After you move to Tuscaloosa, Alabama you find your first encounters with Alabama Football are more like confrontations. If you are a creative writer from the West Coast, your first encounters with Alabama Football resemble the film ‘Taxi Driver’. You attempt to study at the library on Game Day and find your concentration pummeled by renditions of ‘Sweet Home Alabama‘ emanating from the quad. You are startled by intoxicated young men yelling at you from their balconies at 11 AM, and confused by the content of their effusion, which consists of a word you’ve never heard used as an imperative combined with the noun ‘Tide’. You hate Alabama football. You hate its obnoxious, obsessive, cult-like devotion. You hate how it turns the city into a large, opulent tailgating party. You hate that it is sacred above all things, except small businesses. You hate Bryant-Denny stadium, Alabama Football’s gargantuan monument to excess. But then you start watching the games on television, just to see. As someone scores a touchdown, you hear the concurrent roar from the stadium a mile away, and this phenomenon is very pleasing. Your significant other, also a foe of Alabama Football, begins to make fun of you. You start to defend Alabama Football. It’s not so bad, you say, I kind of see why people get into it, you say. You love Alabama Football. You buy a ‘Bama license plate frame for your Honda, even though it looks stupid. Yet you are confused. You wonder what is the ideological purpose of this quasi-religious phenomenon. Then, you pass one of the many monuments to the confederate dead on the UA campus. You start to wonder if Alabama Football’s storied ‘traditions,’ and ‘legacies’ aren’t substitutes for celebrating the state’s other, more heinous, traditions and legacies. Maybe, you think. Maybe.
Or maybe not.
I like how the picture of Bryant-Denny is pretend. Pretend things are nice.
So, the spectacle of community pride in college athletics masks community pride in a history of racism? “Maybe?” Maybe too the spectacle of pretentious writing masks plain, old-fashioned stereotyping. Maybe too I could take your culture crit a bit more seriously if you weren’t gleaning these insights while tucked-away in the library or your apartment, but were finding out which legacies people celebrate by, you know, talking to them. I’m curious what prognostications you and your girlfriend have about the prejudicing effects on young white males of growing up cheering for black players and taking pride in their accomplishments…
I’m with kansaskansas on this one (but feel free to call me alabamaalabama). Race is so much more complicated in & around Alabama football. Yeah its cult-like cult is seriously nostalgic AND sentimental, as are the Confederate flag wavers and re-enacters but they ultimately comprise such different camps. War-Between-the-States nostalgia exacerbates racialist hegemonies; Alabama football can only work if it is a-racial (that’s Bear Bryant’s true legacy and what he pondered all those early mornings he took a stroll across the Black Warrior).
But don’t worry kid. Stick it out in T-town for another 20 years or so & you’ll get it.
1. Is Alabama football inherently racist? Of course not. Can it be used to sidestep discussion of the very real (and still ubiquitous) effects of white supremacy in Alabama? Yup.
2. After drinking vampire blood, I was visited by Bear Bryant. He said, “you must live here for 6 years in order to understand the secrets of Alabama football.” I wrote the above after those 6 years had passed. So please, if you have problems with my authority, direct them to the Bear himself.
3. The Bear, by his own admission to me, was not an Alabama civil rights hero. Here are some actual Alabama civil rights heroes: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/lowndes-county-freedom-organization
4. Boise State is the new ‘Bama.
Thanks for the nod, Janet. I grew up in Alabama and never knew anyone who participated in Civil War reenactments. As for the confederate flags, my intuition is that you see about as many of them (usually tattoos) at a Bama game as you’ll see gang tattoos at a hip-hop festival. I doubt the author of this blurb would be comfortable expressing the sentiment that celebrating hip-hop music is, maybe, a substitute for celebrating gang violence and crime. Likewise, I don;t think historical markers necessarily index nostalgia. We memorialize events for being important, not just for being “good” (see any of the war memorials in DC or the ground zero memorial in NYC); remembering doesn’t entail celebrating. I’m not so much offended that the author confuses these points, but by his presumption that no one will notice the glaring hypocrisy of evidencing prejudice in a culture with a prejudiced interpretation of a few historical placards (ahem, “monuments”).
Hot dang, feller! Thank ye kindly for the www link to the civil rights stuff. Reckon I was always too busy hangin’ up the 10 commandments in courtrooms, collectin’ rebel flag belt buckles, reenactin’ the war of yankee aggression, and spreadin’ the philosophy of the 3-4 defense to ever pay much mind to the civil rights champions of my own damn state. I’ma get me a dictionary and see if I caint decipher them www pages and learn me a thing or two.
Since Jim T took numbers, I’ll go with…
a. Why assume the “monuments” are historical placards?
b. Perhaps this level of fandom fills (covers or mends?) a hole in the state’s psyche. As the former state capital, Tuscaloosa is also the starting point of the Trail of Tears (according to one of those placards). Not celebratable, right? Football lends pride to the city, so Roll Tide.
c.
d.
e.
As a native southerner, I am ashamed and embarrassed by most of our most established traditions (such as classism, racism, rule by an aristocracy and, at times, just plain ignorance). I love my culture and where I come from but being proud often coincides with things to which I am vehemently opposed. But Alabama football is something to be proud about. They are successful, classy, respected and legitimate; they are what Alabama usually is not. Yeah, it’s ridiculous, but it’s all we’ve got so observe it with an open mind.
Furthermore, no, Bear Bryant was not the model civil rights leader, BUT he changed a lot more minds than you think. When A. Phillip Randolph spoke, white Alabamians wouldn’t listen, but when Bear Bryant was on board with desegregated football, it made a lot of Alabama moderates think twice about opposing segregation.
I wasn’t at all suggesting that people shouldn’t be proud of/enjoy Alabama football (whether so many resources should be devoted to it is another question altogether…)
The embarrassment you mention is precisely the point–it’s one of the primary reasons for the desire to celebrate a substitute tradition. Of course the state wants to be known for something other than racism, slavery, etc. Alabama football is one symptom of the state’s deeply conflicted relationship to its own history. This observation wasn’t meant to slight or praise Alabama football, but to give an account of its existence–especially to non-natives who do think it’s an incredibly odd phenomenon.
I don’t get this:
“Maybe too the spectacle of pretentious writing masks plain, old-fashioned stereotyping. Maybe too I could take your culture crit a bit more seriously if you weren’t gleaning these insights while tucked-away in the library or your apartment, but were finding out which legacies people celebrate by, you know, talking to them.”
This review didn’t give me the impression that the author _gleaned_ his insights in the library or his apartment. From my own Tuscaloosa experiences, young men never yell at me from their balconies @ 11 am except when I’m in the library or my apartment. It does happen, though, while I’m about town on game day either running errands, exercising, or doing a little tailgaiting of my own. Kansas, I think you’re arguing against assumptions and biases you’ve seen elsewhere, and thus showing your own assumptions and biases. Perhaps some pretentious writing might mask your misplaced aggression.
kansas-shmansas,
Fair enough. Be a sport then and actually defend the post against my criticisms, not in ad-hom hypotheticals based on my tone but in specifics. To me, the post collapses across Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Alabama football in its analysis. This seems obvious. We forgive these posts a general lack of nuance due to the word limit, but here, the lumped Tuscaloosa/Alabama/Alabama Football is described in salient but unflattering terms–intoxicated, cultish, obsessive, excessive people who talk funny and play lynyrd skynyrd in loops. Are you really going to tell me that this doesn’t fit, to a T, the definition of stereotyping? And when the author comes around to the culture, what details do we get then? what details illustrate the admirable aspects of the individuals or the culture?–”not so bad.” Forgive me. Maybe it’s just not a well-written post, but the complete lack of detail about people, real people, from the babies wrapped in crimson blankets their grandmothers knitted to the racial make-up of the crowd, which on gameday is far more heterogeneous than most any other day, lead me to believe that the author has spent more of his time in Alabama with people from elsewhere. Maybe you’re one of those people. That’s fine. I live in Chicago and my best friends here are from Alabama and Tennessee. Of course, I also don’t presume to take the piss out of the entire midwest in 300 words, and if I did, I’d expect to hear about it from people who know a lot more about it than I do. Looking forward to hearing back from you…
kansas,
i think you’ve criticized an essay you would have liked to read rather than the one that’s actually here. “the complete lack of detail about people, real people”–it sounds like your looking for something far nobler than a 300 word post about someone’s subjective reactions to alabama football and its relationship to local culture. honestly, i’m actually not sure what your argument is. that the author stereotypes people? i’m not sure he’d argue against that assertion. this whole “real people” bullshit that you’re putting forward–i’m sure you sincerely strive to represent the “humanity,” or “authenticity,” of all your subjects through careful attention to detail, even when limited by 300 words, or even in daily conversation. but i doubt that. so you’re pissed because you grew up in alabama and you feel this is one more attack on your state from some outsider who can’t escape the bogus preconceptions he came here with. but you’re missing the point if you don’t recognize how self-conscious the author is about his southern expectations. the post is partially a reflection on the author’s own lack of reflection. i stand by my previous assertion, whether it’s an ad-hom hypothetical or not: you’re arguing against assumptions and biases you’ve seen elsewhere.
and one more thing:
“intoxicated, cultish, obsessive, excessive people who talk funny and play lynyrd skynyrd in loops”–yeah, there’s about 7 saturdays a year that i’m one of them. and i’m completely unironic about it too. what’s insulting to me is that, as an alabamian, you’re trying to distance yourself from that image by accusing the author of representing the worst of us rather than diversifying his descriptions. well, i’ve never been wrapped in a knit alabama blanket my grandmother made, but once i drunkenly yelled “roll motherfucking tide” at the (original) houndstooth and fell to the floor in jubilation when john parker wilson completed a touchdown pass to matt cadell to beat arkansas in the final seconds of the game. you want admirable aspects? RMFT!