Over the past month, I’ve had the chance to visit two other college campuses and experience football game days in two very different environments. I’m a huge college football fan, but I grew up in a family that didn’t have a team that we rooted for or any connections to a school in the South, so I never got the chance to go to a game in person. Last year was obviously a strange one for live sports, so I figured this year would be my chance to get a taste of what everybody had told me the atmospheres of SEC football games were.
Three weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Tuscaloosa and watch the University of Alabama take on the University of Mississippi. The Crimson Tide were ranked #1 and Ole Miss was #12, so a good game was promised and tensions were high. The fans were loud and excited early on, but the Tide cruised to a 28-0 halftime lead and an eventual 42-21 victory.
I watched as fans streamed out as early as halftime while their team won handily, and was disappointed by the attitude of the crowd as the game went on. It felt more like relief that Alabama hadn’t lost rather than joy that they had won. Bryant-Denny Stadium certainly brought an intense atmosphere for a half, but showed its toothless side as the game wore on.
Over fall break, I was invited up to Knoxville to watch Ole Miss play the University of Tennessee. A couple of friends of mine managed to get me student tickets, and when we streamed into the stadium with the rest of the 100,000-plus strong crowd, we realized we were on the third row from the front. And from almost an hour before kickoff, Neyland Stadium showed me exactly what all the hype about SEC atmospheres was about.
It was, quite simply, the loudest place I had ever been. Crazy chants, light shows, and renditions of “Rocky Top” rocked the stadium all night, and the Volunteers kept it surprisingly competitive throughout the game. The ugly side of football reared its head in the fourth quarter, however, as a questionable series of calls drove the Knoxville fans to throw water bottles and beer cans onto the field, as well as hitting Mississippi’s coach with a golf ball.
These experiences showed me both the beautiful and the ugly sides of college football, and they also showed me why what we have here at Covenant is special. While clearly our crowds of several hundred will never compare to those of over one hundred thousand, the energy and excitement that I felt in Knoxville are present here too. Scotland Yard can create the same kind of passion that the great fans in Tuscaloosa, Athens, and all over the country do as well — without any of the vitriol that caused the incident at Tennessee. We need to latch onto that passion and enjoy the energy of Covenant sports as our fall seasons continue and our winter ones begin.