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Notes -
Alabama - Tennessee: Spending an afternoon with 100,000 members of the "grill" crowd.
I have been to several football games at "tier-2" SEC and Big 10 teams. This was my first visit to one of the college football elite. This was a fanbase that has exacting expectations for their team. It was also one with a nervous edge: Alabama had suffered a home loss to Texas and had looked vulnerable in several other games. Like most SEC fanbases, several hours of lubrication had preceded the kick-off. It was a loud, rowdy, yet very focused crowd. Even in the interior areas, the fans would yell "Roll Tide"; the large concrete hallways providing amplification and echo.
Unsolicited, a mostly-sober Alabama fan engaged me in single-sentence conversation: "Our girls are so much hotter than theirs". When I declared my neutrality in the upcoming showdown, he said "oh, you're unbiased then. Aren't our girls so much hotter than theirs?"
In the SEC, people dress up for games. The sorority girls especially dress for display, revealing and augmenting what is typically already top-tier aesthetic qualities. As one large banner hung on a House, re-affirming my previous encounter, "our girls are hotter than UT's!". Several of the sorority members gyrated on the porch as living proof. These girls are secure in their identity: in their looks, their social networks, and their sorority (and these three are all heavily correlated).
In five years, these girls will be wives. They will be more mature and less wild; dressed to the nines but more modestly. In ten years they will have two or three kids. Their beauty will be diminished but they will have found new identity in their children, husbands, and school social networks. They will still faithfully attend games, raising up the next generation of die-hard Alabama fans.
During the game, a particularly enthusiastic fan behind me shouted encouragement and tirades in full volume and with little let-up. Somewhat ironically, his pejoratives for the UT fanbase centered particularly on their inadequate cultural sophistication, with "podunk" and "redneck" frequent descriptors. To one slightly effeminate student he yelled "you should get a Bud-light". With his accent, appearance, and bearing he was almost a perfect Hollywood caricature of an Alabamian. During a momentary lull in the action he let me know he was pursuing his master's degree.
Most of the fanbase was well educated and well-off. While there is a joke that only 10% of Alabama fans actually attended the university, the majority of those in attendance had certainly had a college degree and beyond. The cost of a game is prohibitive to all but the most connected or wealthy. While I didn't pay for my ticket, parking, or the tailgate activities rumor had it that the per-person cost was well into the 4 figures. No one even blinked at the 15 dollar stadium beer.
When Alabama scooped a fumble for a score to clinch the game, the crowd went berserk and the stands turned into a party. After the extra point, the loudspeakers played Garth Brook's "Friends in low places" and the entire crowd sang along, locking arms and swaying back and forth. Cigars starting being lit, and soon the stadium was filled with haze.
I was swept up in the post game excitement. The student body was crowding into the bars and restaurants to continue the celebration. Those of us who had driven to the game meandered back to our cars, knowing that traffic was going to be a disaster regardless of when we left. Along the way, I passed Greek houses where the real parties were at, though even the standard student housing appeared to be holding impromptu parties in the stairwells. Somehow a female Tennessee student made it into an Alabama dorm and yelled "Go Vols" at passing pedestrians. One incredulous fan yelled back "you lost!".
As Scott Greer would say, these fans are economically upper-class economically but who enjoy low-class activities (at least, as defined by our cultural elites). Yet is the tailgating culture truly low-class? The catered food at many tailgates is provided by top restaurants, there is typically at least one very nice liquor, and the cigars were ubiquitous following the victory. I saw an Audi R8, tricked-out trucks costing upwards of six figures, and campers that cost the equivalent of a small lakehouse. In addition, these are people who simply know how to have fun, and do so with enthusiasm and no excuses. There is self-awareness but no navel-gazing. These are people who know who they are and take pride in it.
There's an element of the old classlessness to American culture that haunts some places still. Especially places where the local whites have roots stretching into the antebellum era, there is a cultural memory of a time when people at least took the idea that America shouldn't have social classes seriously, even it wasn't an idea that entirely panned out in practice. If you're middle class, you enjoy low class entertainment as almost a point of pride.
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As a person who generally cheers for Alabama because my sister went there and she loves it, and I want her to be happy, I think this is a good post. I think what it encompasses is that going to an SEC football game is a genuinely amazing experience, and just objectively fun (for most people). And people who look down on such things are just playing into their own prejudices. If you think Bama football tailgating is low class, but enjoy a tv show like Scandal, Rue Paul's Drag Race, etc you are just a person who doesn't know thyself. Indeed, the tailgate is superior, because it involves social activity and has an appropriate level of music volume (contrasted with a modern bar, club, etc).
It is quite the experience. Stephen Fry had a show where he travelled around the US and in one episode he went to the Iron Bowl. His reaction was a blend of "I can't believe they're doing all of this for an amateur football game" and "This is amazing". I cracked up at the face he made when the fighter jets flew by.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FuPeGPwGKe8
I've never gotten to go to the Iron Bowl (my sister has), but I like that video because it shows that people are just having absolute fun, which is the heart and soul of college football. The host is doing a bit of fish out of water thing, but it is not nearly as condescending as you will often see. It is genuine and embracing of the fun. I think a lot of anti-college football sentiment is just culture war. 99% of people don't know the skill difference between CFB and NFL anyways. But the fun is the point. Some people hate the fact that other people are having fun they haven't sanctioned.
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I was raised, and still live in, this culture, and I appreciate your write up.
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Question from someone who doesn't understand US College football culture - you write about Alabama fandom being passed down families, but if you come from a family of diehard Alabama fans and end up attending some other school for academic or personal reasons, does your sporting allegiance change? And is it supposed to?
The only UK university sporting events with this level of interest are the (Rugby) Varsity Match and the Boat Race, and in both cases the partisan fans are alumni of the universities or residents of the relevant cities. I supported Oxford as a kid because both of my parents were Oxonians, but there was no question that as soon as I matriculated I would be rooting for Cambridge. (Not that it mattered much - my family are not really into spectator sport and we only watched the Boat Race because my dad was a rower in his youth.)
My mom's side of the family are all hardcore University of Iowa fans. Not a single one of them went to the University of Iowa.
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If you grow up rooting for Alabama and go to a different school which is actually good at football, you become a fan of the new school. If you go to, say, a basketball school(American colleges which are particularly good at basketball and those which are particularly good at football rarely overlap, and it’s odd for fans of a football school to care overmuch about its basketball team and vice versa), then no, you don’t, at least as far as football is concerned. If your new school is a football school that isn’t a rival of Alabama, you root for your new team first, but you’re still expected to cheer on Alabama if you see them.
Now it’s worth noting that 1) all of this is specific to undergrad, if you grow up rooting for alabama, go to Alabama for undergrad, and the take law school at university of Texas your loyalty stays with alabama and 2) nearly all schools that are football powerhouses are regional generalist schools, although a few of them have better programs than others(like the aforementioned university of Texas at petroleum geology, for obvious reasons) they’re generally going to offer most majors.
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If you grew up an Alabama fan and wind up attending an SEC rival like Auburn, your fandom is expected to change to your new school. If you grew up an Alabama fan and wind up attending a school like UAB, who's football tram is irrelevant, you are expected to remain an Alabama fan.
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