Yankees just don’t get Iron Bowl

Football.

I’ll bet I just doubled my readership by beginning with that word.

If you were born in the Great State, the mighty pigskin is a part of your consciousness.

Alabamians are fond of the game in the same way that the Hindenburg was a balloon.

It was the last few minutes of the Iron Bowl and Auburn could kick a field goal and tie Alabama or go for the extra point and win the game.

Terry Bowden thought the choices over long and hard. He deliberated.

And finally, after much agonizing, he decided to pray and ask the Lord what to do.

Suddenly, there in Legion Field, the heavens parted and the Almighty boomed down, “Terry, boy, you run that ball.” (in all jokes of this nature, the Lord, incidentally, speaks with a country accent).

So Auburn ran the ball and lost. Miserably.

Alabama stopped them cold. Terry was heartbroken, “Lord, Lord, why did you tell me to run the ball? I could have at least tied the Crimson Tide!”

And the Lord said, “I don’t know Terry. Bear, why did we tell him to do that?”

I hope your readers will forgive me for telling jokes in print. It’s just that nobody in New York City gets that joke.

I tell it at cocktail parties and everyone stares silently with that “oh my” look as if I had suddenly sprouted a third eyeball or something.

Alabama is a wild and mysterious place, and I often go into verbal contortions trying to explain the culture to the citizens of Manhattan, but I’ve given up when it comes to the subject of football. Invariably, every year around this time, some New Yorker asks, “What is the Iron Bowl?”

New Yorkers have seen the game.

They’ve gawked at the shots on television of hooligan fans, stripped to the waist, with their faces painted orange and blue.

Or at the shanty towns of motor homes that appear around the Old Iron Lady, or Jordon Haire, or Bryant stadiums.

Or at the images of gentlemen wearing coats and ties walking next to hoards of drunks carrying old Tide detergent boxes with rolls of toilet paper strapped to the top (even worse, Auburn fans actually use their toilet paper to roll Toomer’s Corner).

It is a game that brings together everyone in the state, and even Alabamians out of state.

Here in New York, ex-pats gather in bars and apartments to holler for their favorite teams–though some of the chants like “yellow hammer, red hammer, give them hell Alabama” doesn’t make much sense or rhyme well if you’ve lost your Alabama accent.

Then again, when did “Weagle, Weagle, go War Eagle! Hey!” ever make sense?

You may be a shiny buckle on the Bible belt or a member of the Nation of Islam.

You might have just taken the wheels off your new double wide or put wheels on your new M-Class.

You might be black, white, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Baptist, Jewish, heterosexual, homosexual, pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-prayer, anti-prayer, money, no money, but baby, when it comes to the Iron Bowl, you take a side.

People of dubious moral character who say, “I root for both teams,” should be put to sleep.

There is no middle ground in Alabama football. No moderates. No chance of reconciliation.

If the game gets any more competitive, the United Nations Security Council will have to send peacekeepers and weapons inspectors to hold back the carnage, mayhem, and destruction.

Academics speculate that football is important to Alabama because it gives us a chance to finally whup up on the North. Or maybe because it was the only good thing to come out of the state in the national news during the 1960s.

Or maybe because we’re just aggressive buncha of yahoos that like to beat up academics. Whatever. I do know that we’re advanced enough to have a two-team system.

If one of the teams loses, only half the state goes into mourning, unlike Tennessee where the whole state’s self-esteem rides on the UT’s performance (and what a stupid name that is–the “Vols”)

Football is history, politics, money, and religion all rolled into one big Tide, er, I mean ball.

My grandmama gets on her knees to root for Alabama during the Iron Bowl. Bear Bryant got an electoral vote for President.

Who cares where you were when JFK got shot, where were you when the Bear made his first down to the other side?

And the amount of money we spend on football could arm a European nation.

What Alabama needs is a hobby to take its mind off college football.

I’ve tried opera, art, dancing, fishing, sailing, riding, hunting, business, beer, and even New York.

Oh wait, here’s an ideal solution from a reader in Albertville: “high school football.”

—Morgan Murphy