Let’s just say what most people think about the University of Alabama. Its football pursuits justify its identity with an uneducated backward white population and a symbolic link to the Lost Cause they hold so dear. Much in the same way as D.W. Griffith’s movie The Birth of a Nation encouraged the worst elements of southern society a hundred years ago; Bama football still encourages a similar backward behavior from a large segment of its fan base today. The Crimson Tide football team is an outlet for their lunatic fringe fans and gives them a venue to be recognized.

Bama fans overestimate the “esteem” of being the last college football factory and unwittingly rob themselves of the very reverence they crave by their boorish and obsessive behavior. They defend the indefensible and deny the undeniable. Their unhealthy emotional stake in Bama football substitutes for their own lack of personal acknowledgement and respect. Hence the ludicrous and totally unmerited claim of several Bama national football championships. They have become avatars of the worst behavior and bear witness to a complicated legacy of an earlier segregated society.

The question is: has Chronic Encephalopathy (CTE) not only affected ex-football players but also metaphorically speaking an entire university and its fan base? These other football victims are driven by extreme emotion and delusions to commit unconscionable often violent actions (Harvey Updyke, Michelle Pritchett, John Phillips, Brian Downing, Shorty Price and many others). Even Nick Saban contributes to the lunacy by comparing losing a football game to the Pearl Harbor and 911 tragedies when thousands of Americans lost their lives.

Similar to the victims of CTE, the University of Alabama’s misplaced priorities of gold-plated football fluff over economic substance harms the state’s citizens with the false bravado of football. History reveals that the holy crusade of Bama football acts as an impediment to social and economic progress. For instance the University of Alabama administration allows white-only sororities to continue their policy of banning African-American females from membership. Ironic that most of the precocious Bama “student athletes” are African-American but their daughters and sisters can be excluded from university sororities.

It is well known that when a university simply reflects the attitudes of its football fans it is no longer a university in the true meaning of the word.Football has stalled the University of Alabama’s transformation into a modern university with intellectual, aesthetic or humanistic concerns. The reality is that the NCAA would actually do the University of Alabama a favor by handing down the Death Penalty for its football team. Then perhaps finally its faculty, alumni and students might appreciate the scholarship and learning that mark a university with intellectual fiber and integrity.

Until then “roll tide” is the shameful apology for those either naive or without individual self-respect.

Selah