Posted on 11/14/2009 7:25:27 AM PST by Saije
Each Sunday, Peyton Alsobrook, a 19-year-old freshman at Auburn University, gets together with his Alpha Tau Omega fraternity brothers to compare notes on the women they take on dates to Saturday football games.
Those who seem bored are eliminated from further consideration, he says, along with any who might talk too much during a close game "because they're from up North or something." As the all-important Alabama game approaches, Mr. Alsobrook says he's narrowed his list of potential dates to four. The winner, he says, will get a coveted ticket to the big game and, beyond that, special treatment that might include candy or even "actual flowers."
As the Southeastern Conference solidifies its place as the most prestigious in college football—it has produced the last three national champions—the profile of its games and the growing scarcity of tickets have taken a toll on some of the most genteel (some might say antiquated) traditions of college football in the deep South. The University of Mississippi has already banned the waving of confederate flags, replaced a mascot that reminds some of a plantation owner and this week told its marching band to stop playing a song that ends with the words "the South will rise again."
This season, another old Southern football tradition has found itself in the crosshairs. Fraternities, which have long been given some of the best seats in the stadium at schools like Auburn, are facing the prospect of losing the privilege. To avoid this, they're taking a page from their fathers and grandfathers before them: Putting on coats and ties and showing up with a date.
The pressure is coming from alumni and other fans who think these tickets aren't being used, or who don't like the way the fraternity members behave.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
My nephew is in one of the photos in the slide show. My wife and I are graduates of “the other place”.
We wore ties to the games in Tuscaloosa back in the late 70’s/early 80’s. As a fraternity pledge, we had to be at the game when the gates opened to “save seats” for the fraternity members.
Geaux Tigers.
“I still feel sorry for my husband b/c he went to a college without a football team.”
University of New Orleans?
it is unfortunate that well-dressed young gentlemen and ladies who are actually students at these universities are being shoved aside for boors who never attended any college and are as apt to paint circles around their nipples in the school colors and bare them for the television cameras...all for the sake of outrageous and highly profitable ticket prices. It has always been a tradition in the south to dress decently for football games and to take a libation into the stadium to celebrate touchdowns...something the bluenoses have eliminated. if you see someone in a southern stadium inappropriately dressed it is highly likely he is a non-student, non-alumni, who is, indeed, not from around here.
Worse. Emory. No football, uber-liberal, and in Atlanta.
Ol Dixie Ping
A 'mixed marriage'? How did your family react when you brought him home?
I went to such a school too. I think we gave up football years earlier when our teams would get beaten by local high school teams.
My family doesn't care. It's sort of like why would a giant be bothered by a speck. His family is the one that gets all worked up. They usually resort to the we're-Ivy-League-in-the-South-and-y'all-are-just-a-bunch-of-web-toed-coonasses argument. Whatever. They still beg us for tickets to the big games.
Tulane - LSU was still a big game until about the time that the Sugar Bowl was torn down in a typical Louisiana dirty deal.
Tulane was in the SEC until the mid 1960s, but the collapse of the program was well underway at that point.
I’ve always thought there should be a ‘Southern Ivy’ football conference - Tulane, Rice, SMU, perhaps TCU, Baylor, Tulsa, Vandy, Wake, Duke would be a good start.
Saw Tulane was playing Rice today in the Nerd Bowl.
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