What I learned Part 2

I also learned that UA officials are... hmmm... what's a nice way to say "assholish"?
If you haven't heard a UA employee was fired for deviating from the "scripted" song list for the Iron Bowl.
The songs in question were "Take the Money and Run" by the Steve Miller Band and "Son of A Preacher Man" which has been covered by a lot of people. They were played before kickoff, to be honest, I never even heard them playing and I got to U4 with 15 minutes to go before kick. It's ridiculous, and somewhat embarrassing, not the playing of the songs, the fact that we fired the person who did play the songs is what is embarrassing.
It's our rival! We're supposed to make fun of them. It's not like "F! The Police" was being played as nuns cleaved orphans to their breasts to cover the childrens ears. No they were songs that simply made a joke, and I thought it was a fairly tasteful one given what some of the fans were waving, wearing, and screaming. But uber-sensitive UA officials decided those songs were one toke over the line, (even that song I could see a stir over).

The other thing I learned is that fans are stupid, upon reading about this firing on cbssports.com the first post I saw was from a Barner "Typical classless Bama..." was his remark. Right because Auburn is the epitome of class and grace... that's why they hold the NCAA record for infractions and sanctions levied against their program, that high level of class they have. I got news for the barners, I've been to your stadium when Bama lost, I did not enjoy it. I'm not trying to say that every Auburn fan I ran into was saying something ugly or unkind, many of them were as nice as can be, but there were a few who made the rest look bad. And Bama has its fair share of idiots too, listen to Finebaum for about ten minutes and you can figure that out... though it's hard to top Tammy I have to admit.
Anyway, my point is, just like in life, in religious discussions, political discussions and so on, there are good people, there are bad people, there are kind people, and there are asses, in the end, no matter what group you belong to we're all human and we all fall into the bell curve somewhere. Some are good, some are bad, and everyone else is somewhere in the middle.

What I learned this season

Well for starters I learned, late in the season no less, that this would be a wasted season. I know, 9-3 is an admirable record, being ranked in the top twenty-five at the end of the regular season is something to be proud of, and going to a bowl is something many teams can only dream of.
However, we aren’t those teams. We are Alabama and as you walk around campus for the next week or so pay attention, you will see shirts emblazoned with “13” on it, or older ones that might say something like “Got Twelve? We do!” You might even see a plaque with an homage to the 99 SEC Championship season. What you will not see is an honor or memorial to any team who didn’t win a championship of some kind.
This is a program that demands best of the best status at all times. It may be illogical, but few of us would have it any other way. No championships = no memory. I’ll put it to you this way, a friend of mine and I were looking at a list on Bleacherreport.com that detailed its version of “The 50 Greatest Traditions in College Football.” Ohio State’s dotting of the I was number 1, Auburn was in the early twenties with their eagle flight, Ole Miss and the grove were in there, the Vol Navy, just to name a few of the SEC brethren. Alabama was not on the list, which didn’t upset me in the slightest, my friend however was slightly outraged. I asked him what tradition of ours should have been on there, he had no answer. My reply was “Because our greatest tradition is collecting championship trophies.”
We don’t care about a pet frolicking in the stadium, if the band can spell the team name correctly, if our tailgates are world renowned, or a lot of people show up in a boat to watch the game. These are trivial to us. We only want champions, and this season was a waste.

That being said I learned that I need to remember to say things such as the above in like company only. My mother works at the UAB football office and has become quite the fan, even going so far as to curse at the tv concerning a football play (you did NOT hear that from me). The other day I mentioned to my father, pre-iron bowl, “10-2 sounds so much better than 9-3.” He agreed and the matter dropped. A few minutes later my mother meekly stated “9-3 sounds so much better than 4-7” (UAB’s record at the time).
I felt bad, I won’t lie. Here I was in the land of milk and honey and complaining about the aftertaste while she was living off little more than blind hope that one day she’d get to follow UAB to a bowl. Sorry mom, I’ll keep that to a minimum in your presence from now on.

Come on next season!

The 23rd Psalm for Bama fans.

Since the last post was well received I’ve got another. This one I actually came up with a few years ago while in Knoxville to see Son Volt play. As I drove past Neyland Stadium with a friend of mine I reached in the back seat, pulled out a car flag and waved it as I said:

Saban is my coach, I shall not want.
He maketh me to cheer at top volume
He leadeth me beside the nation’s elite
He restoreth our tradition:
He leadeth me in the paths of championships for the Tide’s name sake

Yea though I walk through the valley of rivals
I shall fear no orange: For Nick art with me;
His hat and his scowl, they comfort me
He prepares a table before me in the presence Auburn and Tennessee
He annointest our team as dominant, our recruits runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow the Tide for all Saban’s days,
And I will dwell in the House of Champions forever.
Roll Tide.

Commandments

The 10... er 8 Commandments for Alabama Football Fans.

I couldn't think of 2 more.
1. Alabama is thy team
2. Thou shalt have no other team before Bama
3. Thou shalt not take Coach Bryant’s name in vain
4. Remember Gameday and keep it holy.
5. Honor thy coaches (unless they’ve proven to be idiots)
6. Thou shalt not wear orange
7. Thou shalt not cheer for auburn or tennessee (unless it helps Alabama)
8. Thou must make one pilgrimage to the holy stadium once in a lifetime

I just came up with this the other day and don't think I really have a place for it in my paper so the blog is now becoming the dump all for things I don't use.

Sacred Space and Football

Since we’ve been reading about sacred space and all I thought about my paper as the reading went on, how my topic fits in with religions and the sacred spaces created in them.
Alabama football is no different. From the statues that stand in the North Plaza of the stadium, to the Bryant Museum, to the crest in the floor of the locker room Alabama football is not short on sacred spaces.
The statues, indeed the North Plaza as a whole is set aside as a sacred space in Alabama football lore. The statues are larger than life towering over passersby, the walkway leading from University Blvd to the stadium (known to fans as the Walk of Champions) is covered with granite inlays paying tribute to every conference championship and national championship the team has in its history. Bear’s office in the Bryant Museum is roped off and left much like it would have if Bryant were still coach. My favorite, the Alabama seal in the floor of the locker room has its own rules, no single player can ever stand on the crest without a teammate with him.
I even have a shirt that talks about Bryant Denny with the words “This is true sacred ground… let us bow our heads and play!”
These spaces are sacred to fans because of the connections they give us to our collective past. To see those statues in some way affirms my fandom as a part of something greater than myself. To walk the path that the players take, to stand in the presence of Bear’s desk, to get chills at the sound of Bear’s voice booming thru the stadium give me a… well, a religious experience.

Need Help

So it's not class related but I'm doing some charity work by getting arrested to help MDA. Please check the link below and if you're wondering, yes, even a $5 donation would be a big help.
thanks,
Ryan

https://www.joinmda.org/tuscaloosa2010/ryan/

Better late than...

My internet has been down for the week so apologies for the lateness.

I have been reviewing Emma’s paper and it’s been a big help to me (though I make no claim that it will actually help her). In reading her paper I now realize just how bad mine is and have a better understanding as to what I need to do. So, thanks Emma for helping me to see more clearly what I need to do and I’m sorry I’m horrible at editing research papers and English in general.

My Thesis Statement is AWOL

I haven’t really decided how my thesis should go, at present the only thing I’m really coming up with is that college football should be regarded as a religion. I’m not saying it should get tax breaks and have holidays based on its “gods”, but that it should be regarded more seriously than just a sport or a game.
I understand that to a devout Christian, for instance, claiming that football is important to a person’s life might seem silly. But to a hardcore fan who also happens to be an atheist, learning about a guy who allegedly defied gravity and such seems equally silly.
To an extent I guess it’s somewhat about tolerance or respect. Some of my paper will deal with the amount of time, effort, energy, resources, etc that many fans choose to commit to college football.
I realize I’m going to need more for such a paper but at present that’s where I’m at.
Thought / feedback appreciated.

Fravel Agrees

I meant to post this before the game on Saturday morning but there was drinking, eating, and friends around… er, pardon me, there was communion to take with fellow congregants and it slipped my mind.

On the days leading up to a game I always read up on my beloved Tide as well as whatever infidel heathen program we might battling for that week. My favorite of the season is an article by Jonathan Fravel which was posted on bleacherreport.com, the article is here.

In it Fravel writes a standard breakdown of Arkansas concerning their passing proficiency, running deficiency, and defense. As I scrolled down thru the breakdown of Alabama I was met with standard photos of stars like McElroy and Ingram just like the Arkansas section had pictures of Mallett and Petrino, however at the bottom of the piece Fravel’s piece turned into a reading of Revalations.

Subheadings like “Four Pronged Offensive Attack from Alabama: The Four Horsemen” with further breakdowns in that group of War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death. And the pictures ceased to be of football or players and were replaced with pictures of biblically inspired artwork and Christ of the Ozarks. That’s what our offense promised to bring, unfortunately, the devil made us stumble a bit first, but we finished like champions in the end.

Wallace Who?

According to what my friends were telling me upon arriving at their house Saturday to watch the game, during pregame some Duke students were asked if they knew who Wallace Wade was. According to my friends the students typically had no clues as to who Wallace Wade was aside from the fact that their stadium is named after him. Answers varied from “old football player” to “rich booster” according to those telling the story to me.

This to me is a perfect example of how sport is religion in the south. Ask any knowledgable Alabama fan and they’ll tell you that Wallace Wade won the first national title at Alabama, he took us to the Rose Bowl, he was even the coach when the nickname “The Elephants” began being used referring to the Alabama football team. Wallace Wade has a statue outside of our stadium as well as a road that runs alongside the stadium named after him.

What I find interesting is how simple differences change all of this. Alabama is a football school, Duke is a basketball school. While Alabama football fans may snicker at the idea of not knowing who your stadium is named after, conversely Duke fans would probably laugh at the notion that most Alabama students have no idea who Coleman is (from Coleman Coliseum) and very few of us could name even three of the projected starting five basketball players for the next season.

The parallel was not lost on me. For Duke fans the greatest moment they probably had on Saturday was not when the team took the field, or scoring a touchdown, seeing old friends, etc. For them, I imagine, the greatest moment was when Mike Kryzewski entered the stadium. After all, he is their version of The Bear, Stallings or Saban.

Likewise, most Alabama fans would stop paying attention to a basketball game, particularly one that wasn’t much of a game, once Saban walked into the arena. We’d be more interested in what he had to say about football, than what players were actually doing on the court.

However, the odd part to me is an almost jealous feeling I had while watching part of the game on Saturday. Duke had success under Wallace Wade in football, including a Rose Bowl win.

For those that don’t know, in the earlier days of college football the Rose Bowl was the end all be all for football. There was no BCS, no AP poll, no Sugar Bowl, everyone wanted to play in the Rose Bowl. It was the pinnacle of achievement for the first three or four decades in the 1900’s.

And there, on lowly Duke University’s (lowly in a football sense, not basketball or academics) campus rests a rock with a plaque on it which describes the time that Duke hosted the Rose Bowl. It is the only time the game has been played away from the West Coast, and surrounding the rock were rose bushes from the Rose Bowl grounds themselves.

Comparatively Alabama Football has everything, titles, trophies, coaching legends while Duke has none of that from a football standpoint, and yet there I sat, wanting that for my program, wanting to add that feather to the collective Alabama hat. Why I couldn’t just let it be and be happy that Duke had something to be proud of is something psychologists and god knows who else would be happy to debate. But for me it only reaffirmed that my love for Alabama football borders on and often crosses that imaginary border into the religious.

The Importance of Football in the South

As I walked towards the stadium Saturday afternoon I could not help but think of Warren St. John’s book “Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer.” For those unfamiliar the book is about the author buying an old used RV and following the Crimson Tide around for the 1999 season.

His main focus was on the groups that follow the team in their RV’s, he wanted to see what would make people be such fanatics for a college sport.

As I looked at the throngs of people heading towards the stadium one fact in particular stuck out from when I read the book, that there are more atheists in the state of Alabama than there are football fans.

I no longer have a copy of the book and don’t remember where that stat came from, but it’s impressive. From there my mind rambled on thru some of the stories that St. John discussed in the book.

One of my favorites concerned a man who was on the waiting list for a heart (or was it a lung?). According to the terms of the waiting list he was on he had to stay within one hours’ drive at all times to be considered for the transplant. Basically, if the hospital called and he wasn’t an hour from Birmingham then his name slid to the back of the list automatically.

According to St. John he was told this story by the patient himself… at the Alabama vs. Vanderbilt game in Nashville. Which is, of course, more than an hour away from Birmingham.

This man was risking his shot at a new heart to see a football team play. That’s how important the experience of tailgating and seeing the games are to this man. Granted, the odds of a heart coming in during the 24 hours he was in Nashville are slim, nonetheless, it’s a big risk.

The other story I thought of, and it’s one of my favorites, concerns the tale of Freeman and Betty Reese. The Reeses attained a small level of infamy for missing their daughter’s wedding. The problem was a simple one, the wedding was scheduled to take place during the Alabama Tennessee game. However, the Reeses do like to state in their own defense that they “made it in time for the reception.”

I may be on the wrong track, something tells me that if all of a sudden fans had to choose between religion and Alabama football, well that atheist stat may rise thru the roof.

Today I Go To Church. My Church

It is a special day as Alabama hosts Penn State. Joe Paterno, the winningest college football coach in history and the pope to Penn State fans, is one of the very few people alive who coached against Bear Bryant. He is an elder statesman of the sport and I for one am honored that he will grace the visiting sideling of our stadium.

It is also Bear Bryant’s birthday, he would’ve been 97 today.

We will also host Bobby Bowden, a life long Alabama and Bryant admirer, and the second winningest coach of all time.

By the way, all respect due to Joe and Bobby, but Bear will always be the greatest to walk a sideline. According to statements they’ve both made, Joe and Bobby agree.

To me, today is a perfect parallel of seeing something secular as a religious event. There will be countless people who wear exactly the same thing they’ve worn for 15 straight games. They will eat the same thing, drink the same beer, tailgate with the same people, sit in the same seat, and truly believe that their rituals and actions play some sort of factor in the outcome of the game.

These rituals are akin to prayer, that if they cheer a certain way, dress a certain way, do a certain pre-game ritual, that the outcome they desire will happen.

People will sing “hymns” upon entering the stadium, holy songs like “Go Bama Go”, not to be confused with “Go Bama”, “Rammer Jammer”, “Yea Alabama!” will all be sung with zeal and ardor by the faithful in the hopes of rallying the players to greatness. Just as a Church of God congregation will sing with the same zeal in seeking their holy spirit to commune with them tomorrow.

On Thursday I ran into two Penn State fans in the Supe Store, I could not help but think of followers on a pilgrimage, Bryant-Denny Stadium is, after all, generally considered a Mecca of college sports.

There is one difference between church and football which is causing me to cut short my post. In church the pot-luck dinners are after the service. In football, they’re before. And I have my own rituals to perform in the desperate hopes that I can somehow influence the team.

Football Is Religion

Religion, according to Merriam Webster, can be defined as “a personal set of institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices” and also as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.”

To me, this describes Alabama Football.

College Football has been called religion many times, but always with a touch of humor. I’m not sure it’s so funny.

For the next three and a half months stadiums will be filled with the faithful, and those who can’t make it will watch their chosen gospel from their homes. It reminds me of the faithful who watch their chosen gospel on Sunday mornings either from the pew or the couch.

Christians, for example, talk about the exploits of Jesus and the apostles. On Saturday I’ll be talking with friends about plays from the past with just as much reverence and admiration. The bible tells of stories of Jesus’ life in the gospels in the hope of giving guidance to adherents, Alabama fans quote Bear Bryant such as “It’s not the will to win that matters – everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”

Interestingly enough, Bear once stated “Mama wanted me to be a preacher. I told her coachin’ and preachin’ were a lot alike.”

As a matter of fact, Alabama football is such a religion to me that upon finding out that my father has to stay in Auburn overnight for work I sent him the following text:

“Yea though I walk through the valley of evil I shall fear no orange for Nick’s Process and Bear’s hat protect me. They leadeth me out of delusion and cow pastures and into the gleaming glory of crystal footballs bathed in Crimson. Amen.”

At first I thought making a game actually sound like a religion was ridiculous, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more sane it sounded.

Football is not just a game, it never was. Perhaps one meeting between two teams is simply a game, but on the whole it is much more. Football is the place where fathers teach their sons about teamwork, dedication, hard work, respect, sportsmanship, how to handle losing, and how to handle winning.

Football is religion, winning is god, losing is the devil, Bear Bryant is my Jesus, and Nick Saban is my holy spirit. And come Saturday the Sabbath, I’ll be with the faithful in the temple, and god willing I’ll be caught up in joyous rapture with my brethren.