Ed Southern - Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

Copyright 2021 by Ed Southern

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Jason Heuer

Blair is an imprint of Carolina Wren Press.

The mission of Blair/Carolina Wren Press is to seek out, nurture, and promote literary work by new and underrepresented writers.

We gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support of general operations by the Durham Arts Councils United Arts Fund and the North Carolina Arts Council.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

The commentary and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Blair/Carolina Wren Press or its employees.

ISBN: 978-1-94-946769-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Southern, Ed, 1972- author.

Title: Fight songs : a story of love and sports in a complicated South / Ed Southern.

Description: Durham, N.C. : Blair, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021022530 (print) | LCCN 2021022531 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949467697 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781949467703 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: College sportsSocial aspectsSouthern States. | Sports spectatorsSouthern StatesAttitudes. | Group identitySouthern States. | Southern StatesSocial life and customs.

Classification: LCC GV351.3.S684 S68 2021 (print) | LCC GV351.3.S684 (ebook) | DDC 796.04/30975dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022530

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022531

Societies live by borrowing from each other, but they define themselves rather by the refusal of borrowing than by its acceptance.

Marcel Mauss, The Nation

Damn dont they take their football seriously around here?

Paul W. Bear Bryant

ONCE THERE LAY A land, green and rolling, between a long chain of mountains and a treacherous sea. This land held only a couple of real cities, but a lot of jumped-up towns. The people who lived in this land didnt much care for one another, by and largenot for the ones who lived in the lands far corners, not for those right across the state lines, not even for their next-door neighbors, sometimes. To a visitor the people of the land seemed more or less alike, but a resident could go on for hours about the foreign, foolish, and downright immoral ways of those who preferred to wear different colors while they watched young people throw and catch a rubber ball wrapped in leather.

But for all they saw as foreignnessbecause of all they saw as foreignnessit could seem like most everyone in this land came together every year, just before spring sprung, to cease all daily business and watch the champions of their preferred colors compete in a tournament so all-consuming that they called it just the Tournament.

Once, this Tournament was three high holy days, three feast and festival days, all in a row. Friends and families gathered to wear their preferred colors in close proximity and eat traditional foods. The outcomes made stonehearted men weep with joy or despair.

Time passed. Things changed. The land increased its commerce with the greater nation, as it long had dreamed and striven for. Natives moved away. Newcomers, many of whom knew little of the old ways and cared even less, came, with cables and satellite dishes that let them nurture distant loyalties. The land and its people pushed against their old horizons, and this was not a bad thing, not at all. But the land became less of a land, less cohesive and neighborly. Fewer and fewer in the land cared about the Tournament, and nobody cared as much.

Still and all, millions cared, cared much and maybe too much, kept the old Tournament seeped in their bones and speech and manner, and one of those millions was me. The Tournament wasnt what it used to be, but then, neither were we, and maybe never had been.

In the second week of March, the year of our Lordour apparently angry Lord2020, I came back from a trip to Alabama to my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, just in time for those high holy days of my home state, the Atlantic Coast Conference Mens Basketball Tournament. The Tournament began on a Tuesday, with my team, my lifelong loyalty, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, losing as a 12-seed to 13-seed Pitt, the second straight year the Deacons season had ended in the first and least Tournament matchup.

That sentence has at least five things wrong with it, none of them the facts, grammar, or spelling.

Still, the Tournament that year was back in the Greensboro Coliseum, its ancestral home, less than a half hour drive from Winston-Salem, and so even if I couldnt root for the team I was rooted in, I planned to go. I was writing a book about our roots and our rooting interests; about the Souths favorite sports and how theyre entangled with our histories and identities; about why North Carolina sets its seasons by college basketball when the Deep South sets theirs by college football. I had been in Alabama working on that book, my personal story about the stories we use to tell each other and ourselves who we are, my fun little book about sports hate and true love.

This is not that book.

For that book I planned to drive over to Greensboro late Friday, go see what a ticket was going for in the parking lot, grab a barbecue sandwich from Stameys across the street, and watch the Tournament in Greensboro as of old, as God and the Pilot intended, as every good North Carolinian should, once at least, and as often as possible.

Then, all of a sudden, I couldnt.

Then, all of a sudden, the stories wed told ourselves so long fell apart.