Alabama Football

Being an SEC football fan is a little tough when you live in San Diego. No one out here seems to understand that Saturdays in the fall are meant to be spent watching football.
Here's the schedule:

1. Wake up and turn on ESPN gameday to watch Kirk Herbstreet and Lee Courso make thier picks.
2. Start watching your first game either on ESPN or CBS or some other channel.
3. Flip around to the other channels to check out the other games.
4. Then you watch your team's game. This is a very serious time. You can't go to the bathroom or take phone calls until halftime. I usually turn on every TV in the house to the game, so if I am forced to leave the room, I can still hear the game in surround-sound wherever I go in the house.
5. After your team wins or loses, you watch other important games, and you cheer against your team's rivals.
6. At the end of the night, you watch the recap shows on ESPN and think about that one play that would have changed the outcome of the game if your team lost. If your team won, you call all of your friends and talk about what a great game it was.
7. On Sunday, you go to church and talk smack about your team, unless they lost, when you act very contrite.

Now, of course, this shedule is slightly different if you are actually going to a game. If you are in that lucky position, then you wake up at the crack of dawn to go to campus and find a parking spot. You find your tailgate or move around to various tailgates and socialize until it's about an hour before the game. Then you make your way to the stadium. You buy a shaker (pom-pom) to use during the game to emphasize all the chants and cheers that you will be singing along with every other person in the 85,000-capacity-crowded-stadium.

Ok, so yesterday was a bad, bad day for me. Alabama, who was ranked #3 in some polls, #4 in others, lost thier first game yesterday to LSU. I had a bad feeling all week. I knew they were looking tired, and they had lost 2 key players to broken bones. I was predicting a loss, but hoping for a win. The first half made me believe that maybe they could do it. They went into the locker rooms 10-0. LSU must have had a come-to-Jesus halftime speech because they came out a different team. The game went into overtime, and Alabama lost. So depressing.

Then, to top it all off as a horrible night, Auburn beat Georgia. Alabama fans don't just hate Auburn, they want Auburn to suffer. They will cheer for any team against Auburn. Auburn feels the same way about Alabama. If you live in the state of Alabama, you must take sides. You will have friends who like the other team, but you won't watch football with them. Some people marry a fan of the other school, but usually one or the other isn't die-hard about it. In Alabama we call this a mixed marriage.

So, I went to bed feeling miserable. My husband reminded me that this is how he feels every Saturday. He's a Mississippi State fan. They always lose. A true fan stays with their team through rain and sunshine. So, roll tide, roll!!