Sept. 11, 2015

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Alabama is always good.

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This is a fact (save a few years post-Gene Stallings) that runs parallel to the static, cultural nature of the region we

live in.

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It’s appropriate that the program most associated with Southern success is renowned for it’s overwhelming

consistency.

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The South has continually participated in an exercise of sado-masochism rooted almost entirely in the

contradictions that give the South its cultural status nationally as both an ignorant, backwards, punch line and a

paradigm of hospitality and goodwill.

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Imagine watching from above as a coin perpetually falls, spins and dives through empty space; you might

envision an accurate picture of the South. Two sides of a coin, endlessly alternating in their solitary presentation.

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Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails. Repeat.

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Entering the Methodist church on Sundays as the preacher’s son, I’ve seen the coin spinning at peak velocity.

Strangely, the quickest rotations at church came from what would be considered an unexpected source for those

unfamiliar with the territory.

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The little old ladies of the many churches I’ve been a part of, who consistently lined the pews each Sunday, who

just as consistently wore unseasonably warm clothes for an oven-baked, Georgia morning, were the biggest

proponents of the Dixie coin flip.

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It was shocking at first to watch an elderly woman perform Oscar-worthy role reversals, transforming from the

caricature of a genuinely kind and doting grandmother to the “bless her heart,” gossip filled, mean girl, but it

became as much of a part of Sunday rituals as any other.

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This is not to say that every old lady you run across in the Methodist church is lurking in the corners to stab you

in the back with a gossip-tipped stake.

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This is not to say that every old lady in the Methodist church is a saint.

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The South is incredibly complex and challenging to understand at best, and while the dichotomous blue-haired

ladies of Methodism are a small example of its contradictory nature, I see a closer similarity between the South

and its biggest attraction, college football.

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College football fandom, an ever-present embodiment of southern identity, brings with it an abundance of good

and a landfill of bad that highlights the contradictions.

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Heads.

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The most glaring of the current contradictions can be seen in the total rejection of history by a subset of the

southern community.

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The country (whether some choose to accept it or not) is in a time of racial and social upheaval, and some in the

South have chosen to attempt to counter the change with a symbol many of them know nothing about.

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If you were to ask most people that fly the flag commonly referred to as the “Confederate flag,” they wouldn’t

know that the flag is not and never was the national flag of the Confederate States of America.

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Those claiming an over-protective battle cry of “history” would be hard-pressed to explain the actual history of

the flag they fly in representation of what they believe the South should be. Many would not be able to tell you

that the flag is not the national flag of the Confederacy, but instead the Confederate Naval Jack that represented a

haphazard navy that was routinely destroyed in any kind of wartime action by the North.

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Essentially, they’re flying a symbol of the Confederate-version of Vanderbilt.

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The Naval Jack has no real historical value beyond its association with hateful groups and ideologies after the

war, yet these people claim to not be promoters of hate but to be crusaders in a noble defense of history.

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The sole point of admiring and embracing history, at its simplest, is to learn from past events of how to better

society as a whole.

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When these people claim history as a reason to stay stuck in the past, they piss their own ignorant ideological

fallacies all over history and regress the South in an intensely damaging way.

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The extension of that contradiction into college football can be seen from the person who flies the flag

throughout the year, excluding a dozen fall Saturdays.

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The flag used to represent hatred changes to a flag supporting the Crimson Tide or any other university in the

South. And the people who are quick to denounce and demean black people as a whole flip to the other side of

their coin, as they rowdily cheer for a young, black man crossing the goal line, provided he’s wearing the correct

jersey.

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Beyond this, students play for schools that make millions of dollars of their likeness without any compensation.

Concussions to 20-year-old heads ruin normal brain function for the rest of their lives.

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Fans take their passion beyond normalcy into lunacy and poison popular landmarks of rival schools.

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These are surface-scratching examples, and the bad aspects of college football are obviously apparent.

However, it would be incredibly unfair to not include the tremendously wonderful aspects of college football in

the South.

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Tails.

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The most beautiful part of sports, beyond the joy of playing, is the fans.

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At its core, sports is less about the final score but rather the communal aspect of celebration and commiseration

that goes with being a small piece in the monochromatic mass of a crowd cheering for an outcome they have no

real control over.

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Nowhere is that maxim better realized than in the passion of college football fans.

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Other sporting events in America come nowhere close to the camaraderie and live-and-die immersion

experience that comes with being a college football fan.

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They do this best in the South, where the traditions and crowds are very seldom rivaled below the Mason-Dixon

Line.

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On game days, the southern friendliness and hospitality is in full effect as total strangers share stories, food and

general kindness to those wearing the same colors.

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Most are even nice to rival colors, except for maybe Florida’s. Nobody likes Florida.

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The most positive aspects of the South are put on full-blast and exemplified at southern college football games:

kindness, joyful traditions and a sense of unbreakable community personified through a fight song.

Again, most of these examples only scratch the surface of what makes the sport, and the South great.

College football gives me hope.

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If the South could take the best of college football and build on its disappointing past, the place I’ve grown to

simultaneously love and hate could become great.

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The South won’t ever rise again, but instead, it could build upon its history and grow to something much bigger

and positive than the mythological ideal of the old South.

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Maybe one day we could see the South bond together to hate what deserves to be hated.

Not people because of the color of their skin, but Florida fans.

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Until then, the South will continue to be stuck. The South will be stagnant in an ideological tug-of-war with itself

between the good embodied by the communion of a college football Saturday and the negative contradictions

that accompany it.

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The tug-of-war keeps going. The tide keeps rolling. The South stays the same.

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Repeat.

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Link to original column - http://gcsunade.com/2015/09/11/fouled-out-coin-toss/