Football Schools
Vandy was the runner-up in yesterday's SEC Tournament Championship game against Ole Miss. Today, my 'Dores are a 2-seed in the College World Series. Eight, count 'em!, eight SEC teams make the field.
Go 'Dores!
Go 'Dores!
posted by JRB at 1:06 PM
4 Comments:
Memphis is the real capital of the *Delta*, my friend, a city-state lording over cotton and rice, not the three-fold glory manifest in that illustrious and noble State of Tennessee.
Atlanta is more of something than Nashville, but I'm not sure what it is. I do think that Nashville has some furtive jealousy of the ATL, but only insomuch as blue-bloods can be jealous of the newly rich.
But yes, you're right about one thing, Emory makes Vandy look like an athletic powerhouse. In fact, laugh as you may, I went to Vandy in large part for real Saturday game-day experiences after languishing at Harding High for so long. I knew what we had been missing, growing up smack between Tuscaloosa and Starkville.
More banal biography. My grandparents are missionaries and spent the 80's in the Caribbean and from 94 to the present in eastern Europe. I'm not multilingual, but their coattails got me out of the South early and often into the wide world.
Emory does have Jimmy Carter, too. My law school can only claim Al Gore and Fred Thompson.
Some would consider a "Vandy game-day experience" an oxymoron. But hey, I can understand the enthusiasm considering the win over UT at Neyland.
Yes, the SEC is making more noise than just football these days. "Football schools" has been the subject of some discussion around our house recently as my 17-year-old considers where he will apply to college.
He will apply to Harding, of course, but I've warned him that "Game Day" at ol' HU is really more "tame day." He will also apply to Bama. He's tasted big-time college ball at Bryant-Denny Stadium more than once, and it was good. Other "football schools" on his short list include Appalachian State (2005 DI-AA football champs) Georgia, and UVa.
Will he feed his college football habit, or will he heed the "Call of the Bison" and move west? That is a question that will be answered over the course of the coming year. Perhaps it will boil down to who has the best record at the end of the season.
Of course, I don't think that school selection should be based solely on Saturday afternoons in the Fall. I chose HU for very serious and blessed reasons and benefited richly from the experience.
Even so, I think big thinkers too easily discount the legitimate community, ritual and love bound up in college sports. To that end, I highly recommend the book, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip Into the Heart of Fan Mania, by Warren St. John. (Surely Dr. Mike has read it already.) My favorite passage describes a Bama game at Vandy, which I attended, where he described the student section, in which I sat, as we cheered an early lead over the Tide. He said we "jumped like spooked baitfish," when we went ahead on a field goal.
Dynamite!
Yes, I greatly enjoyed St. John's book. My next planned read is Eli Gold's Crimson Nation.
I concur regarding the ritual, love and community of college sports. Indeed, football has a liturgy of its own, reaching deep into parts of the soul that no other religion can touch.
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