Reflection

Although we play open this week, and I think Open is favored by thirteen actually now that I think of it. I have been doing a lot of thinking here lately about why do I even care about this crazy ride we call college football? When your team is down, it is amazing the thought process you go through. Not thinking of who stands in our way of the championship, it is more like..."OOOh pretty colors." Let our team lose a couple of games and we all turn in to a block of lunchroom jell-o. If we get enough pressure on one side we will move that way. "Fire the coaches! Bench Him, Hell if he is gonna be the starter next year let's get him some playing time!" Doesn't take much and we are spewing the same Garbage as beat writers in Oklahoma. But why? Where did it all come from?





For me, I am not sure exactly where my first football memories came from? My dad was not a fanatic. Sure he would watch the Alabama game if he was home and had nothing he had to do. But his life did not revolve around it. My first real influences, and I guess the majority of all my football roots were colored orange and blue. Our family was a faithful church attending family beginning around my eighth birthday or so. It was like most Baptist churches, adults in the big church, and in the back we had "Children's Church." This was lead by two giants in my life. A man named Jack Tolbert, and a caring woman by the name of Gladys Stephens. (They later married, many years later, and they were in their fifties at this time) Both were employed at the Super Valu warehouse in Golden Springs, Al, and both were big Auburn Supporters. Notice I didn't say fans, yeah there is a difference. They were season ticket holders. On the press box side, I wanna say about the twenty yard line. Remember it has been twenty five years ago. On the weekends of home games they would take a couple of the kids from the church with them to the game. This was the ultimate to a youngster, Remember it was 1982 or so, And at that time, I didn't know ANYONE that went to ballgames. Now it seems odd if you know someone that doesn't go. I mean I drive five hours to Gods country in East Tennessee to see football. We may not have streets of gold, but we have orange in the endzones. Ok back to childhood. The biggest thing I remember about the games is that you had to bring something back to prove you had been there. To an eight year old sitting in that HUGE stadium, there were two things I wanted. One was the little football puppets. Was a player with no facemask, and it had two levers inside that you worked to make his fists shoot out. I think he usually had a pennant in one hand. Man I wanted one of those. But it was like forty dollars. That was half of what a car cost back then! So I settled for the next best thing. A hat. Whoa hang on now, it wasn't just any old hat. It was a painters cap. Bought at J&M bookstore. Hey it was cool. Had a big interlocking AU symbol on the top and Auburn spelled out across the front right above the Cardboard bill. Ok Twenty five years ago it was the coolest thing to have. You know there were more of us kids back then that were Auburn fans when we came home on Saturday night. You reckon why that was? My orange and blue tendencies didn't stop there. When I was older and in high school, there was another friend from church that was a huge Auburn supporter. His name was Ira Lynn Collins. A huge football fan from Wellborn High School. He was my older sisters age which made him about nine or ten years older than me. He too had season tickets. Opposite of the press box, five or six rows from the top of the stadium, forty nine and a half yard line. We would call me up on Friday evening, ask if I had plans Saturday and ask if I wanted to go see Auburn play. We would go down, hang out, go to Tiger walk and talk to a player from Wellborn we knew, Tight End named Victor Hall. #87 I think. He had a cousin that was a huge recruit but never played I don't think William McCain. This would have been somewhere around the late eighties. Even got to see Victor catch his first touchdown in a televised game against Georgia at night. Went to the Peach Bowl to see them play Indiana, and saw my last game with Ira in the fall of 1992 when i went to my first Alabama game, the iron bowl at Legion Field. We sat close to the AU students and band, which was right over Bama's tunnel, where they could yell D U I at David Palmer at halftime. Remember AU came out on the field in a single file line walking with their helmets in their hand raised high above their heads. I think this was the first time I got chills at a football game. Turns out that was a pretty special year for Bama. I remember going to a bookstore in Tuscaloosa and buying a Sports Illustrated that featured the Championship. Remember watching that championship game against Miami in the managers little raised platform in the Winn Dixie in Saks where I worked during high school. A couple of years later I was at the first Iron Bowl ever played in Jordan-Hare, well sorta but not really, I was in Bryant Denny for the first time, to watch it on a huge screen via closed circuit TV. I guess when I stop and think about it, I got this love of the game honest. From a couple of gentle souls, Jack and Gladys, who cared enough to give some of us kids the only look at football we would have seen. To people like Ira or "Lurch" as we called him, who took a teenager who was struggling with a tough life at home. He never knew it, or maybe he did. Either way, thank you my friend. He took a job out of town and I haven't talked to him in probably twelve or fifteen years. Now I try to do the same. I took my step father to his first game. He is a big Bama fan, I took him to Knoxville for the third Saturday in October in 2004. For Christmas that year I had a picture blown up and mounted of him and the mascot smokey. Was his favorite gift he has ever gotten. I always take someone from the other team with me when I go to a game. Is what it is all about to me. Another subject but I took my mom to her first game. But she is a Braves fan. As big a fan as I am a Tennessee Vol, she loves her Chipper and Braves. Took her to a game one Tuesday against the Marlins. Third base side, about twelve or so rows up from the dugout. It was her greatest moment. Now she goes every year. Couple of years ago, got to be there for them to clinch the pennant. Got to be a part of the celebration.





Is moments like these that make use who we are. Our first game, our first foul ball, playing cup ball on the hill at a high school game with a piece of paper from the sign the players ran through coming onto the field. Like a seed the started to grow, into what we know now as a passion unlike any other. Some call us fanatics, some call us lunatics, some call us lucky. We are living the dream my friends. Living the good life. Now if someone would just tell that to our good for nothing coach. That no good...... what time is it....... Where is my phone I am gonna call him and tell him.............