Alabama Fans Pushing the Boundaries in Birmingham Court Case

It's difficult to explain to those outside of the South of the deep running passion for college football down here.  To do that, a little history lesson is required.

About 150 years ago they had this little spat called "The Civil War."  Actually, spat is an understatement.  It was about as nasty a war as it gets.  The carnage was unimaginable.   The South had better soldiers, but the North had more of them, and they had the manufacturing and logistical advantage, which in the end wins most wars.  

Today, the Civil War is mostly talked about in terms of the racial divide that was mainly a trigger for the event, not the main source of the conflict.  For Southerners, it was about control.  Southerners wanted it, and the federal government had it.

The North won the war and occupied the South.  I say "occupied" because that's exactly how it went down.  They didn't just all shake hands and sip a mint julep.  The war had been costly, and the North was understandably going to make the South pay. 

I speak dispassionately about this conflict because my family was not involved.  They were busy starving to death from the potato famine in Scotland at the time.  In desperation, they came here shortly afterwards and ended up in the South because there were coal-mining jobs to be had.

The abuse the North inflicted on the South outlasted that generation and continued to the next.  There were economic hardships inflicted on the South that prevented them from ever prospering, especially if that economic interest competed with Northern interests.  

Even to this day, folks outside of the South ask me things like "Do you have indoor bathrooms?"  Some of them are joking, but honestly, some of them were serious.  I ask them if they realize that Dukes of Hazzard was filmed in California.

Though we are all one big happy country today, in the mid 1920s the bitterness was still fresh.  Many of the Civil War survivors were still alive and almost everyone had a parent or grandparent who had been affected or killed.  While the rest of the country enjoyed the Roaring '20s, the South continued in relative poverty and despair, in no small part because of the economic manipulation still going on. 

In the South, fans already loved their football, but outside the South there was zero respect for Southern teams.  In 1925, the top team was Washington.  They were so good they couldn't convince anyone to come play them in the Rose Bowl.  Alabama, coached by Wallace Wade, accepted the challenge and put his undefeated Crimson Tide team on the train.

As you would expect, the Tide was a huge underdog.  The press at the time considered Alabama a sacrificial lamb. 

To everyone's surprise, the Crimson Tide won the game 20-19.  This was the first of 12 national titles that Alabama claims.

The effect this event had on the people of Alabama cannot be overstated.  People who had little or nothing now had something they could hold up their head about.  They may come home grimy and dirty from the coal mine everyday, they may barely have enough food to eat, but by God their Crimson Tide showed those boys out west how we do it down here.

The effects didn't end at the Alabama border.  Other teams in the South gained respect by association and began hammering out their own national reputations with similar effects on their fans.

Alabama went back the following year and was given little chance again, and tied Stanford 7-7.

The two games cemented the relationship between the people of Alabama and the Crimson Tide and put southern football as a whole on the map.

My grandparents were those people.  They passed down their love and dedication for the Crimson Tide to their children, and they passed it down to me.  Memories of Alabama games at home were as firmly burned in my mind as Christmas and birthdays.  We marked the years by the seasons.

My mother is an iron willed but avid church-going woman.  The only time I've ever heard foul language exit her mouth was when an Auburn player got a first down.  The passion runs deep.  She still can't stop herself from smiling when you mention the name "Joe Willy."

When I brought home my bride-to-be to meet my mother she whips out her calendar book to plan a wedding date and starts marking off Saturdays,  My wife,  who was from West Virginia, asked, "Why are you marking off those days?".  Mom answered, "Alabama games". 

My wife objected,  she did not understand. Bottom line,  I got married during the off week.  Auburn lost that day,  it was a good omen!

To learn about this passion, you should really check out the book Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer by Warren St. John.  In his book are stories of the lengths that Alabama fans have gone to see their beloved Tide.

With Alabama returning to the scene of those early championships to play Texas for a national title, a new chapter is being added to the madness. 

Alabama has already canceled classes, and word came out today that lawyers involved in a court case in Birmingham have filed a motion for continuance of a rather serious civil case involving a death. 

The reason?  In so many words, it's interfering with our going to the National Championship Game.  You can check that out on www.deadspin.com

I was contacted about this particular incident today, and my only response was, "You find this unusual?"

I would expect nothing less from Crimson Tide fans.  This is just the beginning.