Football Season Approaches. Roll Tide.
I love the first day I realize that football season is coming. Wait, let me be more clear about that, I love the first day I realize University of Alabama football season is coming.
I’m not a football fan, I’m a University of Alabama Crimson Tide fan. That’s it. I could care less about any other team..unless we’re playing them and I want to beat them. I can’t help it, it’s in my blood. I got out of school early the day Bear Bryant died. We were in mourning.
I attended the University of Alabama and whatever awful things humiliate that state (and there are plenty), I swell up with pride remembering my days on the bluffs above the Black Warrior River. I used to give tours to prospective students and spent a great deal of my time at the University learning about its rich history and traditions. One of the most important traditions at Alabama is football.
My blood gets pumping at the first strains of the Million Dollar Band and when the Tide takes the field I jump to my feet. It’s an excitement that is hard to explain. It’s memories of football Saturdays when I was a kid, game day as a student and the smell of bourbon in the air. It’s blue blazers and khakis and it’s pride and having something in common with 85,000 people all at once. It’s a smile that’s genuine and harder to come by as we get older and lives get more complicated.
It’s having something to be proud of that is an intimate part of your life that stirs you, it makes you tingle to be a part of it and I stand taller and yell louder than any rabid redneck fan down in the red dirt roads of Alabama…and I do it with unashamed pride. It is part of my roots and they run deep and they bleed crimson red. Roll Tide.
Comments (1)
Yes, it’s a true love I have for you. (Sorry it seems like I’m cyber stalking you today.)