I still remember the moment. I was less than five years old. It was in Albertville, Alabama. My brother and I were playing in the living room when I decided to climb on the foot stool. This was Alabama, after all. We didn’t have ottomans. Just foot stools.

I climbed up on that foot stool. I looked over my cousins. Even my older brother. There, a few paces away from my throne sat the family patriarch. My great-grandaddy, Reuben Smith. Reuben gazed at me with a sly smile. The smile of a man who spent the best years of his life working hard in a Goodyear factory providing for his family. Who supplied the Second Great War with rubber. Who fought the depression. Who became a yellow dawg Democrat with Big Jim Foldom’s call of “y’all come”, and never cared much for George Wallace. Yes, Reuben Smith of Albertville, Alabama gazed at me with that sly smile. A young boy, barely a toddler, didn’t know what to do with that intimidating stare from such a formidable old man. I stood on my throne as Reuben let those immortal words slip through that smile.

“Boy… if you gon’ say somthin’, it best be ‘Roll Tide, Roll!’”

What to do. My father sat opposite Reuben in the living room. Daddy, Reubens decednent, was orange and blue, through and through. So had I been up to that point, much to Daddy’s approval. But Momma was for The Tide. So were Meemaw and most of the Aunts and Uncles. So was Grandaddy and Great-Grandaddy.

There I was, standing on the foot stool. Surveying all that existed to a boy less than four. My brother, momma, daddy, cousins, Nanna, and Great-Grandaddy. And Great-Grandaddy was for the Tide. And at that moment, and for every moment on, so was I. Roll Tide.

This is why this week matters so much. People talk about the great rivalries of college athletics. Kansas versus Nebraska. Ohio State versus Michigan, and others. But those rivalries are divided by political lines established by statutes, and the lineages of families that dare not cross a state line. The Tide and the Tigers hold no such borders as sacred. We spend the entire calendar in interaction. Call it crazy, but when you lose the Iron Bowl (and yes, if your team of choice fails, YOU have lost the Iron Bowl with them. It doesn’t matter if you have never set foot in one class on that school’s campus), you spend the entire calendar year answering for it. In the workplace. In the grocery store. At church, which is the epicenter of social interaction in the Heart of Dixie.

Even under the Christmas tree, amongst the most blessed and coveted of family lineage. You will still be subject to the ridicule of Iron Bowl failure.

Our entire nation is in the midst of a fiscal crisis. On the national landscape, we argue who’s responsible for our economic misfortune.

But it doesn’t matter in Alabama. For the most part, regardless of who controls office space on Capitol Hill, we’re poor. We don’t have much to put up for pride. Just our homes, Momma’s cookin’, and our values.

But none of that matters. Because whether your veins are filled by orange and blue or crimson and white, for one day a week, four months out of the year you can be proud. You can be proud of your team no matter what the bank note says. If your crop didn’t come in or your house is going to be repossessed, you can be proud. If there wasn’t money for new school clothes, or if you still haven’t moved up from that construction worker’s apprentice position, you can be proud. When your boys are between the hash marks, you are a king atop your own throne.

And for one of those weeks, the most important to anyone born in The Heart of Dixie, you can be prouder than any other. Because it doesn’t matter what’s happening on the farm, or in your house or in the family. If you win, you can climb in that tailgate with the bottle of liquid shoe polish. You can scrawl the score on the back of the cab of your pick-up, followed by “ROLL TIDE!” or “WAR EAGLE!”. No matter how poor you are, no matter what shame comes your way, no matter how sad you think your existence; there is one day more important than any other in the South. And that is Iron Bowl day. And on that day, you were triumphant. And no matter what your circumstance in life, you can pick your chin up, and hold your head up high.

Because you may not have anything to be proud of in life. But by God, you have the team. And that may be the only thing that gets you through the year.

And that’s why the rest of the country will never know what this week means to those of us born and bred in The Heart of Dixie. But by God we know. And for a lot of us, it’s what will get us through to next year’s game.

The chorus of hate directed at the BCS has often pointed to a particular scenario for leading to the systems downfall: a non-BCS school playing for or actually winning a BCS title. My contention has long been that this is an errant assumption. In reality, nothing would do more to strengthen the clout of the system than an undefeated TCU or Boise State making it to the big game. It would prove that the system works far more than it would jeopardize its very existence.

But ponder with me the bedlam that could ensue if an unlikely, yet not unfathomable scenario were to play out for this year’s BCS picture. If all the pieces fall into place, TCU and Boise State’s own success could ensure that a mid-major team if forever shut out of the title picture.

Both BCS supporters and detractors agree that the current system is held in place by one juggernaut of a factor: money. Big schools, big conferences, big bowls and big TV all don’t want to give up their slice of the pie. But suppose the Ws and Ls play out this year so that there is no choice. Suppose Oregon slips against either currently #18 Arizona and/or at Oregon State. Likewise, suppose Auburn drops a game to one or more of tough games against cross-division rival Georgia, at arch-nemesis Alabama, or in the SEC Championship game against a South Carolina team the Tigers barely beat at home earlier in the season.

The stage will then be set for a Horned Frogs vs. Broncos National Title game in Glendale, Arizona. Sound fabulous? To quote the clown of Saturday mornings, “not so fast.” What will be the viewership of a game that lacks national fan base teams? Without an Ohio State, an Oklahoma, a USC, who is going to watch this game? In a year where the Championship matches small schools, will the National Championship telecast even draw an audience equivalent to regular season match-ups between Michigan and Ohio State or USC and Notre Dame?

But suppose it doesn’t stop there. In a year in which many traditional powerhouse schools are not performing up to par, we could see an entire slate of BCS bowls without a marque game. Unranked Pitt is already on track to win the Big East and play in a BCS game. Likewise for #14 Michigan State in the Big Ten. What if Oregon drops both its games against Arizona and Oregon State? Suppose Maryland wins out its schedule (not unfathomable) and takes the ACC title. Suppose Oklahoma State drops games in Austin against a Texas team that dethroned Nebraska, and again in Norman against #16 Oklahoma. Suppose then-Big 12 South Champion Baylor manages to put away the Huskers in a close Big 12 title game.

Here’s your BCS picture:

Championship: TCU vs. Boise State
Rose Bowl: Michigan State vs. Stanford
Fiesta Bowl: Baylor vs. Pitt or At Large
Orange Bowl: Maryland vs. Pitt or At Large
Sugar Bowl: South Carolina vs. Pitt or At Large

Do any of those games sound exciting? Will you be clearing your schedule for Pitt vs. Baylor? Looking at the current top 25, the most exciting prospect for a game would be LSU vs. Maryland, which wouldn’t even merit an ESPN Gameday visit in the regular season.

Now of course, these games will still be watched by certain constituencies. The University faithful will make time to see the game, as will those of us with the college football addiction that makes us tune in for a Friday night BYU vs. Utah St. contest. But outside of that, who is going to really be watching? What will happen to advertising revenue? What happens to the school’s cuts of the profits? Really, in such a scenario, even if the only game that plays out like this is a TCU vs. Boise State title game, the BCS and other stake-holders aren’t going to be encouraged to degrade their payday in future years. No one is going to want to help these teams get back to the same position. In fact, I’d venture the guess that the BCS rules will be changed again to make it even harder for these teams to get a shot (although that likely won’t be necessary since human poll voters will be less likely to help them there as well).

But, of course, the flip side of the coin is that regardless of your position in the FBS pecking order, you play the game to win championships. BSU and TCU, despite the implications on their future title hopes, are going to try to get to the title game and do everything they can to win it, as well they should. But if they are set-up for a title contest, they had better make it count. It’s going to be a long time before they get another shot.

Clearly, I take baseball quite seriously, which is why I hate interleague play.

By the time interleague play entered the lexicon of American baseball fans, I was into my teen years and had been playing Little League longer than the average Major League career. I wasn’t sure about the concept in the beginning, but I’ve come to despise the weeks of summer when my home team plays the other league.

I grew up in the Deep South, a place where there is only one baseball team: the Atlanta Braves. Consequently, I have no desire to which “regional rivalries” like Kansas City vs. St. Louis, the Angels and the Dodgers or the Subway Series in New York. I don’t particularly care about the only two other teams below the Mason-Dixon, which didn’t exist until after I had been a Braves fan for over a decade. Neither do I have any desire to watch other National League teams wasting their time against the American League. I have no interest in that league till the tail end of fail. Right now, I’m more concerned with my team’s route to the Fall Classic.

But the the biggest reason I despise interleague play is that fact, yes fact, that American League Baseball is not real baseball. That’s bound to start some fights here.

I’m what many refer to as a baseball purist, but one doesn’t have to be a purist to understand that the American League doesn’t play by the rules. All you must do is refer to Rule 1.01, the very first rule of baseball:

Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.

An American League line-up, with the exception of games in which those teams are lucky enough to set foot on National League grass, consists of 10 players.

The designated hitter rule is an abomination. It’s poker with a fifth ace. It’s subbing a linebacker for the punter after the punt. It’s replacing Jake Gyllenhaal’s acting skills with Marlon Brando’s, but keeping the pretty face.

As long as interleague play exists, I will grudgingly watch my home team each game. I’ll watch as a bench warmer goes in at first or in left so the every day guy can DH. I’ll watch it, but I won’t be happy about it.
What am I talking about? No matter how much I hate the DH or despise interleague play, I’ll be ecstatic just to watch the greatest game on the planet– even if it’s the silly fake American League version.