What it was, was football

Football in the South is not a business, a culture or a religion. It is much more important than any of those. It is what folks talk about most of the year. When the college football regular season ends, the bowl game that one's team earns...is the topic. After the post-season with whatever final ranking is achieved, recruiting sets in until signing day, around February 15. Then six weeks of spring practice is culminated by the spring game. Where else in the world could you ever find anywhere from 45,000 to 90,000 devotees in attendance for a PRACTICE event?

Summertime is for volunteer workouts and then August camp produces the staring lineups and depth charts of the teams that take the field the first weekend in September. The season lasts through November and it starts all over again.

One of the fortunate side effects of traveling all over the Southeast via the interstate highways in the fall updating the Next EXIT, is the increased likelihood that an important game and our route will intersect at the right moment.

So it was recently when the Clemson Tigers and the Auburn Tigers or War Eagles played near Interstate 85 in Alabama. Our team lost, but no matter. The setting, color and pageantry of the event were great. And boy was it hot!