Perspective Piece: Alabama-Georgia

Football, more than any other sport, is a game of emotion. College football features emotion more than any other brand of pigskin competition. The SEC does emotion better than any other conference in college football. This Saturday, then, Alabama and Georgia are going to blow the Hedges off Sanford Stadium with a hurricane of hot-headed hellraising.

For an SEC clash that, weirdly enough, is not a “traditional” rivalry (Tide-Dawgs is not a regular matchup on the annual SEC calendar; the cross-division encounter occurs only periodically, and Auburn—not Bama—stands as Georgia’s main SEC West rival), there will be a supreme tsunami, an awesome avalanche, of emotional upheaval in evidence Between the Hedges on Saturday. This apocalyptic encounter in Athens will revive the spirits of anyone who will be almost certainly depressed by the presidential debate staged the night before. It will slap a silly grin on the face of any soul wise enough to watch this contest as a way of distracting a worried mind from America’s present financial crisis. If a man finds himself fuming at his fortunes, or a woman finds herself fretting about her family’s future, watching Bama-Georgia—and seeing the enthusiasm that will course through the veins of 20-year-old boys on an electric afternoon—will provide a reminder of how good it can feel to be alive. Anyone in an emotional rut or a psychological ditch need only watch this football game to remember what joy, passion and the vigor of youth must look like.

Just how emotional will this game be? Let one count the ways.

Georgia will run pell-mell on the green fields of Autumn this Saturday, not just because of the confidence created by the impressive win at Arizona State on Sept. 20, but because the Dawgs will be the Men in Black once again. When Georgia donned the dark duds last year against Auburn, Mark Richt’s kids ran roughshod over the talented Tigers. Going charcoal sure lights a raging fire in the hearts of those who play for the ol’ UGA.

This game’s emotional equation must also include a storyline that only recently found its way into the pregame narrative. Larry Munson, one of the very last of the great, iconic, larger-than-life radio voices of Southern football—the SEC’s equivalent of what Vin Scully is in the realm of Major League Baseball announcers—abruptly announced his immediate retirement, due to health concerns, on Monday. With the Voice of the Dawgs since 1966 no longer sitting behind the microphone, a poignant awareness of this game’s place in history will only serve to crank up the intensity on the Georgia sideline, and in the massive ballpark that will hold over 90,000 rabid fans who just gained added reasons to amp up the volume even more… if that were humanly possible in the first place.

Bama-Georgia’s already-off-the-hook emotional outlook figures to climb even higher heights of hotheaded hyperactivity when one then considers the coaching clash in this contest. Even if you are a Bama fan or someone predisposed to root against Georgia (those living in a town called Gainesville, maybe?), you can’t escape the way this game’s coaching matchup will be perceived in the larger public imagination. If this were a spaghetti Western with Ennio Morricone music in the background, Nick Saban would be wearing the black hat, and a white hat would sit atop Mark Richt’s head. Of all the possible high-profile coaching matchups in the SEC (the wholesome but small-scale Bobby Johnson of Vanderbilt isn’t yet “big-time” enough to be considered in this debate; ditto for Sly Croom at Mississippi State), Richt-Saban is the closest approximation of a classic “Good versus Evil” duel, complete with a sprawling, cinematic scope and a Hollywood-scale showcase. Alabama’s coach is viewed by some—certainly those in the state of Louisiana—as a man whose last name’s third (or middle) letter should be changed from a “b” to a “t.” Georgia’s coach is addressed by the locals as “Reverend Coach.” This is a coaching clash right out of central casting. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef would be proud.

And as the cherry on top of the sundae, this game will be emotionally explosive because, oh-by-the-way, it’s gonna be a dadgum donnybrook of considerable proportions. It’s a top-ten tilt with Alabama trying to consolidate its ascendancy and beat a team that, unlike Clemson, possesses genuinely gleaming credentials. Georgia—fielding its best team in years—wants to stay on track for a national championship.

Want to see a spectacle that will make you forget the sour taste of petty politics, the tanking economy, and governmental incompetence, among other things? Watch Alabama-Georgia, and remember what it feels like to playfully romp through life, with positive animal energy coursing through your veins.

One word of advice to all the players who will take to the gridiron on Saturday: Given all the emotions that will flow through their bodies, the young men who will play with pride for the Tide and the Dawgs should watch out for a good number of misdirection plays. As for fans, though, there need not be any misdirection in their own particular movements; the direction of life should lead them straight to a television set when this ballyhooed battle kicks off. That should be the case, at least, if any man, woman or child wants to let a few cares melt away for three and a half hours that promise to be thrilling in the extreme.