It’s football season. We Southerners take football as serious business here. Eight out of the top football states are Southern according to USA Football. Alabama ranks number five with Mississippi leading the pack. Shucks, Mississippi doesn’t often beat Alabama.
Anyway, husband and I saw the “uplifting and heartfelt” movie, Invincible, yesterday and I want to write about football. If you’ve ever seen Remember the Titans, Rudy, Friday Night Lights, Hoosiers, The Rookie or Rocky, well, you know what happens. Vince Papale is a real guy and the film is a fairly accurate portrayal of his life as these things go. It was a good family movie with hardly any rough language (this is Disney after all). The only other thing I noticed was that no one in South Philly in 1976 was locking his doors. Hey you Philadelphians, is this true? Go see Invincible. Reviewers from Entertainment Weekly to the NY Times have liked it. The Rotten Tomato score is good too.
Enough promoting Invincible. Disney can do that. I do have something to say about Mark Wahlberg who portrays Papale. For a guy who started out as a rapper and Calvin Klein underwear model, he’s turned out to be one of my favorite actors. I loved him in Three Kings. And if you’ve seen the HBO series, Entourage, for which Wahlberg is an executive producer, you’ll know his star is rising. Plus, he’s easy on the eyes and has such a sweet, endearing face.
Getting back to football. Warren St. John, Birmingham native and NY Times writer, wrote a wonderful book about football in the South called Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer in 2004. As a two-time University of Alabama graduate, you know my team is Alabama. I never considered attending another college. And when my firstborn son told me about this book, I, as any wise mother does, listened to him.
In RJYH, St. John buys a dilapidated recreational vehicle (RV) and travels around the South to Bama games writing about the people he meets along the way. RJYH tops the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s college sports books with good reason. The book is a funny, often touching picture of football fans. Not just Alabama ones. If you love football, you can identify. Read it.
Now to the really exciting news in our family. Son one and you know who (not me) have tickets to see Alabama’s home opener next Saturday with Hawaii. I don’t mind. The tickets were not cheap, and I have enough Alabama games stored in my memory anyway to do me. They’ll have fun if that pesky storm Ernesto doesn’t mar the day. He’s heading our way if the weather pros are on track.
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