Op-Ed Columns

We had awakened in New York that November Sunday morning in 2001 with a sense of well-being, as we expect to do at our mountain house this weekend. Alabama that year had defeated Auburn 31 to 7.

We had watched the game, six long defeats ago, at the apartment of our friend, Billy Cobbs, an Anniston expatriate whose job is helping bail out cities and states that have gotten in financial trouble. He's busy this year. Billy had greeted us with a Crimson pullover and a Crimson baseball cap, which shouted in white letters, "BAMA."

On Saturday before that last victory, the Alabama-bred Howell Raines, then editor of The New York Times' editorial page, had written, "I am slam up against my annual realization that I care who wins the Alabama-Auburn football game."

He concluded with this modest thought, "If there is a moral order in the universe, Alabama will win this year. Next year would be good, too." Next year, and five more after that, weren't so good, but it is his question that lingers in the mind.

Why do we feel this way about a football game, Howell wanted to know. "It has to do with childhood imprints," he wrote. He's uncannily right. Loyalty for team springs from the same source as patriotism — the infinite webbing of memory.

It is Dad seated in his red leather chair in the library, drawing a diagram of the offensive football positions with the stub of a copy pencil as I watched with absolute concentration seated on his footstool; the smell of his pipe tobacco, the battered hat and long, tan raincoat he wore on cool autumn afternoons to the games at Legion Field …

The merry fight tune, committed early to memory, "Bama's pluck and grit are writ in Crimson flame;" the crimson jerseys flowing like a tide onto the field; the smartness of the "Million Dollar Band;" the treasure Dad got me, a picture of the leaping All-American halfback, No. 52, Harry Gilmer, autographed by my hero.

The tightly clustered memories are released joyously, even with a sense of empowerment in moments of triumph, and in defeat there are the opposing feelings of depression and diminishment.

Until the intellect takes over, reasserting the empty fact that it is only a game, a complex game that has an intellectual component, and that is, to bastardize William James' famous remark, the moral equivalent of war, but only a pale equivalent.

Moral, it certainly is, as all sports are in the sense that before any contest begins, the players agree to the summary execution of the rules; no appeal, no lawyers rushing onto the field shouting, "Tort, tort."

In addition to all the athleticism, conditioning, courage and determination required to excel in any sport, football combines the moves of ballet and battle with the intelligence of a chess master and a military commander.

Take the flying wedge, now outlawed. For the play to be perfectly executed, two sets of players — corps de ballet, if you will — had to time their maneuver so precisely that they came together at just the right moment. The effect was similar in brutality to a Roman infantry charge in ancient times.

Which brings us to the fabled Ohio State coach, Woody Hayes, whose intellectual meat was a diet of military history and Shakespeare's tragedies.

George Will once wrote that he could imagine Hayes roaming the sidelines on a blustery fall day at Columbus, in a Shakespearean rage, muttering, "Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!"

The quote is from King Lear, when the old king is beset by forces of nature and by his own internal demons. The stormy scene is right, but Will chose the wrong king. Lear was weak. He divided his kingdom among his children to gain their love — creating confusion, civil war and tragedy. Hayes wouldn't have abdicated his responsibilities to win the affection of alumni, fans or the press.

Hayes was a successful coach because he filled his mind with Shakespeare's insights into human character, and the great battles of history. Students of military history know that the great Carthaginian general, Hannibal, invented football plays such as the "trap".

It was at the town of Cannae on Aug. 2, 216 B.C., that he invented the classic football sucker-play. Sixteen Roman legions, about 75,000 troops, attacked the Carthaginian, who had made his center deliberately weak and put his best troops on the wings. When the Roman charge sank into the soft belly, the two strong Carthaginian arms crushed them.

As chess masters contemplate their opponent's next move, so Nick Saban has spent sleepless nights devising ways to frustrate the Heisman Trophy-winning Florida quarterback, Tim Tebow, who has all the board moves of a queen, plus a third dimension — the forward pass.

History, art and science combine in the only sport that both celebrates communal values (the huddle and team spirit) with individual skills: think of the power and poetry of wide receiver Julio Jones, Bama's Baryshnikov.

Merely a game? Nay, rather THE game, a north star, source of happiness, a reason for being; all summed up in those immortal words: Roll Tide!