Penny Thoughts: It’s the Iron Bowl!

Well, football devotees all over the Great State of Alabama, finish the dishes from Thanksgiving, get on your Orange and Blue or your Red and White gear, it’s that time again!  After 365 days of debating if the Tigers or the Tide will be the victor, the “Day of Reckoning” will be upon us this Saturday!

I doubt that there will be many TV sets in the State not tuned into The Game which has had an impact on the BCS National Championship for a number of years.  I also doubt that there will be many sets across the Nation which will not be tuned in either.

There is an impressive list of SEC teams which have won nine BCS National Championships from 2006 to 2017.  It includes Florida in 2006, LSU in 2007, Florida in 2008, Alabama in 2009, Auburn in 2010, Alabama in 2011 and 2012, and Alabama again in 2015 and 2017.  What does that tell the rest of the Nation? Well, in a simple word, the SEC means INTENSITY and commitment to excellence!

And the rest of the Nation certainly is tired of hearing a stadium echo with the intimidating chant, “SEC…SEC…SEC!”

This year’s Iron Bowl will be no exception.  The simple fact is that there is no other conference which can consistently compete with the SEC.

We live in a State which has produced National Championships at two different universities and Heisman Trophy winners at each university.  And even with the weeping, shock, lamentations and bravado of both schools the game will not be handicapped with any great certainty by the odds makers.

What makes us in Alabama so dedicated to two university football teams is a question of identity with success – and it is 24/7 for 365 days – which defines our approach to life in general.

And I am always excited to have the opportunity to scribe an observation on this classic confrontation, of which there is no comparison, no approach, no equal in college football!

This all is no news to those of us who share in the fervor of the rivalry between Auburn and Alabama, but to the rest of the Nation it is all a mystery.  Even the ESPN and the other talking sports heads are still confounded by Our Annual Clash of Alabama’s Titans! 

To understand and put it all in a nutshell, it is entirely possible to trace the roots of this notion and practice of “rivalry” back to our Scottish roots.  Yes, that’s right – “Scottish” notions of rivalry.

One of the reasons the English monarchs could keep Scotland under their oppressive thumbs in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries was the constant disunity amongst the Scottish Clans.  William Wallace – familiar to us in large measure because of the 1995 Mel Gibson film Brave Heart – unified those Clans against the English and eventually prompted Robert Bruce, also known as “Robert the Bruce”, to continue Wallace’s unification of Scotland and finally gain independence from England, thus becoming Robert I, King of the Scots.

 I seriously doubt that this has been covered by ESPN’s “Game Day”, but perhaps we here in “Sweet Home Alabama” are somehow hard-wired to be competitive to the point that “rivalry” has taken on a new, more intense practice.

With it all, today we are involved in another Iron Bowl with all its pageantry, its celebration, and its gathering of loyal disciples in pockets of passion throughout the State in sites as diverse as our geography.

 We will bellow with all our strength “War Eagle” or “Roll Tide” and raise our collective blood pressures to dangerously high levels.  We will not care about our health, though, and we will cook the ribs, quaff our ales, share our stories and focus on the boys on the field one more time.  There is nothing else like it on the planet!

The elected boys and girls in Montgomery might just as well have declared the Iron Bowl a State Holiday and I suppose they may very well have done so if it were held on any other day than Saturday.

Those on the field this Saturday know what it is.  They collectively and individually carry the burden of proof for their colors. When asked to comment on the Iron Bowl they will profess something along the lines of “I’m not going to worry with statistics with this game because it ain’t going to matter.  Alabama-Auburn, it’s a whole different deal.”

It is my hope that each of you feels as much pride as I do in this contest which takes on so much gravity for us Alabamians.  It is not “just a game” for us – it is the reaffirmation of our individual and collective identities.

It’s the IRON BOWL!