Anyone who enjoys college football should consider giving this in-depth case study in fandom a look, even though it's written by and focuses on fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide, a team that I, like so many others, am unable to contemplate without feeling a mixture of disgust and hatred. As a Texas Longhorns fan, I'll never forget the cosmic cruelties of the 2009 BCS Championship Game, and I'll always remember the peculiar sense I felt when the Tide played Big 12 turncoats/SEC newcomers Texas A&M in 2012, nearly unable to decide who to pull for in a can't-they-both-lose spectacle of competing acrimonies.

The author, a journalist for the New York Times, is a lifelong Tide fan who decided to do some research into the nature of fandom, hoping to shed a little light on why millions of otherwise psychologically healthy people devote time, energy, and money to sports. Though the urge to root for sports teams is nearly universal, people have been fascinated with its seeming irrationality for millennia. St. John has a good quote from the ancient Roman author Pliny the Younger about our propensity to cheer for laundry:

"It surprises me all the more that so many thousands of adult men should have such a childish passion for watching galloping horses and drivers standing in chariots, over and over again. If they were attracted by the speed of the horses or the driver's skill one could account for it, but in fact it is the racing-colours they really support and care about, and if the colours were to be exchanged in mid-course during a race, they would transfer their favor and enthusiasm and rapidly desert the famous drivers and horses whose names they shout as they recognize them from afar. Such is the popularity and importance of a worthless shirt."

He conducted field research in the form of following the Tide, in an RV if possible, for the entire 1999 season from the opener against Vanderbilt right up until the SEC championship game against Florida (oddly, he devotes only a single oblique paragraph in the epilogue to the Orange Bowl against Michigan, a heartbreaking loss also notable for being Tom Brady's final college game). The real draw are the characters he encounters along the way, such as:

- a couple who missed their daughter's wedding so they could attend the rivalry game against Tennessee (don't worry, they made the reception afterwards)
- a couple where the wife was having a gall bladder attack, and she desperately got hopped up on Demerol for a bowl game against Ohio State before dealing with her medical issue
- a man who crashed his plane into a tree before the Mississippi State game, yet still made it

These people are really funny to read about, and though as an outsider I read their stories in much the same check-out-this-trainwreck spirit that drives people to watch horrible reality TV shows, by the end I admired the author for doing what I thought impossible - humanizing Bama fans. I freely acknowledge the arbitrariness of sports fandom, yet I still can't resist compulsively refreshing ESPN to get my fix of modern tribalism during football season. If you've ever chuckled knowingly at those Bud Light "it's only weird if it doesn't work" commercials, you should check this out as soon as you've fortified your stomach against the prospect of nearly 300 pages about crimson and white. It's broader than that, and you may find yourself with a deeper appreciation for your (our) shared obsession. ( )

Really interesting look into fandom, in particular college football insanity. ( )

I should preface this review by saying that I am not a sports fan and not a football fan, and I was not looking forward to reading this book, which was recommended to me. So with all that in mind, no one is more shocked than I am by how much I loved this book.

The book is essentially an Alabamian-turned-New Yorker's experience taking a leave of absence from his job to follow the Alabama Crimson Tide football team in an RV. It is a funny and sometimes surprisingly poignant account of his time at home and away games. He introduces us to the people he met along the way, many of whom start out as comical caricatures and then surprise us with their complexity. Somewhat critical to the story is the fact that, even though the author is from Alabama and grew up following the Tide, he is almost universally viewed as an outsider because he lives in New York and introduces himself as a reporter, which affects many of his interactions.

If you do not like reading accounts of sporting events with mind-numbing detail about fumbles and touchdowns and interceptions (I do not), you will actually be OK with this book. The discussion of what actually happened in the games was limited to a few pages at most per game, and for the most part, you can skip ahead to find out whether the team won or lost without missing anything. The book is about southern football culture (which is basically a religion), and the games themselves are not actually all that relevant to the broader story.

A couple of things I do feel inclined to mention. First, the author can be a little bit sexist, occasionally expressing shock when good-looking college women are drunk or screaming profanities at the games. He is young enough to know that being obnoxious is not the exclusive provenance of 20-something frat boys, and I found these passages annoying.

Also, the author does occasionally touch on issues of racism among the fans, and while the book is obviously meant to be a mostly lighthearted account of his experience, he could've broached this subject with a little more introspection. He does talk about the incongruous logic of the racist fan, but he doesn't ever really touch on the exploitative nature of college sports or the deeply entrenched racism at some of the institutions featured in this book. I don't think this type of book demands an in-depth study of the issue, but I felt distinctly as though the author was intentionally giving a very big issue only the most perfunctory mention. ( )

My blog post about this book is at this link . ( )

Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer; A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania. Warren St. John. 2004. Two sports books within a couple of months of each other! Have I lost my mind!? No, My Losing Season was a marvelous book and so is this one. St.John is a life-long Alabama football fan who had his picture taken with The Bear when he was a child. He is fascinated with “fandom” and wanted to find out, if he could why fans, especially Alabama fans are so rabid. He decides to follow the Crimson Tide for a year and he decides to make this trek with the RVers, those fans who travel from game to game, in RVs of all sizes. This is one of the funniest books I have ever read! St.John is a great writer and he has a marvelous ear for language. You don’t have to be an Alabama fan (in fact, some Alabama fans might not like the way they’re portrayed) to appreciate this funny, intelligent book. ( )