The high life: the thrill of a roaring stadium, the comfort of your living room--it's easy to get spoiled to skybox living.

"We're trying to figure out a way we can actually move in here," W.G. Watkins says on the way up to the skybox he and his wife, Polly, share with friends David and Susan McCormick.

He's joking--but just barely.

Their skybox in the south end zone at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, home of the Ole Miss Rebels, boasts all the comforts of home: comfortable seating, a kitchenette, and even a private restroom.

The meals and snacks they have selected from the catering menu are delivered to their door at the appointed time. During the game, a radio announcer's play-by-play is piped in through overhead speakers, with the volume adjusted by a knob on the wall. A pair of televisions lets them watch the instant replays while keeping tabs on other Southeastern Conference action at the same time.

Best of all, the gameday rush of cheering with 60,000 fellow fans beckons just beyond the glass door.

Gone are the days of toting raincoats and blankets up endless stadium steps or sweating in your seat as the sun beats down on the bleachers. No more hauling cardboard trays of teetering Coca-Colas from the concession stand or hiking a mile back to your car when the game is over.

For skybox owners at Ole Miss, it's an easy stroll from the reserved parking spaces behind the stadium through the south end zone gate. The elevator opens at the top into an air-conditioned hallway, with numbered doors giving the effect of a hotel corridor.

But inside the Watkins-McCormick box, the only thing that really wowed the eye was the stadium view beyond the glass wall--until they gave Oxford interior designer Na-Ann Watts the challenge of revving up their gameday atmosphere.

What they offered her in September 2004 was little more than a blank slate. The walls inside the skybox were painted a sterile gray, with a sofa and chairs in the same unfortunate shade. The new color scheme was a no-brainer.

"We told her we wanted red and blue and that we wanted pictures on the wall," David says.

But their only specific instruction--and the designer's real challenge--was that they wanted it all done before the next home game.

"I ate, slept, and breathed it for three weeks," Na-Ann says. "But I had a ball doing it. I'm a person who works better when people are excited and the momentum is there."

Choosing stylish, comfortable new seating was the designer's top priority, and painting some of the walls red added both color and depth to the space. Next, a collection of professional gameday photographs in matching black frames filled the room with vibrant energy.

Even the restroom did not escape the designer's attention, receiving a vivid red paint treatment, dramatic lighting, and a decorative tower of shelves--which, as it turned out, was a bit too tall for the south end zone elevator. Ever resourceful, the designer hitched a ride with a stadium worker, hauling the shelf around and around the stadium's many-leveled ramp to the top.

"You wouldn't want to see how we got it on the golf cart," she says.

At last, when the two couples and their families gathered for the first game in their newly finished skybox, the wide-eyed effect was just what they'd hoped for.

"We didn't tell anybody that Na-Ann was doing all this," W.G. says. "It was like those makeover shows on TV. Even for us, who knew kind of what was coming, it was a big surprise."

The Watkinses of Madison and the McCormicks of Pascagoula both have second homes in Oxford, and the two men have known each other since law school in the late 1970s. Since then, they've often been on opposite sides of asbestos litigation--but still remained friendly outside the courtroom.

On gamedays, their skybox fills up with their families, since children and grandchildren take up most of the 30 seats allotted for their box.

"For the kids, it's perfect," Polly says. "They can go inside when they get tired, or they can all go out in the hall and play football."

The sheltered and air-conditioned spaces in the skybox have eliminated any excuse for the families not to enjoy gamedays together.

W.G. knew the box was worth its price during Eli Manning's last season as quarterback, as he watched the Rebels' spring game in the box's outdoor chair-back seats with his 3-year-old granddaughter by his side.

"She's sitting out there with me under a blanket asking me, 'Which one is Eli?'" he says. "And I thought, 'This is it. It doesn't get any better than this.'"

The Watkins-McCormick skybox is one of 28 that Ole Miss added as part of the stadium's south end zone expansion in 2003. Each one includes both indoor and covered outdoor areas.

Another 33 smaller skyboxes have crowned the stadium's west side since 1988 and have been newly renovated for the 2006 season.

Since 2003, Don and Becki Felts of Oxford have made their south-end-zone skybox a gameday gathering place for a variety of friends.

"It all depends on who we're playing," Don says. "If we're playing LSU, we invite our friends from Texas who are big LSU fans, or if we're playing Arkansas, we invite those friends. Then we have our standby friends here in town whom we enjoy having any time. It's always a great fellowship."

The party begins a couple of hours before the game for skybox fans, as caterers bring in the first round of the day's pre-ordered fare. The choices are a few steps up from the concession stand: fresh fruit and cheese, artichoke dip, prime rib, pecan pie.

Skybox fans say even the game itself looks better from a penthouse perch.

"You're sitting so high, and you see so much more from up there that the game takes on a whole new perspective," Don says. "Guys who come up can't believe it. The game is so much more interesting, because you actually see it develop--even before the players do. It's like being at home watching it on a full-size TV."

At Mississippi State University, a major expansion beginning in the year 2000 added 50 skyboxes at Davis Wade Stadium, home of the Bulldogs. There's now a lengthy waiting list, with only four turnovers in the past seven years.

Among those fans eager to get a spot is Don Mason of Gulfport, who was responsible for the skybox owned by Mississippi Power Company for five years before retiring as vice-president in January 2005. He and his wife, Barbara, now look forward to having a box of their own.

"It'll spoil you," he says of the experience.

For the power company, the 24-seat skybox has been an opportunity to nurture both personal and corporate relations with its top customers.

"It's a good way to get to know your customers better, by hosting them and being able to socialize in a very nice environment," Don says.

Rather than having separate indoor and outdoor spaces, the skyboxes at Mississippi State feature sliding glass doors that either enclose the entire box or open it fully to the stadium while remaining covered on top. Skybox owners simply decide each week whether they'd prefer their box open or closed, depending on the weather.

"We always kept ours open even if it was real hot or cold, because we like to get the feel of the game," Don says.

Fans at Mississippi State personalize their stadium spaces with corporate-logo decorations or with sports memorabilia and family pictures for family-owned skyboxes. In a skybox provided for MSU's Bagley College of Engineering by engineering alumni, artwork on the wall was often tailored to suit the group of visitors on a given week.

"If we had a group of chemical engineers and then the next week aerospace engineers, then we would tailor it to that discipline using images from one of the flight labs on campus," says John Rush, previously the director of development for the College of Engineering.

In his current post as director of major gifts for the MSU Foundation, Rush now uses the foundation's skybox to entertain current and potential donors.

"There's such a great opportunity to visit informally during the football game," he says. "The atmosphere is very relaxed, but the dynamics change from week to week. Some groups are very interested in sitting down in the seats to watch the game, while others are more interested in the social aspect and enjoy visiting in the back."

In the MSU skybox of E.M. "Hoot" and Doris Gipson of Meridian, the fun is in floating from box to box, sharing the day with friends old and new. Usually, the party goes on after the game until the lines of traffic--which they can see from their perch--clear out around the campus.

"The food is great, and we usually have too much," Hoot says. "Everybody comes in visiting. People visit each other's box throughout the game, before the game, at halftime, and sometimes after the game.

"It just goes to make a great day at Mississippi State University."