confessions of an alabama football "fan"


let's get this out of the way first.

before you think it or feel compelled to throw the term at me as a pejorative, i am beating you to the punch. as i have mentioned here and in other posts here on HACAJAM, i am fairweather fan. in every sense of the word, i am fairweather. even with the teams that i love and live and die with the most (alabama football, atlanta braves, atlanta falcons, alabama basketball...in that order), if they suck and don't show much potential for improvement, dude, i am off that boat.

it's not that i'll only root for a winner. i love a good underdog story, and, shoot, nothing stirs my drink in a more bonds-ian way than when one of my teams is being given points. no, it's not that i'll only root for a winner, but i will only root for a team that is intentional about wanting to win. and by "win" i mean compete for the highest of titles in their respective leagues/conferences. for example, vanderbilt may say that they want to win, but they don't really mean "win" by my definition. the lack or resources afforded to vanderbilt football do not set their bar of accomplishment at "sec champs". to "win" at vanderbilt means to hopefully beat tennessee once every ten years and maybe go .500 in-conference. unless you are a vanderbilt alum or a masochist, i haven't the slightest clue how someone could be interested in that program.

the same can be said for many, many professional teams as well. in major league baseball, in spite of how much i love my friend, philip gibson, his pirates will never actually compete for a world series title, not when three other teams in THEIR OWN DIVISION are willing to outspend them. the same goes for the astros, a's, royals and a handful more of other teams. through no fault of their own, the championship bar in baseball has been determined by the "have's". exceptions to the rule like the a's of ten years ago or the rays of the last three years only prove the rule. they are cinderellas only because the stars are or were aligned in just the right way for them to compete, talent-wise, with the "have's" over the course of a 162 game season. their deficiencies are then ultimately exposed in a best of 5 or 7 game series, the nation nods in approval of those mighty "mights" and their achievements, and then we move on to celebrate a world series champion with a 85-200 million dollar payroll.

(see also: 2/3 of the nba, 85-90 percent of "big-time" college football)

for me, myself, and i, these odds against winning it all would be too great for me to waste my time with.

for me, the value of my sports fandom can be measured in these ways:

1) can my team potentially and legitimately win their league/conference this year or in the next three seasons?

2) if not this year, is there work happening in recruiting, free agency, or a farm system that leads me to believe the "three year plan" is potentially and legitimately realistic?

3) is there a superstar that i can own and attach my man-fan-wagon to in a way that will interest me and engage me on the field and off even if my team of rooting interest is struggling to find consistent success?

that's it. that's pretty much the list. for me to be a card carrying member of any team during any given season, only one of these three criteria must be met.

i'm still relatively young. i have a little disposable income. pay free agent lebron james to come to miami? i'll be a heats fan and buy a t-shirt. sign ichiro to an otherwise irrelevant seattle franchise ten years ago??? i'll buy the bobblehead and look along interested from birmingham, al. draft alabama wunderkind wide receiver, julio jones, to play only two hours away from me? i'll convince my wife and friends that we should get falcons season tickets.

there are many, many more examples of such impulse in my sporting fandom i am sure, if i sat down and thought about it long and hard enough.

...

and then, of course, there are exceptions to my own rules.

as much as i love my alabama football team, as much as i love knowing about them and following them and talking about them, this year has been a struggle for me, even though they easily cover all three of my fairweather fan qualifiers.

i call it my julio jones hangover.

way back during his junior year in high school, julio hooked me in as being interesting. as a junior at foley high, he was already considered the best wide receiver prospect the state of alabama had ever produced and he was already considered a university of alabama lean. over many a dreamland lunch, andy, kiker and i swooned at the idea of bama having a dominating presence at wide receiver. through its rich tradition and history, it's the one thing (outside of the heisman) the school had really lacked. not that alabama has ever been considered a passing school, but, then again, maybe they could be.

yada, yada, yada, julio came. as i documented for over three years, his impact was almost immeasurably positive. alabama did not become a passing school, but julio's skill-set opened running lanes for mark ingram and trent richardson in a way that eventually proved the school to be heisman worthy. julio left last year as the most accomplished wideout in the history of the school, won a national title, and was drafted sixth by the falcons in the 2011 nfl draft.

when julio left the capstone, though, it left a julio-sized hole in my heart. it left me scrambling for a supernova of a super freshman to hitch my man-fan-wagon to. if i couldn't find that freshmen, the season, no matter how highly thought of the team as a whole would be, would feel less exciting. and so, i attached my love to dee hart, a rich man's version of lsu's former waterbug, trindon holliday. i attached my love to dee and then...??? shit. dee tore up his knee before fall practice even officially started.

dammit.

i kind of went into an alabama football daze after hart went down. i loved trent, of course. and hightower. and my little terrorhawk, mark barron. but i didn't love them like that, you know? not like julio. not like i wanted to love dee.

and so the season started.

one of the crappy things about following alabama football in the new, golden age of saban ball is that once the season begins, there are really only four-five games on the twelve game schedule that alabama can legitimately lose. alabama has become so efficient, such a juggernaut, that a loss to someone outside of lsu or arkansas would have required a state of emergency being declared. their sheer depth of talent and skill and resources and coaching render most opponents moot before the game even begins. and while that process proves entirely fascinating during the offseason and can make the football team a 365 day a year show worth watching, once the games kick off, the result is hardly in question. it's one thing i have found completely fresh and wonderful about the falcons this year. in the nfl, the falcons can absolutely and potentially lose every game they start (as can the packers for that matter, which makes what they are doing so special). you can live and die with the product on the field. the same can't be said for alabama football. you can tell yourself that auburn or tennessee or penn state or florida had a chance to win, but some honesty and forethought might tell you otherwise. i digress.

and so the season started.

alabama blows through their first 8 opponents. they average just over 39 points. the average margin of victory is just over 32. the closest any one opponent gets is 16. they use the pre-julio alabama formula for success in all eight games. run the ball. run the ball some more. play action here. one deep throw a game there. overwhelm the other team with a suffocating defense. impose will. win game. rinse. repeat. to some alabama fans, this was immensely exciting. this was the product of all of the recruiting and the money and the saban and the history and the tradition and the best of the best that alabama football has to offer a player or a fan manifested as unstoppable force/indestructible object.

to me, i'll be honest. it was boring. what i wanted was more creativity in the offense. take some chances. fling it around a little. be more aesthetically pleasing. wear a black jersey. just do something, anything, a little different from what every alabama fan knows and loves.

i caught flak for saying as much on facebook, pining for the excitement that came with being a fan of an auburn team that's just barely good enough to beat utah state, because at least the utah state game made you feel something. wishing i could somehow claim oregon and their flavor of the week uniforms and their zippity-fast athletes flying all over the place. long tenured bama fans scolded, "go, dammit. go be an auburn fan!" "are you kidding? you should LOVE this type of smash mouth football!" "this. is. alabama football, you heathen!" "sounds fairweather to me." can i say for just a minute how fucking retarded the few fairweather comments i got on facebook and off were. truthfully, weren't my comments the opposite of fairweather??? you can't really get any higher up on the mountain than alabama football right now. fairweather would mean i had left the mountain during times of trial and now wanted back on. that wasn't the case at all. i kind of wanted off the mountain in these times of utmost prosperity. anyway, maybe there are other definitions of fairweather out there that i don't know about. i digress again.

i caught flak for calling alabama football, in-season, boring, but, again, i just wanted to feel something, anything.

and then i did. lsu came into alabama having already played a game that they could have lost versus "my" oregon ducks. they didn't lose. they destroyed them. they had played a game versus the eventual big east champ, west virginia. they didn't lose. they beat them worse than they did oregon. they embarrassed florida, same as alabama and kicked the crap out of auburn. they came to tuscaloosa with an edge, with a number one ranking, and with the only real shot of blemishing alabama's season.

and fuck it all. they won. in overtime. in one of the most dramatic football games i've ever watched. both defenses brought their "a" game. alabama's offense showed sparks of trent, a dash of creativity, and several more scoring opportunities than did lsu. but they couldn't convert enough of those opportunities. they let lsu hang around. regulation ended in a tie. aj mccarron showed his nerves during overtime. and lsu escaped tuscaloosa with a win and started driving down this now ridiculous road of being considered an all-time great collegiate team.

i was heartbroken, but, looking back, i think i was a little happy. if nothing else, even though it was sadness i felt, at least i felt something, anything.

and thus the switch turned back on. the julio jones hangover ended, and my alabama football fandom was back. i fumed at their shitty play versus miss. st. i refused to watch a meaningless game against a lower tier opponent in georgia southern. i digested the undressing of their arch rivals in auburn and genuinely hoped that some of my auburn friends felt some of the same pain i had allowed myself to feel last year during the greatest iron bowl meltdown/comeback ever. i rooted for their misery and hoped it felt bad, if only for a couple of hours 'til we all came back to our senses and realized it was "just a game". after all, it's not schools we root against. it's our friends and family that don't see things the way we do that we hope are hurting. (kinda screwed up, really.)

i felt something during the auburn game most especially because of dominoes having fallen and stars having aligned back in the favor of "my" alabama football team. if they beat auburn, they would have their second chance at lsu.

they did. and they do.

it's funny to me. as much as this year's team has accomplished, i am already waiting for next year. i want to see dee hart and tell him that i love him and that i wish him well. i want him to light the sec on fire in the same way lamichael james has done so with the pac 10 12 the last three years.

in the meantime, though, my switch as been flipped. my fairweather flag is waving proudly behind me. i am 34 days away from alabama playing for and possibly winning their second national championship in three years. it's going to be incredible. it's going to be insane. i will yell. and scream. and cuss. and eat. and it will be wonderful, because alabama is going to win the scoreboard this time, not just the game.

let's be honest. we are all fairweather fans of some thing, some place, or some one, whether we choose to admit it or not. and there is no shame in admitting it.

just admit it.

i'm the pot. you are the kettle.

roll tide.