Football for me, like most others born in the South is life. Those twelve to fourteen games from September to January carry us through the rest of the year in a state of glory or malaise, depending on how our favorite team fared. I once heard it said that, in the state of Alabama, before you enter the state (by birth or by road), you must choose between Auburn and Alabama. At some point after my birth in February of 1987, I chose the University of Alabama. Five years later, they won their first National Championship since 1979. I was just starting kindergarten.
In 1996, I was finally able to attend my first college football game. It was a family affair with my parents, brother, grandparents and uncle all clad in Alabama gear, much to the dismay of my dad, brother and grandfather, who were Auburn fans and my mom who is a Georgia fan. It was a ‘Bama-Southern Miss tilt in Birmingham. I don’t remember any of the game, but I was hooked on college football.
I’ve stated before that the first college game I remember watching on TV was actually the year before. It was the 1996 Outback Bowl with Auburn facing Penn St. I remember that was the first time I had ever cheered for Auburn, which was a huge step considering I had stormed out of the house during an Iron Bowl. (I’m not sure which one it was. The only Auburn wins over Alabama during that time were the 1993 22-14 win and the 1995 31-27 win.) Sadly, Auburn lost 43-14, but it was the first time my dad, my grandfather and I had cheered for the same team. Three years later, the three of us and my brother all went to my first Auburn game to see Tommy Tuberville notch the second win of his Auburn tenure.
As you can tell, the late 90s were my formative years in terms of football. I started cultivating a love for the game, rather than a love for the name a team had. Since 1999, the teams I’ve cheered for have won a combined six Conference Championships. Alabama’s 1999 SEC Championship was memorable for two reasons. First, Alabama became the first team to beat Florida twice in one season (please check the fact here. I could be, but don’t think I’m wrong here.) Second was how I watched the game. My family was in Atlanta with some friends of my parents’ for the race that weekend. Their friends were big Alabama fans and so we watched the SEC Championship with them. At one point, someone in the room started yelling, “Su dot!” every time Shaun Alexander appeared on-screen. After a while of pondering this, I finally realized that his name on the back of his jersey was “SU. ALEXANDER.” Hence, the foundation of their very clever nickname. By the way, he has always been Su. to me since then.
2001, that was the year football changed for me. 2001 was a big year. Dale Earnhardt’s death had already begun to sour NASCAR for me and 9/11 was right around the corner, but September 1st was a special day. That was the day the UCLA Bruins made their return trip to Tuscaloosa after the Tide went west and lost the year before. It was also the day my dad and I would go to our first game in Tuscaloosa. Even for my dad being a life-long Auburn fan, being in Tuscaloosa is a special thing. (The least special thing about that day was seeing the first loss of the dubious Dennis Franchione era.) I didn’t understand the significance of the game until years later. My dad told me that we were seeing two traditional powers play each other. To me, tradition didn’t exist outside of Alabama-LSU, Alabama-Tennessee and Alabama-Auburn. My mind hadn’t expanded enough at that point to realize the full scale of the game. To this day, it is the only time I’ve seen a Pac-10 (12 now) team play.
As I said, football changed for me in 2001. That is because a team I had never heard of was making waves (Red Waves, if you’ll allow the pun.) The same day we were on the way to see Alabama, the Troy Trojans were playing their first game as a Division I football team against the Nebraska Cornhuskers. We listened to the game on the radio as we drove up. I had never heard of Troy before, but my dad told me this was an important game. They would get blown out by Nebraska, but in mid-October, the Trojans would pull off a shocker. On October 13th, they beat the Mississippi Bulldogs in muddy Starkville, 21-9. It was Troy’s first win over a Division I opponent and an SEC opponent. Troy would only lose one more game that year to Maryland.
On November 17th, my dad said he had gotten tickets to a Troy game and we were going. I was not happy, to say the least. He wanted me to see Troy play some random team at the SAME TIME Alabama was playing Auburn. How could he do this? What I didn’t know at the time was that I was seeing the end of an era, the capping of a long and storied rivalry, The Battle for the Ol’ School Bell with Jacksonville State, which dated back to 1924. Jax State led the series with a 32-29-2 record, but Troy kept the Ol’ School Bell , which still resides in the Tine Davis Fieldhouse, with a win that day. The next week we were back in Troy to see them play the North Texas Mean Green. They won that game too. Troy finished 7-4 that year. After that, I was enamored with this small school only an hour away from home. I didn’t have to make a long trek to Auburn or a day trip to Tuscaloosa to see Division I college football anymore because it was right in my backyard.
Since those two games, I have been to exactly one Auburn game (2002 loss to Arkansas and Matt Jones) and one Alabama game (2003 win vs. Kentucky and Jared Lorenzen). It is impossible for me to calculate the amount of Troy games I have attended since that first one in 2001. I can say I’ve seen every Sun Belt opponent at least five times each. I also have seen games against Missouri, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma State, Utah State, Idaho, Cal-Poly (Funny story about that one. After we beat Missouri in 2004, Iowa State was our home opener, but they decided it was better to buy our contract out than play us, so we scrambled and picked up Cal-Poly.), UAB, Alabama State, Alcorn State, and Central Michigan. I’ve seen the high points (Five straight Sun Belt Championships and five straight wins over Middle Tennessee State) and I’ve seen the low points (the entire 2005 season, my first on-campus as a student, and both LSU games).
During these times, Auburn has had two undefeated seasons (sadly, only one culminating in a National Championship) and Alabama has had one undefeated season that ending with a National Championship. As I watched, Alabama’s National Championship Game against the Texas Longhorns. I was proud for my state and my friends who were ‘Bama fans, but I felt nothing as a fan. It was hard for me, because the team I had followed was at the pinnacle of achievement in college football, but I couldn’t celebrate it. It wasn’t mine to celebrate. They were not my team anymore. (The same goes for Auburn’s 2010 Championship. I was proud for the state and for the wife, but it was not mine to celebrate.) I know Troy’s chances of winning a National Championship at the Division I level are "never gonna happen to none," but that doesn’t stop me from giving it my all for the team. For instance, during Florida’s 2009 drubbing of Troy, which ended in a 56-6 loss, I stood in the rain cheering for my team to fight for the win, even when we couldn’t move the ball in the mud. During the 2008 LSU game, I was at my friend Justin’s house watching the ‘Bama-Mississippi State game because the Troy-LSU game wasn’t televised. That game is still hard for me to talk about because I have never been more elated and disappointed in one night in my life. We carried a 31-10 lead into the fourth quarter, only to go scoreless in the fourth while giving up 30 points. I watched this collapse happen via the ESPN ticker at the bottom of the screen.
While there have been low points, there have also been good points as well. The 2009 GMAC Bowl was a cold game to attend, but it was my first (and so far only) bowl game. Even though we lost in the second overtime, I knew I had seen the best bowl game of the year. The Missouri game was another game I will remember forever. It was amazing to see Troy rally from a 14-point deficit (that was already on us by the time my family and I got there from Headland) on the heels of Junior Louissant’s fumble recovery for a 60 yard touchdown. The best part of the night was not only knocking of the #17 team in the country, it was also putting a black mark on Brad Smith’s Heisman candidacy. I don’t like wishing ill on people and I thought he was a great quarterback, but I like knowing that when Missouri people look back and wonder why Smith never won the Heisman, they’ll know it was because of Troy.
The wife and I were talking and she mentioned that our marriage probably wouldn’t have worked if I had been an Alabama fan, considering her huge distaste for all things Crimson and White. I pondered this for a little while before responding to her and told her that I had always known that my team wore red, but for years I didn’t know I was cheering for the wrong shade of red. I bleed Cardinal, Silver and Black, not Crimson and White. I was born the same year we won our last National Championship, which was also 100 years after the founding of Troy. In 2009, Troy celebrated their 100th year of Troy Trojan football, the same year I celebrated becoming an alumnus of Troy University. Troy is my team, my passion and my pride.
