Alabama is Back . . .and So am I!
by Charlsa Perdew

(Editors Note: When my wife and I married I had to learn to love college football, but specifically Alabama football. Read her comments about the Alabama 31-3 rout over Florida and you'll know why. What's it have to do with Peace? Keep reading. . .)

I can't remember when I have had more fun.

Right was on the side of the good guys. What we did worked and worked well and what they tried died on the vine. It was just like years gone by at Bryant Denny Stadium. . .long gone by as a matter of truth.

I marveled as I watched it happen.

The crowd was supportive and in touch with the game. It almost felt like we were one with it. We all seemed to feel it. . .a return to something irretrievably misplaced; something that we knew we had lost but had ultimately forgotten. It had become too painful to keep searching for it so we retreated into a kind of numbness that became a way of life. Its not that we had lost the love for the Crimson Tide or for the game, it's just that we were tired.

One defeat after another, one injury after the other, heaped upon failure, embarrassment, disillusionment and then, concession. . .that it just wasn't coming back and we needn't hope any longer. Hope vanished and drudgery took its place at the helm. Coaches left, sanctions descended, fans weakened and dreams died.

All that was left was to hearken backward to days gone by. We cheered old plays on the Jumbo-Tron, we revered Coach Bear Bryant more, the stars of old became more sainted and we sank into that morass that the aged inhabit. . .the place of "remember when" where the present is nothing more than a pain to be endured.

The young never really knew those days. . .when we were winners. They never experienced that feeling of peace on Saturday night when they put their head on the pillow and knew that the Crimson Tide had crushed the opponent of the day. They had not known the feeling of security that this knowledge brought nor felt the intense pride which nothing could erase. They missed out on a crucial part of their development where success at football was all it took to wipe away the day's troubles and ease the turbulent thoughts about work and responsibility.

All we could do is tell them about it and our memories were fading.

It was as if "reality returned" on October 1, 2005 when Alabama defeated 5th ranked Florida 31 to 3. Fans around me seemed to know it as I was beginning to know it.

There was the fear of daring to hope, disbelief that it was really happening to us. We the disenfranchised and humiliated, the saddened and wounded were watching something wonderful and the numbness began to dissipate. First with a tingling kind of pin-prickly glimmer in the eyes, followed by a gradual opening of the heart and then an explosion of clear knowing that we were going to see it again!

Alabama was back.

I have never understood and therefore have certainly been unable to explain my love for college football. I am, after all, a woman and one that seems an unlikely candidate for a Sports Center addiction.

It goes way back to cool, fall Saturday afternoons of my girlhood where we listened to the radio broadcasts of the Alabama games crackling from my transistor propped against a pine tree as we raked and bagged mounds of dried straw and oak leaves in our front yard. Long before college game telecasts, Alabamians made sure they were watching The Bear Bryant show on Sunday afternoons to see the plays we had heard about the day before. We watched Bear drink Coca Cola and hawk Golden Flake chips and delighted when he described receptions, hailed tacklers and outstanding blocks with exclamations like, "BINGO!".

When it came to time to go to college, there was no other contender for me. I went to Alabama and I knew I should go there with a certainty that made it hard for my mama to deny. I have wondered about that certainty. . .Where did it come from? Why wasn't it apparent in other areas of my life?

I loved being at the University of Alabama. I was a part of something that was bigger than me and a part of something wonderfully successful. . .something to be proud of. It gave me a confidence I had not known and I guess it made me feel secure; if life was to be a little like Alabama football, I would be okay. I was no longer a small town girl and a nobody. I went to Alabama.

I took on challenges and attained personal goals; I enjoyed living and my friends and. . .I went to games. They were the highlight of my week. The passing of events during the year was marked by the status of the football season. Spring was spring practice and the A-Day game, summer was time to read and hear about the team's progress and August was filled with anticipation of the coming games. I bought wool skirts, sweaters and nice shoes for my wardrobe that "I could wear to the game".

And then, when the season started the focus of the week was the Saturday game. Who would I go with? Would we drive or ride the bus to Birmingham? What parties were to be attended? These thoughts energized and occupied me throughout the week. Classes, library study and daily tasks flew by. The radio went on first thing Saturday morning to learn what "Leonard's Losers" would say about the game. How were we standing in the SEC, the country and the API/UPI polls?

And deliciously, at the end of the season there was the Auburn/Alabama game to top off Thanksgiving dinner. The entire state was electrified by the mere mention of this game. We bit our nails, crossed our fingers and even prayed for each player. The outcome of the game would effect our lives and the peace of our existence among friends and colleagues all year long.

For Alabama though, the season always ended in a bowl bid and we were anxious to see which one we would attend the end of December or the first of January.

From spring to January, I used football as my barometer for life and activity. As a graduate, I watched Bear's final Liberty Bowl while living in Atlanta from the home of friends from Alabama. I took pictures of him on TV being hoisted up by the players. I put them in my photo album. . .pictures of a TV with Bear triumphant.

When he died, I mourned with all Alabama fans. I kept clippings, collected photos and memorabilia and put them in a box labeled, "Bear things". Being an Alabama fan in Georgia wasn't easy. Radio coverage was not available and television didn't cover many weekly games. I lost touch and didn't feel I could afford ticket prices except on rare occasion. I listened to the news to see if we had won or called my mama who had listened to it on the stereo in her living room.

Successes became less pronounced and some lean times emerged, but Gene Stallings came in as coach and things were looking up again. The tale loses joy after that 1992 National Championship and Alabama and its fans headed to the days I described earlier.

My life seemed to go the way of Alabama's Crimson Tide. It was a parallel that is quite remarkable in its similarities.  We all just lost ourselves, our verve, our passion for living and loving life. Football and life were tasteless and bland. The energy drained out of all of us and left us with activity that was unfulfilling and automatic.

On that hot October day in 2005, I knew this was it. The color was returning to our faces there in Bryant/Denny Stadium. Fans of old and the new ones experienced "Alabama Football" and they experienced true joy. . .a feeling of pure delight that cannot be described and does not need to be.

We are alive again, we are awake to this life and all the beauty in it. Our "sleep" is ended and our eyes are wide open again.

Alabama is back. . .and so am I.