’s oldest department store and has the brass plaque to prove it. Within its modest 15,000 square feet, there is plenty for women, men, children, and gift-givers to peruse. The men’s department suits locals and visitors in country squire style: seersucker and bow-ties in summer, tweeds and cords for fall and winter. Male students turn here for their traditional navy fraternity pledge jackets, accented with gold buttons.
Where to eat
Uptown New Orleans native John Currence has a cluster of eateries, from the breakfast diner to upscale bistro: City Grocery, Bouré, Snackbar, and the original Big Bad Breakfast, a format duplicated elsewhere in the South. My first Oxford dinner was City Grocery’s blistered okra appetizer, preceding an excellent plate of shrimp and grits. The best spot there is a seat on an upholstered banquette, where you might strike up a conversation to your left or right with friendly locals.
At Big Bad Breakfast, I had the Breakfast Crumble—a deconstructed Eggs Benedict with buttermilk biscuits and local stone-ground grits subbing for the English muffin. Tabasco and brown sugar-infused bacon stand in for the Canadian slice.
Ajax Diner has comfort foods with authentic sides. Consistently rated “Oxford’s Best Plate Lunch,” management claims to have served 300 million butter beans. Pass on the poboys; stick with meatloaf, chicken and dumplings, pot roast, or catfish.
Where to stay
The 136-room Graduate Hotel is at the north end of the old commercial district. Room décor includes variations of Ole Miss blue and red. Unique key cards are notable Ole Miss grad student IDs; mine were Cooper Manning and his mother Olivia.
The Chancellor’s House, a member of the upscale Oliver Hospitality group, offers 38 rooms and elevated casual dining inside and out. Dining or sipping a cocktail outdoors on the patio terrace offers a view of Oxford’s strategic “four corners” of Lamar Blvd. and University Ave.
Directly on the campus, the Inn at Ole Miss is mere steps from the eleven-acre Grove, the SEC’s most famous tailgating grounds.
Where to explore
Operated as a museum by the University of Mississippi, William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak is a Greek Revival home set on twenty-nine forested acres. Explore the house and the grounds for a five-dollar cash-only admission. Whether you care for Faulkner’s writing or not, simply imagine the author composing his tales here with characters derived from family and acquaintances of Oxford and beyond.
In town, Square Books is headquarters for all that is Southern writing, plus everything else expected of a two-level bookstore in a historic former drug store building: No better souvenir than a signed first edition from John Grisham, David Rae Morris, or Julie Hines Mabus.
Norman, Oklahoma
On a road map, Norman appears as any other Oklahoma City suburb inserting itself into the gerrymandered-like metro layout. But a visit to the home of the University of Oklahoma, set to join the SEC in 2025, verifies: Norman is a free-standing college town with appropriate bona fides.
Situated in central Oklahoma “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain” per the Broadway tune, Norman’s flat terrain is offset by a Mayberry-like downtown and stately campus structures dubbed “Cherokee Collegiate Gothic” by Frank Lloyd Wright. Beyond its role as the state’s major college town, Norman is a community that loves arts—both visual and performing—as well as athletics, since it is not only the home to the OU Sooners and NFL Cincinnati Bengals coach Zac Taylor and Seattle player Jordan Evans, but also that of actor James Garner and singer Vince Gill.
Where to shop
Tribes Gallery is the largest gallery of its kind in the state offering Native American, Western, and Oklahoman art, pottery, turquoise and silver jewelry, and textiles.
The Walker Arts District covers Main Street from Flood Avenue to Ponca Avenue and holds a variety of stores selling antiques, apparel, and eats. My nose found the sweet treats at Apple Tree Chocolate, a four-time winner of the Annual Norman Chocolate Festival.
Indigenous women-owned Green Feather Book Company is Norman’s oldest bookstore, circa 1972—offering books, cards, gifts, and educational toys.
Fine-tune your aura at Sandalwood & Sage with its assortment of books, teas, tarot, resins, candles, oils, rocks, and crystals.
Performing and Visual Arts
In addition to the university-wide range of music and drama performances, a unique community venue is the historic Sooner Theatre, opened as one of the region’s first “talking movie” houses in 1929. It was built in the Spanish Gothic style and presented films and vaudeville shows. When it was set for demolition in the mid-1970s, a concerned group of citizens joined together to save it. Beyond concerts and plays, the theatre has also served as a classroom for young students participating in its educational programs.
On the evening of every second Friday of the month, the Norman Art Walk is a collaboration between artists, art organizations, and businesses in the Walker Arts District. As the District has grown, so has the popular event with additional galleries and live music venues opening their doors—spurring a sort of artistic renaissance in Downtown Norman. Parallel to this is the growth of the annual Norman Music Festival, which began in 2008, and will take place this year from April 27–April 29.
Where to eat
Scratch Kitchen and Cocktails is serious about its name: every possible culinary component is house-made. I enjoyed fried ravioli stuffed with shredded braised short rib from the state’s notable NoName Ranch while I perused a cocktail menu offering familiar classics like the Vieux Carré, Old Fashioned, and Sazerac.
The Diner, just down the way, was twice featured on the Food Network (in 2009 as part of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives show and in 2015 as part of Ty Pennington’s American Diner Revival renovation show). I chose the “Eggaritto” and famous chili.
Where to stay
New, unique, and opened just last fall, the NOUN Hotel is part boutique/part city slicker hotel with views of the stadium and the historic Campus Corner student entertainment district.
The dining and libations confirm this place is more than just a pretty view. In the Supper Club bistro, lunch was Mister Crispy ham and gruyere on brioche, a tasty detour from a Reuben or grilled cheese, with house kettle chips and grilled broccolini. For a late dinner at the lobby bar, I enjoyed bucatini pasta in a warm leek and butternut squash purée.
Upstairs the indoor/outdoor ONE Bar has multiple sports screens, fire pits, and an overlook of the campus.
Museums
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma has a permanent collection numbering some 20,000 pieces, including Native American and American Southwest artifacts from close to home. But European, Asian, 20th century American paintings and sculpture are also fully represented. The Weitzenhoffer Collection of French Impressionists is in a wood-paneled parlor and library. Surrounded by Mrs. Weitzenhoffer’s 18th century decorative arts and period furniture, you feel as a guest in her home.
The university’s expansive Sam Noble Museum focuses on natural history, from ancient times to present day. Start in the Orientation Gallery, and then follow a color-coded pathway segueing from one epoch to the next. Specimens range from the gigantic to the tiniest origins of life. Stand below the world’s largest Apatosaurus (like a Brontosaurus but much bigger), then take a ride in the museum’s glass elevator (called a “dinovator”) to view it face to face.
On Main Street, by the railroad tracks, be sure to stop by the prominent statue of Norman native son and award-winning actor James Garner. This is also the meeting place for the Downtown Norman Ghost Tour, which offers equal part history and spooky lore—telling of the barber who died nearly a century ago but still trims hair, a notorious gangster buried by his hideout, and monsters of a nearby lake.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
With its distinctive Second Empire style “Old Main” classroom building as anchor and other Collegiate Gothic structures set between the Boston Mountains and Ozark foothills, the University of Arkansas stands proud in its college town: campus and city skylines peek up at opposite ends of a shared entertainment district.
Fayetteville is known as the “Track Capital of the World” because of the legendary reputation of the University of Arkansas track and field programs. Situated at the southern end of the Northwest Arkansas market—NWA per locals—it also connects north to the “Mountain Biking Capital of the World” (Bentonville) through an extensive biking trail system. With nearby hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing, there’s never a lack of outdoor recreation, not to mention visual and performing arts. A discriminating clientele supports an excellent food scene.
Where to shop
Dickson Street Bookshop has been an institution since 1978, with an inventory estimated at 100,000 titles. Buy, sell, and trade books new and used, including some out-of-print.
The Fayetteville Farmers’ Market, the oldest in Arkansas, features seventy vendors offering local produce, plants and handmade crafts. It operates Tuesdays, May to September and Saturdays, April to November around the downtown square. Home game Saturdays are particularly colorful with Ozarks fall foliage, brightly colored squash, gourds and pumpkins, and red-and-white clad Razorback alumni in full array.
Performing Arts Walton Arts Center
The 1,200-seat Walton Arts Center, a year-round venue of Broadway tour shows, classical music, jazz, and more, opened in 1992 and is a catalyst for the ensuing evolution of its Dickson Street neighborhood from dingy college pub crawl to vibrant entertainment district. The sister, open-air Walmart AMP is in nearby Rogers and a separate professional repertory company, TheatreSquared, sits one block off Dickson.
George’s Majestic Lounge
Across the parking lot from the Walton Arts Center is George’s Majestic, Arkansas’s oldest live music venue—founded as a restaurant, bar, and general store in 1927. Icons of blues, country, and rock have appeared here; the likes of Leon Russell, Little River Band, Old Crow Medicine Show, Eddie Money, and Dierks Bentley, to name a few. Inside are two large bricked rooms each with a stage, a bookcase filled with dozens of University of Arkansas yearbooks above the main bar, and the owner’s instrument collection featuring guitars signed by the Rolling Stones, Santana, Marshall Tucker, Elton John, and The Eagles—plus a Charlie Daniels fiddle.
Where to eat
Cheers at the Old Post Office on the square offers a-step-above-pub fare in a building worth the stop. Dine in the 1911 post office with wiring once installed by the Thomas Edison Company. Ask to see the original fuse box.
Doe’s Eat Place on Dickson, spawn of the original Greenville, Mississippi purveyor of massive steaks, reminds us that now-urbane Northwest Arkansas is still Southern.
Bordinos Restaurant and Wine Bar, a long-time Dickson St. favorite, appropriately offers wild boar and pasta Northern Italian style in Razorback land of Northern Arkansas, among a score of gourmet dishes and impressive wines.
Mockingbird Kitchen is always busy serving up “chef-inspired modern Ozark cuisine” for lunch, brunch, and dinner from a non-descript strip center diner you wouldn’t suspect was owned by a Hyde Park, New York Culinary Institute alum and a teaching chef at Northwest Arkansas’s large community college, Chef Chrissy Sanderson, until you ate there. Hamburgers, salads, and duck tacos, yes. But also, interesting twists like the fried buffalo cauliflower appetizer and a blackened catfish take on shrimp and grits.
Where to stay
The Graduate is a repurposed, totally renovated 70s-era Hilton decorated to the hilt with all things Razorback. The default football weekend headquarters, it’s a perfect footing year-round mere steps from the square. Rooms to the east view cross-topped Mount Sequoyah and to the west, the campus and spectacular sunsets.
Or, stay on campus at The Inn at Carnal Hall, a historic former women’s dormitory-turned-luxurious boutique hotel. Sit in a rocker and sip a cocktail on the wrap-around porch overlooking the Old Main lawn. Dining is superb at Ella’s Table. Example: a seafood vol-au-vent of Gulf oysters, blue crab, and Arkansas farm-raised shrimp.
Museums
Sure, you can visit the expansive Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, but in Fayetteville there’s Bill and Hillary’s first home from when he taught law at the university, the Clinton House Museum. A one-bedroom brick Tudor-revival, its living room is where the couple was married.
The Arkansas Air and Military Museum is south of town at Fayetteville’s Executive Airport. See close-up 20th Century military and civilian aircraft, vehicles, weapons, and memorabilia in hangars adjacent to the airstrip.
Thirty minutes north is Bentonville’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the “nation’s most important new art museum in a generation” per NBC News, with art, stunning architecture, and nature in one place.
Disclaimer: This trip was hosted in part by Visit Norman, though the opinions of the writer are entirely his own.