Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Alabama versus LSU is much more than football...

Two great teams are so close it is impossible to pick a winner...


     An old football betting salt states that "you can bet the ranch on this one". I wouldn't recommend any of you doing that in this game.  Don't let your crimson or purple colored glasses cloud your common sense. Maybe a better saying for this game is "mama didn't raise no fools".  This may not be the greatest game ever played but it is easily the most talked about national championship game played to date. If you wear crimson and white or purple and gold this game may seem as important as life itself. 


      Americans living outside the Deep South  simply cannot appreciate the meaning of this particular game. Football thrived in Dixie because we have always been so  economically decimated that the game gave us all a sense of pride. The South many not actually rise again but we'll kick your butt in football every game we play against you.  Football is not just game in game in Dixie. It is an emporium where people from all walks of life, all economic groups, and races meet for a common purpose and cause. The gridiron is where the notion equality of the races actually became reality. When these two great teams take the field on Monday night it will be contested in a context of things both great and small, simple and complex, and fans full of pride and anxiety. Whichever team scores the most points will be declared the winner. In a larger sense it is the entire South who is the winner. The nation might might fun of our accents, our pace of living, and our antiquated notion of civility but no one can argue that football is now a game of the South.  Football is entwined in our heritage as much as Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King. Southern football is a microcosm of all things below the Mason-Dixon line. I want Alabama to win. But the pride I feel that two Southern teams are playing for the national championship is palpable. Regardless of who wins, it is yet another championship of all of us and we revel in both the joy and pleasure it brings. 




Back to Tider Insider and the boys

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