For those of us who are alums, we sort of have a built-in interest in the team's performance... and most likely are fans regardless of that performance.
Also, for many of us, fandom started long before we made college or work or location decisions. For example, my dad got his Ed.S. at Alabama during the summers when I was 1,2, and 3 years old. We lived in Rose Towers and it was eleventy thousand degrees on the playground and at the pool. Despite those scorching memories, I ALWAYS said I was going to be a "Bama boy" (according to my Mom) and I don't have any memories of anything else (because there was nothing else in the picture for me because of that lifelong desire).
Others of you probably have family stories, or the fact that Alabama was dominant during your formative years. Others, you have entirely different reasons for cheering for the Tide.
Whatever your story, I want to hear it!
I hate this question because - even though I know this isn't YOUR intent - it's an Auburn-level objection. It's the old "anybody can pull for a winner, but it takes a REAL FAN to pull for a team that goes 8-4 more often than a hooker changes her underwear."
My fandom actually started with an insult on the school bus.
The day was
September 14, 1978, and I'm not making that up. This dude who lived across the street from me, well, we'd only been neighbors less than three weeks. We were on the school bus, and he asked where I was from. When I told him I was born in Selma, Alabama - a place I knew at that time only as my birthplace - he told me people from Alabama sucked. If he would have stopped right there, I might not even be on this board nowadays.
But he then said that "the Ole Miss Rebels" were much better than Alabama and went on a fourth grade stream-of-conscious commentary worthy of Dennis the Menace (which, not making this up, was the real first name of my OTHER friend at school). I was vaguely familiar with the term Ole Miss Rebels simply because we had one of those little plastic footballs from the game with that on it. But I didn't like being told I sucked, any more than I liked finding out pro wrassling was fake about two years later.
So when I got home, I asked Mom. The cool part to me was since Mom grew up in Alabama (Lanett), she was able to tell me they were coached by a BEAR. I mean, you must be a good team if a BEAR can coach you and you're still good, right? Eight-year-old logic. She regaled me with the fact my uncle played backyard football with Bobby Hunt and Dave Hill, who had gone on to make it big at Auburn. Throw in the fact my favorite pair of grandparents lived in Lanett, Alabama, and you've made the sale.
That weekend - and I recall this distinctly because it was the night of the Ali-Holmes fight telecast on ABC - we went to see my cousins and "other" grandparents in Missouri.
Guess who Alabama was playing on the local TV station the next day? Yep, look it up.
When I got back home, I opened the Monday afternoon newspaper and right there at #1 - I didn't have to look far - was Alabama, who had just beaten Missouri. Ole Miss? They were nowhere to be seen.
I didn't know what the ratings meant exactly, but I was gonna figure it out even in 1978 with no Internet.
It's been a 45-year love affair ever since.
And JUST FOR THE RECORD......
I APPLIED AND WAS ACCEPTED to school at the University of Alabama in the spring of 1987. I opted to go a less expensive route with no loan, but it's not for lack of trying or desire.
