Dixie Babble

The University of Alabama, in addition to the many other academic and social activities it offers its students, fields a varsity football team.  Perhaps you are already aware of this, for they have played admirably over the years.

You also may be aware that a great many people in and from the state of Alabama – including a sizable number who did not, do not, and will not matriculate at the University – care very, very much about the fortunes and performance of the students who made the cut to play on this varsity football team.

Soon that team will meet the varsity football team fielded by the University of Notre Dame in a pre-arranged contest.  (Notre Dame’s varsity football teams also have played very well over the years, until the last several years when they did not, until this year when they rather suddenly did, again.)  The winner of this game will be acknowledged, somewhat arbitrarily, as the best out of all the football teams, supported by institutions of higher learning, that compete at the varsity level in the United States.  It’s quite an honor.

OK, I’ve ridden that conceit into the ground.  Writers are always tempted to turn big games, especially championship games, into palimpsests with bigger meanings about bigger issues than just the game itself.  This year’s BCS title game is such a semiotic playground, is so loaded with Backstory! and Import!, that it would have turned Borges into a college football fan.

The Crimson Tide against the Fighting Irish!  The two most storied football programs in the land!  The Bear versus Knute Rockne, All-American!  Roll Tide Roll and Shake Down the Thunder!

The champions, the victorious mechanisms, through which marginalized populations gained a purchase in the American mainstream while staking out and maintaining a cohesive group identity!

(Put that on a t-shirt!  I dare you!)

Dixie Babble will post updates leading up to Monday’s championship game, because this game is evocative of an important part of the South’s history and culture, and because this game is a very big deal to a very big portion of Southerners.

Also, because that ‘very big portion of Southerners’ includes Mrs. Babble, and Dixie Babble – despite occasional evidence to the contrary – is not dumb.

Over at the Birmingham News (through al.com), Bob Carlton is running a Pop Culture Championship between Alabama and Notre Dame, starting at the movies.  Pick your favorite cinematic football player: the Crimson Tide’s All-American kick returner Forrest Gump (fictional), or Notre Dame’s benchwarming tackling dummy Rudy (pretty much fictional, it turns out).