SEC OPINIONS - Football is more than a game in the Deep South

ALABAMA GAVE BIRTH TO SOUTHERN FOOTBALL....

Every team in the Deep South owes
Alabama a great deal...



   

Bama beats mighty Penn 9-7

    The new playoff system games kick off this Thursday.  Alabama is one of the four teams. So what else is new? Regardless of what national pundits want to say or even believe, there is always Alabama at the forefront. Alabama again. Alabama again and again. I suspect it will be Alabama forever. Some things are simply cast in stone. Alabama’s presence in the race for another national championship seems cast something even more lasting.  College football is the Deep South’s contribution to excellence in sports. The love of football lives deep in the hearts of all Southerners. The entire South has Alabama to thank for that love.

      To understand the importance of football in the South you must first know about its birth.We live in a section of America that has been treated almost like a third world country.  We were the butt of jokes regarding ignorance, poverty, and lack of indoor plumping. Southern Americans are not ignorant, we are not exactly rich, but we are not all poor, and we all have indoor plumbing. We aren’t cosmopolitan in any manner. We are very sophisticated in the structure of our society, along with its rules regarding courtesy, kindness, and respecting the understanding of what is morally right and wrong. Most of us fall on the right side of what is moral. Sure, we have a minority of people who are still bigots, racists, retrogressive, and to hold to some of the trappings of a time long past.  We are changing as a culture, but still hang on to those things which we value as important from the past.

   

West Coast Sports writers called Alabama's Johnny Mack Brown
 as "slippery as an eel." The Tide beat Washington.

  Football is one of those things. When the South was considered a haven for rednecks and crackers, we had football to separate us from the rest of the nation. It took some time for the rest of America to understand that Southern Americans played the best football. Those early players in the 1900’s proved that the South could lead the nation in something.   Football  superiority started with what is now the Ivy League. Anyone with a lick of sense knew that a poor white kid from the Deep South could whip the living snot out of some kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  The South had been kicked in the rear end after the War between the States. Football was one thing which was played in an area where rules existed for the wealthy and the poor. The football gridiron was one place in our society where we were all literally equal. It took some doing to get our foot in the door. When the door was cracked just a little, a storm of swamp rabbits and cotton pickers took that opportunity to show the rest of America that the South belonged. Today, we all take pride in the SEC and it’s football superiority. That started in the early part of the 20^th century,  and every team in the Deep South can thank the Alabama Crimson Tide for making that happen. How did that happen? Well, first you  have to understand that the South had been beaten down more often than a drunk Irish prize fighter. Except, we just wouldn’t stay down. Something inside of the Southern character continued to fight back. Maybe it was born on the battlefields of Gettysburg. When the rebel yell exploded before a battle, the Yankees cringed in their fortifications.  It takes more than a little courage to scream like a banshee and then get killed. I think Southerners still have that attitude. What better place to express such bedrock courage than on a football field.

Alabama fans welcome 1926 national champs home in Tuscaloosa

     All Alabama fans have an understanding of the first Crimson and White team that played in the Rose Bowl. That was 1926, but in 1922 and equally important game occurred back East. The Tide traveled to play the Penn Quakers. At this time Southern Football was a distant third to Eastern and Western Football. Alabama pulled off a 9-7 win over Penn. 
No longer could the Southern brand of football be ignored. That win rocked the East Coast in general, and the Ivy League in particular. Alabama followed that monumental win by going to Pasadena and beating Washington tea in what was then considered the biggest upset in college football history. I have often wondered if those young men who went to Philadelphia and Pasadena had any idea of what they were contributing to the Deep South. The southern teams were not the embodiment of skill and finesse. They just knocked your block off. They did so from picking cotton, hauling hay, and digging ditches. They were not just strong in body, but strong in spirit rooted by decades of being treated like second class Americans.  After those two games things changed. No longer could the South be forgotten. The nation could make all the jokes and innuendos about the South they wanted. They just couldn't ignore the fact that more likely than not if you played a team like Alabama you were going home like a whipped puppy, tail between your legs. I guess in modern America you could say that Southern football was trending. It is a trend that has never stopped. Even when FSU broke the string of SEC national championships you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact they were a Southern team. Even with the FSU championship many Southerner were morally offended by allegations which invaded that program. 

  

John Mitchell came to Bama on Bear's word
that his race was no factor...

   It is ironic that a racially divided area found common cause on the football field. Black Americans started to dominate the ranks of Southern Football. Those black players  fought the same prejudices that their white predecessors faced, and fought for different things as well, but they proved that any race of Americans could never be viewed as less worthy.  Now, I’m not stupid enough to think that everyone in Dixie has laid to rest their prejudice. Many clearly haven’t.  All those people have to do is watch the football teams in the South play. Any doubt about equality dies a futile battle with reality. Are things perfect? No, but how bad could they be without the binding spirituality of sports?  Poor white football players understood the plight of black Americans. Football caused a respect for the differences of our citizens to grow.We've seen so much change in my lifetime. More change will come. You can't stop the future. You can't even slow it down. 

     Football and sports changed so many things for the better. So if anyone cares to understand the importance of football in the deep south just open your eyes. At Alabama games we don’t cheer for white or black players. We cheer for Crimson players. I think that a lot of us have learned that true character is not the sole property of any racial group. I don’t think that Alabama fans cheer the unlikely story of Blake Sims, a black quarterback. They cheer the story of Blake Sims, a kid who had to prove his worth. Is his story even greater because he is black? I don’t think so. We love a kid like Sims because deep down we’d all like to believe we too have the right stuff. 

     Southern football helped a region pull itself out of ill repute and hopelessness when the rest of America laughed. Black American football players helped build a bridge of hope and understanding which will help bring racism to an end. Southern football is not just about a rise from reconstruction and regional bias. It is about the spirit of a region that wouldn’t be defeated. It’s also about the spirit of black Americans who fought a similar battle to gain recognition. Southern football fans helped fight that battle. Football helped elevate more than a geographic area. It lifted an entire community of blacks and whites to a better place. That's not to bad for something that's merely a game.