Before the 2008 season, I had a very basic knowledge of LSU football. I knew they had won two BCS National Championships, and I knew they were located in the place from that Garth Brooks song.
I had been living in Wisconsin for the majority of my life, following Bucky U and the Green Bay Packers more closely than economists watch the stock market.
But things changed.
I was in the middle of my only deployment to Iraq during a four-year stint in the Marine Corps, and conversation heated up between my cohorts and I about going to college together. LSU was the choice.
Why am I going on about this? Because the game between LSU and ‘Bama in 2008 solidified my assimilation into southern football culture — and it has been a beautiful thing.
I was a typical Yankee who had reservations about southerners and southern living, like: Are they really all toothless yokels down there? Do they really call all sodas “Coke?” Do they know how to party for a football game?
The first two questions were answered quickly. The last one I thought I figured out pretty quickly after frequenting campus on fall Saturdays. But I hadn’t seen anything until ‘Bama came to town.
The unbridled passion and the insane gameday atmosphere galvanized everything I thought southern football could be, and the Alabama game has proven to be the top draw since I arrived on campus in 2008.
The 2008 game was, of course, a momentous occasion. The Tide had obtained the No. 1 ranking, and all of Baton Rouge seemed to be divided over the unceremonious homecoming of Slick Nick Saban.
This is the moment when I saw the passion for football in the South that is nonexistent in the North. I can honestly say I’ve never seen or heard of anybody in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan or Illinois burning a rival coach or player in effigy.
But that’s what was going on in Baton Rouge. And I loved it.
The campus was alive on that day more than I had previously seen in any of the home games. It was literally teeming with anticipation.
In all the Packers, Badgers or Brewers games I attended, I had never seen anything like the atmosphere on LSU’s campus for a game with the magnitude of LSU v. ‘Bama.
The game was a back-and-forth slugfest, but the lasting memory of the game came with the massive undulation of emotion at the end, which really speaks to the zeal fans embrace in the South.
Death Valley nearly came tumbling down when Ricky Jean-Francois blocked Leigh Tiffin’s chip-shot field goal to force overtime. The prayers probably would have been audible had it not been for the deafening roar in the crowd — a roar that I have never heard in any instance in the North.
I also got to experience the other side of southern fans’ total commitment to their squad — despair.
After a Jarrett Lee interception, ‘Bama only needed two plays to score in overtime — maybe setting a record for the quickest amount of time it took to silence 93,000 people.
In the North, the end of the game would be a dead issue by Monday morning, but in Baton Rouge it seemed to eat at the soul of the entire campus community for weeks.
Tomorrow, Saban returns for the second time in Crimson and Cream. This time he’ll be sporting his fancy new ring.
While the anxious feeling hasn’t been tangible on campus for the entire week before the game like it was in 2008, the switch will be flipped on gameday for the student section to be rowdy as it can be.
And I’ll be there. A damn Yankee living the dream in Dixieland.
 
 
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Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected]