NPR: Southerners and Football: More Than Just the Game

Southerners and Football: More Than Just the Game

My wife, who grew up in a little town near Atlanta, hates football. No, "hate" is too weak a word. She despises it. She says "football" the same way a Red Sox fan says "Yankees."

So imagine my surprise when recently, while an ESPN announcer was talking about the Georgia football team, she threw her hands in the air and shouted, "Go Dawgs! Woohoo!" I gave her a look that said, "What have you done with my wife?" She shrugged and said, "I'm from Georgia. What did you expect?"

That's when I first grasped that the attachment Southerners have to college football is not just about the game. It's about the experience of football: hanging out with friends, joshing rivals, having an excuse for a party.

That spirit is captured in NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman's piece about the LSU-Ole Miss football game and the Web diary that sports editor Uri Berliner kept of their trip. They provide lots of vignettes about the fans' traditions.

Take June Guillory of Baton Rouge, La., who looks like your grandmother but wears a button that says "Go to Hell Ole Miss." Then there's the "mic man" who fires up the crowd at Ole Miss: Marcus Guinn, a 6-foot-7 black man who was surprised by his celebrity, especially in an area once known for its racism. And the get-togethers at the Grove in Oxford, Miss. Nine acres of parties: Women in pearls in one canopied area beside Southern rockers who've erected shrines to Elvis in another.

And this is great: The speed limit in the Grove is 18 mph in honor of former Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning, who wore No. 18.

3:22 PM ET | 11-21-2007 | permalink

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And the really most stupendously underappreciated tradition endemic to Ole Miss football that does not fail to mention Ole Miss Antebellum ethics that prevail long after the Mint Julips have been consumbed by God fearing Southern Gentleman and their beloved Southern Belle brides skirting the most finely manicured Southern lawns seen since the days when Robert E. Lee trimmed the hedges of his beloved Arlington property overlooking the heights of stately Washington manor that reminds us all that just before the first pigskin is kicked off without the slightest of pun to the honor of the Southern style barbecue before which we gentleman of the South remove our hats whilst our Southern Wives and daughters and lovers smile with the sunshine that is known only in the south long before even the first note of the American National Anthem wafts across the lush green ten yard increments of the gridiron we so despeartely hope to prevail will all take pen in hand to write a ten page rememberance in our diaries to the late Ole Miss hero William Faulkner without dabbling in a period or a comma or exclamation point to delay our Southernmost pride in Mr. Faulkner's memory.

Amen.

Fred Call

Sent by fred call | 3:50 PM ET | 11-21-2007

Imagine if you will, a pair of chimpanzee tribes fighting over a kill, let's say the carcass of a wild pig (a literal pigskin). Chimps running, tackling each other, tossing the carcass back and forth in an effort to return the prize to their home camp. The females of the tribe standing on the sideline, showing off the virtues of their fertility (if any could be said to exist). And here you see the true heart of sport, and especially football. Ritualized warfare

Wake up people

Sent by Jody Sol | 1:05 PM ET | 11-26-2007

Sssshhhhhh! Not now Jody! The game is on! Wait until the commercial. I'll need to run to the bathroom and the refrigerator first but then you can tell me your wierd chimp story. But only until they get back to the game again.

Sent by John R. Otten | 2:51 PM ET | 11-26-2007

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