Eat 'Em Up, Get 'Em!

It is a September Saturday morning, and the tribes have begun to move. The interstate highways that lace the South start to clog up with a glut of cars, campers and $25,000 motor homes complete with beds, baths, color TVs and banner-streaming antennas. Citizen's Band radios howl with rebel yells, chants and incantations: Eat 'em up, Dogs! Get 'em, Gators! Roll, Tide! The college football season has arrived. Everyone who could ferret out a ticket is going to The Game. Which The Game? It doesn't matter. The South is renewing its annual passion, and every game is The Game.

Fluttering Flags. Football in the South is a social event, fashion show and year-round centerpiece for bragging. Its rituals are as firmly fixed as the firmament on high. In Knoxville, Tenn., fans strip the supermarkets of their favorite fruit: orange is a school color, a half-time snack and something to throw at offending referees. When 60,000 University of Florida loyalists gather for a game, the world's largest beach party is under way, fueled by whisky and Gatorade. At the University of Georgia, wardrobes are planned for the slow stroll to seats behind the fabled hedges. Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, home of Louisiana State University, is a saucer-shaped bowl that amplifies every sound and helps screaming boosters live up to their reputation as football's noisiest fans. At Ole Miss, when the band plays Dixie, massed Confederate flags in the student section wave frenziedly on cue, a blur of fluttering bunting.

Students and alumni are often outnumbered in the stands by zealots whose sole link to college is football. Ralph ("Shug") Jordan, who retired in 1975 after 25 years as head coach at Auburn University, describes the "adopted" alumni: "It goes back to the Depression down here, when most folks could not afford to go to college, but they could take pride in and link themselves to a Southern football team. So you would become known as an Auburn man or an Alabama man, and people would assume you went to school there. You bonded with a team, and it became part of you."

Nowhere is the bond more visible than in Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama and Paul ("Bear") Bryant's mighty Crimson Tide. Bryant's teams have a record of 18 straight winning seasons, nine Southeastern Conference championships, including five in a row, three national rankings as No. 1, 17 trips to postseason bowls--and stunning defeats in their opening games for two straight seasons.

The spectacle of a Crimson Tide loss is so rare that it comes like death to Alabama fans. "I have seen grown men weep in the stands," says Band Director James Ferguson. After the 10-7 defeat by Ole Miss this year, the unbelieving victors chanted, first wonderingly, then exultantly, "We beat 'Bama!" as Tide fans walked silently out of the stadium. In the parking lot, there was time for a consoling drink before the long drive home. Coed Vicki Schneider sobbed uncontrollably for an hour after the game. Says she: "It was the next morning before I could accept the loss and regain my faith in the Tide."

Faith is one thing that Alabama has, and feeding it is a highly organized operation renowned not only for its success, but also its profitability. 'Bama football has paid for half of a $4.9 million coliseum, an indoor pool, a $1.1 million track complex and a prairie of varsity tennis courts. But these bonuses come after costs like $175,000 a year in airfare to out-of-town games. Alabama football is a way of life--first class.

For the Bear's players, wearing the red jersey means being part of a tradition that reaches back to Don Hutson, Bart Starr, Lee Roy Jordan and Joe Namath. Says Defensive Back Andy Gothard: "Football at Alabama is earthly heaven." For the majority of students, the equation seems simple: by their football you shall know them. Cleo Thomas, Alabama's first black student-body president, says: "A national identity from football is all we have. If we had a losing season, we'd be nobody. We're gambling our pride and respect for the school on one thing--athletics." To participate in the quest for identity, students endure a struggle for out-of-town-game tickets that rivals a World Series. Lines form 20 hours before the ticket windows open. Patient under umbrellas, students will gladly wait out a long night and a lashing storm for the privilege of paying their $8.

Game Fixture. The archetype of the Alabama fan--indeed of all football-seized Southerners--is Birmingham Hardware Distributor Tony Brandino, who never attended the university. Since 1954 he has made it to 239 Crimson Tide games in a row, traveling as far as California and forgoing, among other things, a free trip to Switzerland and the mourning period for his mother-in-law. Brandino recalls: "The first time I ever heard about football, I was nine years old and it was a radio broadcast of the 1925 Rose Bowl--Alabama v. Washington. I've been hooked since." Brandino and his crimson-and-white 28-ft. motor home are a fixture at Alabama games. Friends, former players, curious passers-by stop by for drinks as Superfan grills pregame steaks. Says Brandino: "Football is a passion around which we order our lives. We make friendships over football and we strain friendships. But mostly, football holds us together--especially when we beat one of those big Northern schools." On this year's schedule: Notre Dame. Roll, Tide!

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