I went to a Southern university where proper ladies and gentlemen of culture wore suits, ties and sundresses to football games on Saturday. Since I was neither proper nor cultured and wouldn’t recognize a lady or a gentleman if they bit me in the ass (a suggestion I offered to more than a few of the nicely-clad drunks on countless occasions while watching the Tide treat an opponent like boudin), I wore the loyal opposition’s uniform: jeans, t-shirt and Chuck Taylor’s. Altercations – even if only verbal – were bound to occur. Some went much farther.
I pushed and was pushed. I swung and was swung at. I insulted and was insulted in return. I had a drink poured over my head. I shoved a group of tweeders into a fallen wad like dominoes (the crowd cheered like Ozzie Newsome had caught a 50-yard bomb). Gangs of “suiters” tried to save entire sections. Gangs of slobs attacked from every side. We beat them back with poster boards bearing messages like “Keith Jackson!” You had to be there.
We smelled like perspiration. They smelled like musk oil and British Sterling. They insulted our family heritage. We had no family heritage, so the insults landed in the bleacers. Have you seen “Braveheart” when the Scottish raise their kilts and show the Brits their freedom-loving butts? We had our own version 20 rows up. A larger-than-lineman art student called “Bared Bryant” would wade into the lovely people; half naked and cursing like an episode of “Deadwood.” When he parted the sundresses and sports jackets like a stoned Moses and dropped trou, mooning the beautiful people, it took the fight right out of them.
At its core, wearing a suit and tie to a football game is Biblically wrong. There’s a verse in Hooteronomy about it. Forgive me if you are, or were, one of those tragic, over-fashioned victims, but if you dress for football like you’re going to an outdoor wedding, you need to watch more ESPN. It is 112 degrees high up on the aluminum hill. Two teams are trying to kill each other down on the grass. People wearing animal costumes roam the sidelines making obscene gestures with stuffed paws. Enough sweat is flowing to dehydrate a herd of camels. You are sucking alcohol from a body-temperature flask and have been three stages past legally intoxicated since Thursday in Psych class. Maybe the coach can get away with a tie, but if you show up drunk at 10 am, dressed like George Clooney in Oceans 11, 12 or 13, don’t be surprised if you feel something warm running down the back of your dress pants while you are standing in line to get your turn at the urinal. The guy behind you in the damp shorts, the guy who dry-shaved his still-bleeding head with his girlfriend’s leg razor and painted himself the team color, that guy is entitled to give you a refresher course on how to act like a damned drunk at a football game. Sorry. Those are the rules.
There is another rule about sunburned, sun-dressed, sloppy-drunk, females that fit’s nicely with the male rules: vomit is not sexy, no matter how much lipstick you put on after you yodel the groceries on your $200 shoes. And gum doesn’t hide the aroma of rancid boilermakers and curdled pizza either. If you are too liquored-up to stand in the heat anymore and decide to sit with your legs dangling off the upper deck, try to keep your knees at least within a yard of each other. Cameras will find you and your parents will not be amused.
As you can tell, this game day dress-up habit confounds me to no end. It happened when I was in college and it is still going on today at many Southern schools. It has got to stop. Dressing up has its place: church, funerals, interviews and court. Just don’t do it while you are jammed into a 45-degree metal angle amid 93,000 people all screaming “bullshit!” at a man in a stripped shirt who can’t see a 400-pound human holding a 387-pound human three feet in front of him.