Entry 003: Maybe I Was a Nick Saban Fan All Along

Maybe I Was a Nick Saban Fan All Along

I have recently had to admit something about myself. I may not be as much of an Alabama fan as I thought I was.

Now, before somebody snatches the houndstooth out of my closet and escorts me right out of Bryant Denny Stadium, hear me out. I still love Alabama. ROLL TIDE. But since Nick Saban retired, I have discovered that a considerable portion of my Alabama devotion may have actually been Nick Saban devotion.

I love that man. I loved him standing on the sideline looking thoroughly disgusted while Alabama was winning by 38 points because somebody missed an assignment in the second quarter. I loved the process. I loved the standard. I loved that nothing was ever quite good enough because there was always something that could be done better.

And now that he is no longer coaching Alabama, I find myself enjoying him just as much. Maybe more. Because somewhere along the way I realized I am not really a one-team college football person. I am a college football person. More specifically, I am a Southern college football person.

There is a difference.

Side bar: I still love Notre Dame. Notre Dame gets special dispensation because some things simply live in your heart without requiring an explanation. Touchdown Jesus. The gold helmets. The history. The whole thing. I am forever sorry, Bear. That whole 73 Sugar Bowl thing and well all four losses. I know just shown unhinged it is that love these two teams at the same time!

But otherwise, when we get outside the South, I don’t have a lot of strong feelings. Inside the South? Oh, I have feelings. Lots of them. Sometimes my Saturday allegiance has less to do with who I want to win and considerably more to do with who I absolutely DO NOT want to win.

Florida? No.

LSU? No.

Auburn? Obviously no. Hello, ALABAMA.

Tennessee? Ehhh. I can’t properly hate Tennessee because my daughter-in-love is a die-hard Vols fan, and there are limits to what I am willing to do to family harmony. I will occasionally slide on Tennessee. Occasionally.

But this is what I love about college football in the South. It isn’t just football. It is a thing of beauty.

College football is where the most genteel Southerners, people who say yes ma’am and hold doors open and would never dream of showing up empty-handed to somebody’s house, turn into absolute raving lunatics for approximately four hours every Saturday. People who would ordinarily consider yelling in public uncouth will stand in a stadium with 100,000 of their closest friends and question the eyesight, intelligence and possibly the upbringing of a referee they’ve never met.

And I love every minute of it.

Our tailgating is unmatched. We do not put a cooler in the back of a truck and call it tailgating. We bring tents. Televisions. Rugs. Chandeliers have happened. There is food that required somebody’s grandmother’s recipe and three days of preparation. There are people dressed better to stand in a parking lot in September than I dress for Easter Sunday.

Then there are the stadiums. Some of our football stadiums are bigger than the colleges that built them.

And the fans? Have you met us?

Once we love one of our players, that’s pretty much it. We follow that boy right into the NFL. And apparently I will follow him regardless of where he goes.

Case in point: Jalen Hurts. I hate the Philadelphia Eagles. I said what I said. But will I watch Jalen Hurts play football? All. Day. Long. Because he was ours.

That may make absolutely no sense to someone who doesn’t understand Southern college football. To everybody down here, it makes perfect sense.

Which brings me to something else entirely. Since I mentioned the NFL, I need to circle back to LSU for just a minute because apparently we now need to discuss NFL players going BACK to college football.

No. Absolutely not. GAME OVER.

You went pro. You crossed the bridge. We loved you. We wished you well. We bought your NFL jersey. We continued yelling, “THAT’S OUR BOY!” every time you appeared on television even though you are a grown man making several million dollars a year and have absolutely no idea who we are.

But you do not get to come back. And college coaches should not get to reach into the NFL and pull players backward either. College football has changed enough already.

Don’t get me started. Actually, that’s a lie. I am clearly already started. Maybe that is what I have figured out since Nick Saban left Alabama. I don’t need one team to love college football. I love the whole ridiculous Southern spectacle of it.

I love Saturdays when there are three games I want to watch at the same time. I love checking scores because I need to know whether somebody I dislike is losing. I love the rivalries that make otherwise reasonable adults behave completely unreasonably.

I love that you can walk into a grocery store on Saturday morning and tell exactly who everybody is pulling for without asking a single question. I love that entire families are divided by state lines, alma maters and marriages. I love weddings and vacations are scheduled around the entire season! I love that we remember players years after they leave. I love that the first hint of fall feels different because somewhere, somebody is about to kick off a football.

And yes, I still love Alabama. But I think what Nick Saban helped me realize is that I love the game even more. Especially our version of it. The loud, irrational, tradition-soaked, tailgate-eating, referee-questioning, Saturday-consuming version we play down here.

So depending on who’s playing whom, you may hear several things coming from my living room this fall. ROLL TIDE! GO DAWGS! GO IRISH!

And occasionally, because I love my daughter-in-love, Go Vols.

But don’t push it.

XOXO, Jani 🏈