The fervor that comes with college football in the Southeast is difficult to overstate. It is our raison d”etre. It is the common thread that ferociously divides the region. It is why, until the day he died, my grandfather was sure that Bear Bryant could walk on water. And believe me when I tell you, college football down South is a beautiful thing indeed.
So you can imagine my excitement as I pulled into Auburn this past weekend for a long overdue “guy”s weekend” with two of my closest friends from my college days. Though LSU was heavily favored against my struggling Tigers, the purpose of the trip was more than merely attending the game. It was to spend two days basking in the pageantry of SEC football as we tried in vain to reclaim the innocence and debauchery of our college days. It was to be a weekend of bourbon and ballyhoo, chants and cheers symbolizing days gone by. In reality, it was a chance to get together and creep out all the college kids who kept wondering, “Who let these old guys in here?”
It has been nearly a decade since we graduated college and it was immediately obvious that we weren”t going to slide into our past seamlessly. The little things add up quickly. For example (and don”t tell my friend”s wife this), our beer cooler had to sit on top of a baby seat. The symbolism wasn”t lost on anyone.
The Auburn-LSU game was much closer than anyone had assumed it would be and those Auburn Tigers refused to roll over, despite the predictions. They delivered hard-nosed football just like those teams I relished from 1999-”03, as if they knew the three of us were in the crowd. And although Auburn lost, the mood was high on the effort and we bounded out into the night with 90,000 of our closest friends to enjoy the scene of downtown Auburn.
But alas, the lines were too long and the music was too loud for anyone over the age of 25 to possibly tolerate, so the three of us found ourselves sitting alone in an empty bar on the outskirts of town, happy as a lark. There were no more screaming co-eds and no more crowds. Just the three of us sitting, beer in hand, throwing out those perfectly delightful inside jokes that always seem to start with “Remember that time?” or “Whatever happened to?”
Echoing across the desolate bar were the sounds of our shoulder-shaking gut laughs as the bartender shook her head in disgust at the astonishing immaturity of men old enough to know better. It is a rarity in adulthood to have those friends who you can pick right back up with, as if you were together yesterday.
Glad to have spent the time together, we enjoyed each other”s company until the beer didn”t taste as good and then we headed back to the hotel. My body just couldn”t keep up with the party and that was OK. I needed Tums and Gold Bond, a point my friends found funnier than the bartender.
But my soul had been satiated. I got my fix and that is the unrivaled beauty of college football. To indulge in the atmosphere is to step back in time and relive a chapter that is almost better in retrospect. The purpose is not to long for the past but to celebrate having lived it. Imagine walking into Jordan-Hare Stadium amongst a sea of smiling Southern faces. The sweat forming on the Jack Daniel”s miniatures tucked into your boots, just as the sun is beginning to set on the Loveliest Village on the Plains. To be in the company of good friends who share good memories of a good time in your life. I assure you, few things could be better.
The NFL will never have that. It will never match the personal side of college football. It will never be able to perfectly encapsulate and forever preserve an entire chapter of your life and keep that chapter available for you to revisit every few years. And with that in mind I will move on again, every few years descending on that amazing town and that amazing time it represents, every time a little fatter and balder than the last. But the laughter will always sound the same. War Eagle!
