Who is your team?

Sports happen all year round in different seasons, much like nature itself.

When I was coming of age there were three distinct seasons that overlapped the traditional four equinox-related time periods. (I went into great detail to explain all the equinoxes in a previous post.) Those three seasons were Football, Basketball and Baseball.

Basketball overlapped both Football and Baseball as a bridge season. Hockey had not been invented yet, and as soccer journalist Roger Bennett likes to say, soccer has been “America’s sport of the future since 1972.” I’m trying to learn soccer, and from what I’ve been able to observe, it’s always soccer season in some form.

In the South, there is really only one season, and we’re in it: College Football Season. It is simultaneously idolatry and a motivator for religious faith. On one hand, it can distract you from your regular religious practice while on the other, it can cause a prayer to be lifted to the heavens by anyone whose team lines up for a field goal with seconds remaining on the clock or, as the Dawgs did last weekend at Tennessee, emerges from the huddle in a run formation trying to secure the go-ahead touchdown in overtime. But I digress…

Regular readers of New South Essays will no doubt recall that in June I changed jobs. That has provided the opportunity for me to make new work acquaintances and have those introductory conversations with my new coworkers that as an extrovert I enjoy so much.

This week I had a casual, hallway conversation with a new colleague who innocently asked me, “Who is your team?”

It was a simple question with a complicated answer. Honestly, it stumped me for a moment. For pro football, it’s easy: Dallas Cowboys. OK, so not so easy these days, but I was born in Fort Worth and grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Being a Cowboys fan came with my birth certificate.

But when it comes to college football fandom, I contain multitudes.

I matriculated at what was then Troy State University. The Trojans competed in NCAA Division II athletics and had won a national championship in football the year before I showed up on campus in the fall of 1988.

During my four years in Troy, they were lackluster, never winning more than five games in a season. Immediately after I graduated, they moved up to NCAA Division I-AA and went 10-1 making the playoffs. Troy now competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) in the SunBelt Conference. They have notched notable wins in recent years against Mississippi State, Missouri, Navy, Oklahoma State, LSU, Nebraska, and Army. A few weeks ago they gave Clemson a run for its money, but that was back when we thought Clemson might be good this year.

Because Troy is “my school,” they will forever be No. 1 in my heart, but I also earned a degree and worked at Mercer University, now a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) powerhouse. Rooting for the Bears has taken on new urgency since our middle son, Harris, is now a junior there. We’ve been to a couple of games his first two years there, and that first one against VMI his freshman year was a surreal experience.

Mercer didn’t play intercollegiate football from 1942 to 2012, which included the years I worked there (1999-2003.) So being a Mercer football fan has been a relatively recent occurrence. Seeing the gameday activities let alone a stadium in the heart of campus was not something I had ever imagined.

Before becoming attached to Mercer, I attended games Between the Hedges in Athens with my Macon friends, Mitch and Tim. I was an invited guest off and on from 1992 to 1999. I dutifully rooted for the Dawgs on those days, but truth be told, my support of the University of Georgia dated back to their 1980 season when they won the national championship. My dad grew up in Georgia, so we followed them from our home in Texas from afar. I distinctly remember watching the Georgia-Florida game that year when Lindsay Scott took Buck Belue’s pass 92 yards to give the Bulldogs a dramatic, late victory.

I also pulled for the Dawgs against Texas in the Cotton Bowl in 1984 when we were living in Central Florida. We were a house divided with Dad and I rooting for Georgia and Mom and Lee cheering for our native Texas team. Georgia won 10-9 spawning the traditional question Georgia fans of a certain age will all know: “What time is it in Texas? 10 to 9.”

My Georgia fandom took on more importance when I began dating the former Carla Barron of Sandersville, Ga. Her father and uncle had taken her and her cousin to games, and when I entered the picture, I read the room. If I had any shot of winning Carla’s hand in matrimony, I had to prove myself a worthy son-in-law by cheering for the Dawgs. That provided several opportunities to trek up Georgia Highway 15 from Sandersville to Athens with Lanny to pull for Georgia.

When I went to work at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012, our oldest son, Barron, who was 11, and very astute about such things, asked, “Does this mean we have to be Tech fans now?”

My answer was always something along the lines of, “You cheer for whoever you want. Georgia Tech puts food on our table, so I will root for the Jackets.”

Those Paul Johnson-led Yellow Jackets teams were fun. They never quite broke through into the national championship conversation, but they were always competitive, beating Mississippi State to win the Orange Bowl in 2014. The first game I took the family to at Bobby Dodd Stadium was an improbable 28-17 win over Miami that season.

I still have a soft spot for the Jackets and want to see them do well even after leaving the employment of The Institute in 2019.

Our family became firmly entrenched among the Georgia faithful again in 2021 when our oldest transferred and joined the Georgia Redcoat Marching Band. He was able to perform on the field for two national championships and was at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2022 when Ohio State missed a field goal as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, sending the Dawgs to the national title game against TCU, which they won handily.

So, that, faithful readers, is how I answered my new friend’s question. The “TL;DR” version of my answer? My college football team is the Troy Trojans/Mercer Bears/Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets/Georgia Bulldogs.

Like I said, I contain multitudes.

Enjoy college football season and say your prayers.