College football, for all its manifold problems (see 1987 entry on SMU), maintains its attraction for a simple reason: it’s fun. There are dozens of traditions that to outsiders are hokey but to fans are as important as anything that happens on the field.
Watching 90,000 University of Wisconsin fans jump to “Jump Around” between the third and fourth quarters is thrilling. The University of Hawaii’s version of the “haka” may not be entirely accurate, but it’s very cool. And only the stony-hearted could fail to be stirred by the pregame march of the Army Cadets and Navy Midshipmen. Or by Florida State’s Chief Osceola galloping into the stadium on Renegade, his trusty steed, then planting a flaming spear at midfield. The Ivy Leaguers at Penn throw toast onto the field before the fourth quarter.
Then there is sound. Drumlines and battles of the bands are regular features of football at historically black universities; the sound-off between Grambling’s Tiger Marching Band and Southern University’s Human Jukebox is a highlight of the annual Bayou Classic in New Orleans. The routines of marching bands at large schools like Ohio State have become so intricate that they have become YouTube sensations.1
Then there are the chants. From Kansas: “Rock, chalk, Jayhawk!” From Alabama: “Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, give ’em hell, Alabama!” At Bethany College in Kansas, home to teams once known as the Terrible Swedes, students shout, “Rockar! Stockar! Thor och hans bockar!”2 To hear 100,000-plus fans belt out Michigan’s fight song—perhaps the best in all football—is to get goosebumps. Tennessee has a bluetick coonhound, Smokey, trained to howl after the Volunteers score.
But a coonhound is a comparatively minor member of the zoo of mascots associated with the college game. Colorado has Ralphie the buffalo. Louisiana State and Memphis both have tigers (caged, thank heavens), and Yale has had Handsome Dan bulldogs since 1889. Georgia also has a bulldog, Uga; after its death, it gets interred in a special marble vault near the stadium. There have been nine more Ugas since the first one. Navy has a goat mascot that really should get combat pay, because it keeps getting kidnapped. Army has a mule and Air Force a falcon, named Mach 1. Texas has a longhorn steer called Bevo. Baylor has two black bears, sisters named Judge Lady and Judge Joy, and South Carolina a red-breasted black gamecock, Sir Big Spur.
All this makes autumn Saturdays a uniquely American spectacle in college towns across the country. The only thing better is rivalry week, when an additional set of traditions kicks in, often in the form of a useless and ugly totem to the winner.
Oklahoma and Texas compete in the Red River shootout for the Golden Hat. Brigham Young University and Utah State compete for an old wagon wheel; Indiana and Purdue for an oak bucket; Notre Dame and USC for a made-in-Ireland shillelagh; Maine and New Hampshire for a musket; and Union and Rensselaer Polytechnic for a remarkably ugly set of red clogs called the “Dutchmen’s shoes.” The men of Concordia and St. Olaf fight for a troll made of Norwegian moss.
Perhaps the most famous totem is the axe head mounted on a wooden plaque that Stanford and the University of California have traded back and forth since 1899. Stanford students used the original axe to decapitate a blue-and-gold Cal effigy; Cal students stole the tool and kept it in a bank vault for the next 30-odd years, until Stanford stole it back in a daring heist.3 Barring the occasional theft—and the score in that regard is 4–3 Stanford—the winner of the Big Game gets the axe, and the score is etched onto the plate under the axe head.
But every time the axe changes possession, the owner rubs out the score of the 1982 game—the one that featured The Play. In that game, Stanford had scored with four seconds left to take a 20–19 lead. On the kickoff, Cal lateraled five times before threading through the Stanford marching band to score the winning touchdown. All Stanford fans swear that at least one lateral was illegal and possibly two. So when Stanford has the axe, it changes the score to 20–19; when Cal has the axe, it restores the score to 25–20.
There is no way to define what the most intense collegiate rivalry is, but Auburn–Alabama has to be near the top. The annual Iron Bowl between the teams in November is the most important date on the state’s calendar; the other 364 days, Auburn–Alabama is pretty important too. Auburn fans deride Alabama as a home for spoiled, lazy rich kids spending daddy’s money and whiling away afternoons under the magnolia trees. Bama fans ridicule Auburn as a cow college for folks with dirt between their toes and gaps between whatever teeth they have. In the words of one caller to Paul Finebaum’s popular sports radio show, “I ain’t got no love for them West Georgia coon-dog buzzard inbred toenail lickers.”4
The University of Alabama has the edge in the Iron Bowl (44–35–1 through 2015) and also in pedigree; it was the home of Bear Bryant, the legendary coach who led the Crimson Tide to six national titles from 1958 to 1982 and also played a key role in the racial integration of the university. Joe Namath played for Bama. For its part, Auburn has Nova, a golden eagle that swoops down over the stadium before games. It had Bo Jackson. And it has “rolling the corner.” After important victories, Auburn fans go to the corner of College and Magnolia Streets and throw toilet paper onto two oak trees. Like many college traditions, the ritual sounds more than a little cheesy. Auburn loves it.
All this is great fun, until someone gets the stupids. That’s what happened in 2010. In that year’s Iron Bowl, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton led the Tigers to victory after falling behind 24–zip—the biggest Auburn Iron Bowl comeback ever. In Auburn, the game is known as “the Cam-back”; in Tuscaloosa it’s “the collapse.” The Tigers went on to win the national championship.
And a man named Harvey Almorn Updyke of Dadeville got angry. Even in Alabama, Updyke’s allegiance is extreme. His children are named Bear Bryant and Crimson Tyde, and he once said that he thought about Bama football 18 hours a day.5 Distressed by the Cam-back, Updyke bought some herbicide, drove to Auburn, and poisoned the 85-year-old oaks. Then in January 2011, identifying himself as “Al from Dadeville,” he called into Finebaum’s show to brag that the trees are “not dead yet, but they definitely will die.”6 The former Texas state trooper was no criminal mastermind; he was quickly arrested and convicted of criminal mischief, desecration, and damaging agriculture.7
In April 2013 Auburn had to euthanize the trees; the cow college has experts on soil and tree health, but too much poison had been at work for too long. Even the miracle of Alabama fans sending $50,000 to help save the trees8 could not halt their decline. But it didn’t seem right to just toss trees that had been the site of so much joy. So the university chopped them up and sold the splinters, one of which is shown on the opposite page, with the proceeds going to the scholarship fund.
Auburn got its revenge on the field in 2013 in perhaps the greatest Iron Bowl ever. With one second left, and the score tied at 28, top-ranked Alabama tried a 57-yard field goal. The kick fell just short. Near the back of the end zone, with no time on the clock, Auburn’s Chris Davis caught the ball—and ran it back 109 astonishing yards. Auburn won 34–28—and also ended Bama’s quest for a third straight national title.
The play, known as the “Kick Six,” was a triumph that took less than 20 seconds. Fifteen months later came another triumph that was months in the making: Two 35-foot live oaks were planted at Toomer’s Corner. Another 30 trees, grown from acorns of the original oaks, were planted nearby.