Photo by Vinnie Cammarano
Key Points
Could college football have kept this country out of war?
Not with some other country. I’m talking about the one we had with ourselves in the 1860s, when the South took on the North.
The Civil War started in April and went on for four years. If football had been around, I doubt that the South would have lasted past October. Four games deep into the season, and the states would have been seceding from each other.
After what happened Saturday in Gainesville, how likely is it that Floridians would rally ’round a flag hoisted by South Carolina? Suppose they did and the troops joined forces and mingled before a battle. Some Palmetto State yahoo would bring up the game and do a taunting Gator Chomp. “Friendly fire” would be bound to ensue.
A recruiter would have a hard time this week signing up Alabamians to defend Atlanta. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine a football fan in any surrounding state who would have raised a finger to stop Sherman from burning that place. Most would have provided free kindling and said, “don’t forget Alabama while you’re down here.”
And then there are the generals to consider. If Steve Spurrier had been called home to Tennessee to serve, he would have been fragged before First Manassas.
College football familiarity in the South has bred a special kind of contempt, and it has nothing to do with college. My first newspaper job was roughly equidistant from the campuses of Auburn, Georgia and Alabama.
As a copy editor, I had to go down to the composing room and fix things, like headlines that were too wide and stories that ran long or came up short. Editors were resented “on the floor”; as a known Tennessee fan, I was more resented than most.
Not a man down there had ever spent a day in college, but they all had school spirit to spare. When I arrived in the area, I would be greeted by “ROLL TIDE,” somehow stretched out into six or seven syllables with no “L” sounds. Right on the heels of that, almost like a call-and-response in church, came “GOOOO YOU SILVER BRITCHES,” from a Georgia fan. Right on cue, a little red-faced man who supported Auburn would lean back and shout at the ceiling, “WHOAAAAAA IGGLE.”
And then we’d all insult each other, bicker and brag, and sometimes there would be hard feelings. We mostly agreed on politics, morals, music and admiration for a good biscuit – the stuff that really matters. Yet we couldn’t get along.
People like this were once part of a Confederacy that held them together; now, they’re part of a conference that keeps them apart.
It’s hard to imagine anything that would cause these tribes to set aside their differences, except one. They’d probably all be willing to team up and go burn down Lane Kiffin’s house – if he would just stay in one place long enough for them to catch him.