It even makes grown men cry

(Excerpted from a column I wrote on Sept. 2000)

If it's only a game played on 57,600 square feet of green grass, then why does it make grown men cry?

Why do young women plan their wedding dates around football Saturdays, so not to interfere with a home game in Athens or Tuscaloosa, Ala.?

Why do perfectly normal people bark like dogs, paint their faces, leave season tickets in their wills and make some of the largest emotional investments of their lives in 19-year-old football players who can run like the wind?

There are husbands who can never remember their wives' dress sizes, yet they can recite the depth chart at tailback for Florida State.

There are children walking around with names like Buck and Bear. They are products of families who keep playbooks on the coffee table.

That's football in the South. That's just the way it is.

If you haven't noticed, the season has arrived like a tight spiral. The scent of pigskin is in the air.

We have goalposts in our cross hairs. Our fingerprints cover anything that has to do with the teams we follow. For the next four months, the lives of every Tom, Dick and Herschel will revolve around passes and punts the same way the planets orbit the sun.

Football is much more than the sum of its parts.

It's almost like a religion.

The definition of an atheist in Alabama? Somebody who doesn't believe in Bear Bryant. Football in the afterlife? A Florida fan once died in the middle of a long losing streak against Georgia. When the Gators finally prevailed, his buddies took the next morning's sports section from the Florida Times-Union and laid it face down on top of his grave. So he could read it.

Pigskin passion. It's contagious. It's outrageous.

On football Friday nights in hotbeds like Thomasville, Warner Robins and Lincolnton, the town's center of gravity is the local high school stadium. People not only talk about the game all week --- in the grocery stores and at the bank --- they are obsessed with it. In many communities, football season is the most significant social institution.

Why? Because it often can do what churches and government agencies cannot. It can rally the masses and bring together people from different walks of life.

On Saturdays like this one, the date has been circled on the calendar for months. Palms have been sweating for weeks. Game faces have been saturated with cautious optimism for days. In college towns, the sabbath is often observed on Saturdays, too.

At the University of Georgia today, a red sea will arrive this morning beneath shade trees across the campus. Fans will throw toy footballs over parking lots and dormitory lawns. Many will congregate on tailgates and huddle behind Winnebagos with buckets of cold fried chicken.

A cemetery plot inside Sanford Stadium is reserved for dearly departed bulldog mascots and is considered sacred ground. And absolutely nothing offends Bulldog fans more than when opposing teams prune the hallowed hedges that surround the field.

However, the infatuation with football in Georgia is not without rival. A power grid of devotion extends across Dixie. It reaches beyond two teams buckling chin straps and going toe-to-toe for supremacy.

At Clemson, the players rub "Howard's Rock," brought from California's Death Valley in the 1960s, for good luck before every game. The rabid fans love it.

In Statesboro, the Georgia Southern faithful believe in the magical waters of "Beautiful Eagle Creek," a drainage ditch near the practice fields.

In Tallahassee, mock headstones have been placed in a nearby "graveyard" for each opponent the FSU Seminoles bury on the field at Doak Campbell Stadium.

The affinity for Southern-fried football speaks volumes. It can split family loyalties and start backyard feuds.

It can inspire books --- "Clean Old Fashioned Hate" is the classic that chronicles the Georgia-Georgia Tech rivalry. It also can provoke jokes. (What does a Georgia graduate say to a Tech graduate? Do you want fries with that?)

In baseball, you win some, you lose some and some days you get rained out.

But in football, every game is magnified. Every game is meaningful. The crescendo builds each week. It can take months, and even years, to shake a loss. Victories often are savored for a lifetime.

It is more than just a game. Quite simply, it is a part of who we are.

It even makes grown men cry.