Battle of The Hokey Pokey
Hark! A lone trumpet swings to the sky. Seven, proud, slow notes burst skyward: "Mine eyes have seen the glory..." Your eyes well with tears and the hair on your forearms stand at attention. The battle has begun. The battle to defend the honor of the Dawg Nation is under way. The Dawg Nation I'm talking about is the University of Georgia--Athens. While the Civil War is long gone, the passion and the energy have been redirected here in South to the battlefields of SEC College Football. Football is a religious part of life here in the South, and tomorrow, after six years, Tony and I will receive our first introduction to the intricate underworld of Southern college football. "More than any other sport," reads my _Encyclopedia of Southern Culture_, "football seems to reflect cultural characteristics of the South." Only a few years after the Civil War, the first official football game of the South was played. My encyclopedia continues, "Modern football in the South is characterized by a subculture passion unrivaled in other regions of the United States." I've been doing my homework so I could better understand what I will witness tomorrow when we attend the Georgia vs. Vanderbilt homecoming game with our friends Johnny and Jon, who have been attending games since '92. They haven't missed a home game since, except back in '97 when Jon's grandmother passed away and they had to watch the Kentucky game on TV after the funeral. My study started in August, when Johnny and I attended a pep rally at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel. The coaches had just completed a bus tour of the state to drum up support for the team. On that night, the day before freshmen were to report to the practice field, a standing-room only crowd of 5,000 upwardly-mobile UGA graduates who donate thousands of dollars a year for the opportunity to purchase tickets costing hundreds of dollars were proud to show their support for Coach Jim Donnan. And I was there to observe. The evening started off with a joke from the head of the Alumni Association: "How can you tell a rich pink flamingo?" The room is silent. "He's got a Tennessee statue in the front yard." Like a Catholic Church, the room leaped to their feet, and began to bark (unlike a Catholic Church). The Georgia players are known as the "Bulldogs", or "Dawgs" for short. The a-w spelling indicates the proper Southern pronunciation, and helps to make it a two-syllable word. All words in the South are made into two syllables. And if your name is just one syllable, add "Bob" or "Joe" to the end and you'll get by. Like the Atlanta Braves who have the oh-so-controversial Tomahawk Chop, the Dawgs have their less controversial bark. It's not a "Bark-Bark" or a "Ruff-Ruff", but a "Woof-Woof"--sort of a deep, husky bulldog bark. Only, keeping with the two-syllable theme, it's more of a "Wh-oof-Wh-oof". The accent is on the "oof" syllable, and the "wh" sound almost falls silent. Repeat it very quickly, and you've got it down. Now back to the Flamingo-Tennessee joke. Tennessee is a rival of sorts; Georgia has not won over Tennessee for nine years. A fact I know from my 348-page Georgia Football Media Guide. Although, the Dawgs rewrote history last Saturday, stomping on Tennessee. With 1:13 left in the game, students leaped over the sacred hedges that protect the playing field at Stanford Stadium and stormed the field. At completion of the game, 8,000 students worked to rip down both goal posts, causing over $100,000 in damage to the stadium, and leaving one student in Intensive Care with head injuries from a resulting stampede. Regardless, Georgia won the game. I know it sounds cavalier, but she's only one student, and it was an important win for Georgia. And besides, she's been stable since Sunday. On the treadmill Monday morning at the gym, I picked up this sound byte from a Georgia Freshman, which echoes all too closely the local media's coverage of the riot: "Yeah, it might make the school look bad with the injury and all, but it also makes the school look good because it shows we support our football team." This anecdotal evidence helps to explain the Tennessee part of the joke. But I'm afraid even with two months of understanding between me and the Flamingo-Tennessee joke, I can still only say, "I-- think?-- I get it. There has been much hype about this year's Georgia team. With 19 returning starters (that means players who start playing when the game starts, as they tire or screw up, they are replaced by second-string players), there is much optimism they will win their first SEC championship since 1982. Head Coach Jim Donnan reassured the pep rally crowd, "I've waited 55 years to coach a team with this much potential and something special's gonna happen this year. We're gonna get it done. I guaran-damn-tee it!" Crowd leaps to feet: "wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF! wh-OOF!" I must admit, I never sang along in church as a child because I found it all too reminiscent of the Hokey Pokey at the skating rink. I'll be biting my lip tomorrow as a crowd of 80,000+ bark with the opening kick-off to a battle that for many will be 'a fight to the bitter end.' |
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tim.state@barnesplace.com © Timothy State, 2000 |
Most
do not know the Civil War still rages in the South. The passion
for the gallant fight pumps deep in the hearts of those truly
Southern. Troops of young men who train constantly around the
clock prepare for victory on modern-day battle fields. The air
is crisp. The breeze is sharp. The tree leaves rustle in the
wind. It is the awkward silence before the storm.