Trying to Imagine a Place Where It's Always Safe and Warm

Part XX (My Response)

I'm going to try to restrain my opinions on your particular rooting loyalties (Duke basketball, Yankees baseball, and Lakers basketball) for a little while, but for now, I'll be glad to talk about sports fanaticism in general.

I mentioned this to you this weekend, but I really think you would enjoy Warren St. John's "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer." St. John grew up in Birmingham, Alabama as a HUGE Crimson Tide fan, but when he decided to go to college at Columbia, he couldn't understand why no one there cared about the school's football team, when during his childhood, the Crimson Tide were the biggest thing going in the state of Alabama (sorry, Auburn fans). He goes back to Alabama, follows the team around during the 1999 season in an R.V., meets an entire cast of bizarre/lovable characters, and does a little writing about the idea of sports fanatacism in general.

The main reason that I think people are so fanatical about sports, besides the ones that you've already mentioned (triablism, vicariousness, competition) is that it provides a context in which we can experience all of these emotions that the world tells us are bad (hatred, anger, violence, revenge, etc.) in a setting where it's more socially acceptable, because, after all, it's just a game. People from the entire southeastern United States don't really hate Tim Tebow (well, maybe they do). They hate that he plays for Florida, a team that they loath.

Sports fanaticism is appealing also because it's an inviting alternative to the ambiguities of everyday life. At the end of a regular day, we may feel good about what we've done that day, we may be proud of what we've accomplished, or the day may have been an unmitigated disaster and we can't wait for it to end.

But here's the thing: All of that exists in this subjective gray area. Sports has none of that ambiguity. At the end of the game (unless it's that sissy game of soccer), we have winners and we have losers, and you can't really get confused about who's who because the answers are there for you on the scoreboard. With that understanding, we sit down to watch our teams play knowing that we'll have some sort of resolution (whether it be good or bad) in a few hours. It allows us to experience all of those aforementioned emotions in a way that isn't exactly real.

I'll stop there and let the conversation continue.

You're up, Reeves.

We've Gotta Move These Refrigerators, We've Gotta Move These Color TVs

One of the unwritten rules that exists for adults is as follows:

Rule 345: When meeting a new person, you should demonstrate interest in said person by asking where they are from (Whatever that means these days in a country as transient as America).

As such, when asked the aforementioned question "Where are you from?", I throw out "Tyler" as a response. This is obviously a bold-faced lie, but let's be honest, it's better than taking time to work my way through the dog-and-pony show of:

"Well, actually I'm from a town called Whitehouse, which is right outside Tyler."

"Whitehouse? You mean, where the President lives?"

"My goodness, such original humor from you. I've never heard that one before."

Quick Tangent: There are two instances where the fact that I'm from Whitehouse was a source of great amusement.

1. As I was sitting in English class during my junior year of high school, one of my classmates turned to me and said,"Justin, I get it. The drill team is called the "First Ladies", because we're Whitehouse." This guy may or may not have smoked a lot of pot, but I was simply thankful to be present when someone made a landmark intellectual breakthrough. It was probably equivalent to being near Robert Oppenheimer while he worked on the Manhattan Project. At least that's what I tell myself.

2. In keeping with the hallowed tradition of wit that is sign-making by Texas high school cheerleaders, one of the schools that we played in high school proudly displayed a sign that read "Murder at 1600" along their sideline. Given that the game wasn't played in the direct aftermath of the events of November 22, 1963, everyone had a good laugh and admired the humor available from Presidential address jokes.

Back to the story at hand...when I tell people I'm from Tyler, that usually leads to a discussion of "What was it like to grow up there?" I then put on my Tyler-area Chamber of Commerce hat and dish out platitudes like "It's a great place to raise a family" (again, whatever that means), but my favorite thing to mention about Tyler, and East Texas in general, that while it is certainly part of Texas (as if this fact were disputed by cartographers), it also feels like growing up in the Old South. For better or worse, you could pluck East Texas from the Lone Star State and place it in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia and probably not be able to tell the difference. There are old plantation homes in the city, downtown has brick-lined streets, and sadly, the city is still fairly segregated along racial lines.

I say all of that to say this...even though I've grown up my entire life in Big XII country, in a state with a national powerhouse like Texas, regional powers like T.C.U., Texas Tech, and the artist formerly known as Texas A&M, I'm fascinated with the SEC. Maybe it's just that I've a few good books on the SEC experience (Warren St. John's "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer" and Clay Travis's "Dixieland Delight" in particular), and none on the Big XII experience, but in my book, you can't beat the SEC.

I can probably chalk it up to a few too many afternoons listening to the dulcet tones of Verne Lundquist wafting across the airwaves as CBS broadcasts from exotic locales such as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Athens, Georgia, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Oxford, Mississippi, but I have drank the SEC kool-aid and I have drank it deeply. When teams such as Alabama and Auburn in the Iron Bowl each year, it doesn't seem as much a football game as an extension of some old Southern feud like the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Which is why I'm very excited to say that next Saturday, Oct. 31st (exact time to be determined), with the company of Cole and Audra Griffith, the lady friend and I will be attending our inaugural SEC game in Knoxville, Tennessee as the Gamecocks of South Carolina (led by the head ball coach himself, Steve Spurrier) pay a visit to Rocky Top.

Despite pressure from the lady friend to wear some variant of the color orange to support the home team (she's a current resident of the great state of Tennessee and is thus likely simply fulfilling her duty as taxpayer), I have made my decision to not wear any Vols' gear well known. Even though only a small group of people would know that I was a Vols' fan poser, I would know, and as Alex Rodriguez taught us, if you can't be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with? As such, I'll be wearing neutral colors into Neyland Stadium, and I will certainly not be wearing any South Carolina-related paraphernalia I want to come back alive from Knoxville and not in a pine box, after all.