More than a game

First in a series.

Football has evolved into the never-ending sport.

Whatever the medium - newspapers, TV, sports talk radio, Internet message boards or just folks hanging around the water cooler or at the local diner - inevitably talk turns to all things

football.

It's the hot topic 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year, especially in the Deep South.

The passion for the sport doesn't start and end with the college game, either. High school stadiums are the place to be on Friday nights in the fall - a spot for community socializing much like Sunday church.

For players and coaches, the game is no longer just a seasonal activity to be enjoyed for a while and then move on to the next sport. It's more than that. Off-season workouts begin shortly after the final game of the season and continue throughout the year. Summer vacation is a just a myth.

No doubt, it's a football world these days, and it would be hard to find anyone who says that's a bad thing.

The odor emanating from the Wayne County High School field house is unmistakable, and it ain't something freshly made from Rachel Ray's kitchen, either.

The smell is a combination of sweat and grime, with a pinch of mustiness thrown in for good measure.

Just a few feet away, coach Rick Rice's office - it's really more like a big closet - is cluttered like an 8-year-old's bedroom only with big-boy stuff scattered around. The upholstery on the desk chairs is ripped and the desks themselves - they're under the clutter somewhere - look to be vintage pre-World War II surplus.

Non-fans wouldn't understand how a collection of high school students and a couple of coaches could survive an extended period of time inside the field house and coaching office. But for those involved with the game, it's their second home.

About 40 miles south of Waynesboro, Spirit Hill at Braly Stadium in Florence comes alive on game days for the University of North

Alabama. Fans of Division II's top-ranked football team arrive early for a mini-tailgate experience on the days when the hometown Lions are going to play.

Music blasts from speakers in multiple locations as local radio stations set up shop for promotions. Underneath tents that are outlined in purple and gold - the school's colors - fans both young and old mill around, chomping on traditional tailgate foods that seem to have been invented for afternoons in the fall.

As game time nears, inside the stadium the Pride of Dixie marching band plays, mascot Leo the Lion makes a spectacle of himself, the cheerleaders cheer and fans anticipate the approaching kickoff and what they hope will be another dominant performance by the Lions.

Home football games on Saturdays in Tuscaloosa and Auburn are expansive displays of fandom with something of a rock concert flair. The stars, of course, are the Tigers and Tide players and coaches. Tailgaters arrive early and stay late, and for three and a half hours each week in the fall, time seems to stand still when their teams are playing. Nothing seems to be quite as important as whether the Tide and Tigers are winning.

It's early Saturday morning and the stadium is mostly empty - no noisy student sections, no marching bands trying to out-do the other, no radio crews broadcasting the games to faceless fans sitting at home.

Those who are in the bleachers are mostly moms and dads, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and grandmas and grandpas there to watch family members.

Headsets and coaching coordinators are non-existent - mostly it's dads or volunteer coaches on the sideline calling the plays, often hoping their team can at least get lined up in the correct formation.

Welcome to youth league football - a staple of the southern lifestyle that breeds the next generation of Bo Jacksons and Julio Joneses.

Auburn coach Gene Chizik calls football "the greatest game in the world."

In the next breath, he wonders why that's so. As a coach, his livelihood revolves around the performance of young men ages 18 to 23.

He said there's really no logical explanation for the passion and commitment football players expend in their sport.

"There's something funny about the game because common sense will tell you that you practice year-round to play 12 times doesn't make sense," Chizik said recently. "Then you practice in 105-degree weather on Tuesday and Wednesday and beat each other up, all so that you can get to the game. It's hard to explain."

Theories abound as to why football is king around these parts. Some historians argue that it's the South's revenge for coming out on the short end of the scoreboard in the Civil War.

Kirk McNair, editor of Bama Magazine and one of the premier authorities on Alabama football, doesn't subscribe to that theory. Instead, he credits Dr. George Denny for having the foresight to realize football and the college experience could go hand in hand.

"He decided that football would be important to the university," McNair said. "He realized that having a good football team could attract students. He was so far ahead of the time. It's the same formula Dr. (Robert) Witt uses today - if you spend $4 million for a football coach, it pays off in the long run; if you spend $50 million to expand the stadium, you make that back in five years."

Former Auburn athletics and sports information director David Housel, an authority on the Tigers, agrees with McNair that football's explosion of popularity can be traced to the 1920s.

"We're born to it," Housel said of the region's passion for football. "Our egos and self-image are tied up in it. A lot of it goes back to the days when football began to become a passion in this part of the world.

"In those days, Alabama led the way. It had those great Rose Bowl teams and it received a lot of national acclaim."

Housel said that in those days, just a generation removed from the Civil War, there was still resentment from much of the country toward the South.

Alabama won five Rose Bowls between 1926-46.

"Those wins gave the South something to hang onto," Housel said. "Of course, the outcome of games has nothing to do with the quality of person they are or aren't, but football is a game where it feeds your self esteem if your team wins."

Housel is reluctant to call the Auburn-Alabama rivalry the best in any sport, but he points out it

is different from many other top rivalries.

"I'm not going to say that Alabama and Auburn is bigger for us than the Red Sox and Yankees, but they play more than one time per year. If you are a college football fan, given that all the games are one day and you have a week of build up, I'm not sure anything is better. There's nothing like it."

How deep does the passion for football run? According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, nearly 1.2 million student-athletes played some form of football in 2008-09. Attendance at Southeastern Conference football games averaged 75,816 per game - tops in the nation. In the NFL, attendance topped 17 million in 2007.

Small towns, big cities, it doesn't matter. If there's a game, it'll attract a crowd.

John Hardin spent nearly three decades coaching football at tiny Hackleburg High School in rural northwest Alabama. For him, playing football was something that was expected of the boys at the school.

"It was part of growing up," he said. "It's what you did on Friday night, it didn't matter what else was going - and usually there wasn't anything else going on."

Rice, coach of the second-ranked Wayne County Wildcats, calls football "a special game."

"You put in all this time for just 10 ballgames," he said.

"That's crazy, isn't it? It's something you truly have to love and have a passion for. This is something I love to do. How many people can go to work and say it's not work, it's fun?"

Players and coaches agree camaraderie and competition are part of what make football such a great game.

"It's the warrior mentality that makes you want to compete," Florence coach Alvin Briggs said. "If you really love the game, you are going to come out here and compete every day in practice no matter what. I miss that I can't get out there and compete."

Briggs, who played for coach Pat Dye at Auburn, now channels his competitive juices by matching wits with opposing coaches and trying to extract the potential from players.

"That's part of the fun of it," he said.

"Seeing how we, as coaches, can get those players to compete on a level that we are used to seeing."

Former UNA coach Mark Hudspeth, who now is an assistant at Mississippi State, said the competition is what drives most players and coaches.

"Anybody who loves competition loves the game of football because it's a group of people representing a community or a university," he said.

"It's the greatest game in the world - it brings people together.

"It's a lot like life. After a loss, it's almost like a death in the family, and there's nothing greater than a victory."

Gregg Dewalt can be reached at 740-5748 or gregg.dewalt@

TimesDaily.com.

Auburn beat writer Luke Brietzke contributed to this story.