OXFORD, Miss. – Four hours into a five-hour bus ride, the Auburn Tip-Off Club stopped Saturday at Chick-fil-A in Tupelo, Mississippi.
With one eye on their waffle fries and the other on the weather forecast, which featured a winter storm warning for Oxford, the 43 club members reloaded for the drive's last hour, arriving at the team hotel in time for Tiger Walk, joining hundreds of fellow Auburn fans in the lobby.
"I want to hear you thls loud tonight! War Eagle!" Auburn coach Bruce Pearl shouted to fans on his way to Auburn's bus.
"I want to hear you this loud tonight!"
— Jeff Shearer (@jeff_shearer) January 16, 2022
🗣@coachbrucepearl at 🐅 Walk before @AuburnMBB game at Ole Miss. pic.twitter.com/bxgDixb4qZ
"We do two or three a year now, and people are asking, 'When is the next one?' said Tip-Off Club president Jason Harbison. "That something that's new, but we love it."
Wearing her pearls in honor of Auburn's head coach, Sally Bingham has been a fan of Auburn football since her childhood in the late 1950s, becoming a basketball fan when Pearl arrived on the Plains in 2014.
"He's a wonderful man," Bingham said. "He has embraced Auburn and we are very thankful to have him. It is so much fun. Fun, fun, fun. Auburn is electric."
"He is so enthusiastic it makes all of us enthusiastic," said lifelong Auburn fan Elizabeth Grant on the 1.5-mile bus ride from the Graduate Oxford hotel to the Ole Miss basketball venue, the SJB Pavilion. "He's such a promoter of Auburn, all of Auburn, not just basketball. Having experienced being on the bus with a bunch of Auburn fans for five hours has been exciting."Witnesses: Auburn fans make their voices heard at the SJB Pavilion
During Auburn's road wins last week at Alabama and Ole Miss, fans of the visiting team could frequently be heard over the home crowds, with shouts of "Let's go Auburn!" and "It's great to be an Auburn Tiger!"
"To me, they're the No. 1 fans in the world. I love them," Auburn guard K.D. Johnson said. "They travel with us. Before the game, they were in our lobby and they introduced us before we got on the bus. I just love the War Eagle family, for them to come out all the way to Oxford in this weather and come support us."
"I think it's unbelievable," said Pearl, who shared text messages with Auburn football coach Bryan Harsin about fan support on the road. "I said we're starting to travel like Auburn football. What a difference that makes."Road trippers: Auburn fans support the TIgers in Oxford, Mississippi
When the Tigers won at South Carolina on Jan. 4, Gamecocks coach Frank Martin noticed how many Auburn traveled to Columbia.
"Instrumental in our road wins," Pearl said. "Road wins are hard to come by. League road wins are even harder to come by. When you've got witnesses on the road, it gives our kids a little bit more courage.
"We want to reward our fans who made that treacherous journey, especially home from Oxford. They all went to Oxford knowing they could get snowed in but they still went to support this team. We owed them everything we could do to pull out a victory."
Walker Kessler greets Auburn fans during TIger Walk in Atlanta in December
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer