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.