TR - Do you guys have a fun job or what?

CSTV -This is pretty much the dream job.  There's really no better place to spend a fall, and really no better way to spend it then by chasing around the best football games in the country.  Plus, people's demeanor down here really makes our jobs easy - everybody is so friendly, accommodating and enthusiastic that we would really have to be doing something wrong to come up with bad videos.  All we have to do is sit back and let the camera roll, and the good folks down here essentially do our jobs for us.

TR -So I gotta ask, after all your  travels in the Deep South..what is different that you expected?

To be honest, the one big element I was expecting, and have never found, was some open hostility between opposing fans.  We had thought there would be some serious dislike between the various teams, which might even occasionally boil over into some good old fashioned brawling.  In reality, though, we've found exactly the opposite.  The atmosphere at these games seems to be one of all-encompassing inclusiveness; everybody seems to be glad that everyone else has decided to make the trek, regardless of affiliation.

One Alabama fan said it to us best. When we asked why he didn't harbor more ill-will to rival teams, he said, "The game only lasts a couple hours... the party that I share with all these folks lasts for years."

And do we have some football fans or what?

CSTV - In a word, yes.  Matt and I, both hailing from Boston, are quite accustomed to fanatics.  The major difference here is that the love held by Red Sox Nation is unique in the world of professional sports; in the SEC it's the norm.  Not to mention, the tradition and the pageantry of these schools is unlike anything I've ever seen. 

I've said this before in my blog, but one of my favorite traditions is the use of "Roll Tide' as a substitute for just about any phrase you can think of.  "Can you pass the potato chips?"  "Roll Tide."

That gets me every time.

SWEPT AWAY WITH THE TIDE

"Roll Tide!" said the man toasting his waffles. Last night was a bit of a late one, so when I wandered down to the hotel lobby for breakfast this morning, I was a little slow on the draw. My mind awash in haze, all I could give the guy was a blank stare. He smiled.

"This is your first game in Tuscaloosa, isn't it?" he said with that friendly Bama drawl. "Let me tell you, boy, you got a Saturday coming to you with more tradition than you could shake a stick at. If things got any better, you'd have to hire someone to help you enjoy it."

To be frank, and with apologies to other SEC teams and stadiums, this was the game that I'd been working myself up for since first learning that I would be one-half of Going South. And not because it was the much-hyped Saban Bowl. As a sports journalist neophyte from the Northeast, growing up I'd been exposed to relatively little of the ragged mountain named Southern Football Lore. And by relatively little, I mean that my knowledge was probably limited to the following facts: Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker were the best players in Tecmo Bowl, and in Alabama there was a coach people called the Bear and he occupied a place somewhere between sainthood and godliness.

Of all the traditions that filtered their way through the ether of American regional relations and into my young brain, somehow Alabama stuck out. So during my CSTV interview, when the brass asked me which game I would be most excited about attending, the answer was easy. Any game in Tuscaloosa. It was the one game I told Waxman that we had to be in the stadium at least fifteen minutes prior to kickoff. That's when they pipe the Bear's voice over the PA, delivering the one line that every Bama child learns before he can walk: "I ain't never been nothing but a winner." Rest assured the work-up for this game in my mind was multi-faceted and layered, and certainly stood the chance of being the victim of over-hyped expectations. But then again, this is Tuscaloosa, a place where expectations are never considered to be too high.

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

Let me say quickly here that the thing impressed me most about Alabama fans was not their knowledge, nor their enthusiasm - both of which operate at the highest levels. What blew me away was their amazingly coordinated pom pom work. Every single person in the stands seems to be holding one, and what's more, they all know the exact rhythms and tempos for the various cheers. The only thing I can compare it to is a National Geographic program I saw about coral reefs, where millions of coral move in intricate patterns timed to the tides. Very heady stuff.

I've never seen a stadium filled with people so overtly obsessed with being from their state. You walk into Bryant-Denny Stadium, and the first thing you notice is that any song containing the word "Alabama" is being played on the loudspeaker. If you're ever fiending for a Lyrnrd Skynrd fix, sit down on the sidewalk of Paul Bryant Boulevard on a Saturday.

For the thirty minutes prior to kickoff, the promotional folks of the Crimson Tide do an unparalleled job of getting the audience hyped (though one could easily argue that they have easiest task in the world). They roll some fantastic tradition pieces on the big screen, including one Bear Bryant video that gave me chills. If the heavens had opened up and a guy had floated out of the sky wearing a houndstooth hat and landed on the field, I honestly wouldn't have been all that surprised.

By the time the Tide is ready to take the field, the atmosphere in the stadium is just about ready to burst. And they do a very nice job with the final pump-up. On the big screen, they show an empty hallway, at which point the crowd goes absolutely batty. Then one by one, the hallway fills with crimson-clad players, before finally a smaller fellow, dressed in a white polo and khakis steps into frame. At this point, if there was a roof on the place, it would certainly be blown off. The coach and players look at each other and then slowly saunter out towards the field, taking maybe twenty seconds to arrive. By the time they reach the field, the entire stadium is filled with a collective chill, and ninety thousand faces smiling ear to ear.

I'll leave you with this: Saban's pregame saunter is something you have to watch in person. You get the sense that if this guy thought any more of himself, he'd need a wheel barrow to help him get his junk out onto the field. If there's anyone who feels more confident in his ability to fill the biggest shoes in American sports... well, there's not.

The years of Bear Bryant, so close yet so far. Final score: LSU wins 41-34.

Posted by Nate Weinstein on November 3, 2007 11:52 PM