Sports Saturday
The mighty University of Alabama football team will be contending for its third national title in four year on January 7 and once again, wherever you look, fans of the Crimson Tide are confidently chanting their mantra, Roll Tide. As a University of Tennessee fan, I find this most distressing.
ESPN has a funny take on Alabama’s slogan. In its “It’s not crazy, it’s sports” ad series—designed, I suspect, to convince sports fans that they are not throwing their lives away as they spend countless hours watching ESPN—there is an ad where Alabama fans are seen delivering the line in a range of situations. A policeman says “Roll Tide” as he gives a ticket to a speeder and the driver says “Roll Tide” as he accepts it. School kids call out “roll tide” to their mother as they climb out of the family van. “Roll Tide” is the final phrase in a funeral service.
The image of a rolling tide brings to mind a Byron poem that captures the inexorable nature of the Alabama team:
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore;–upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.
Yes, there are mighty football teams, especially in the Southeast Conference, that seem capable of marking the earth with ruin. When they walk into the stadium, they have the impressive presence of ten thousand fleets. After encountering Coach Nick Saban’s team, however, they sink “into thy depths with bubbling groan.” Like a drop of rain (unless, they are Texas A&M, who dealt Alabama its one defeat this season), they go down “unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.”
Roll on, thou Crimson Tide—roll.
W. S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) wrote a humorous parody of Byron’s poem that we can use, in this discussion, to capture the strangeness of how fans can feel empowered by a team. Gilbert is addressing the Earth:
To the Terrestial Globe
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of Space
Roll on!
What though I’m in a sorry case?
What though I cannot meet my bills?
What though I suffer toothache’s ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
Never you mind!
Roll on!
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through seas of inky air
Roll on!
It’s true I’ve got no shirts to wear;
It’s true my butcher’s bill is due;
It’s true my prospects all look blue —
But don’t let that unsettle you!
Never you mind!
Roll on!
(It rolls on)
The final parenthetical expression makes the poem for me. We may feel empowered when our team wins, but that doesn’t change the fact that our lives are small and miserable. We may puff ourselves up following a victory, but our team is unaware of our existence. Regardless of what we say, it will do what it does.
But don’t let that unsettle you. Roll Tide.
