Back in the day I was an English major, and most of my time I studied medieval literature-- things like saints, heroes and romances.  One of my favorite saints, for instance, is Saint Boniface, but I have held a grudge against him for one specific thing: he destroyed a huge, ancient oak tree and then bragged about it.  Doubtless, old Boniface felt justified in what he was doing (the pagans worshiped it after all, and he was a Christian bishop), but the story has never set well with me because when you get right down to it, Boniface wanted to destroy his pagan rival so badly that he would literally wipe its presence off the landscape.  And an ancient oak whose rings could remember when Rome fell was the sacrificial victim.  There is no justifiable reason in a land of cultural warfare to blight the earth, to enact a scorched earth policy to punish the land.  To scorch the land is to scorch the very memory of a culture, to alter it forever. 

Photo by Robert S. Donovan, via flickr.com)

So, in the last twenty-four hours I have been thinking through the nature of this rivalry from an outsider's perspective (outsider to the South, to football, largely, and to the SEC fandom), and trying to figure out if there is any lesson we can learn from this about how fans should treat each other and respect each other's memory.  The whole point of a rivalry is to is to have a relationship, I always figured.  Rivalries foster relationships with others in the spirit of competition, for bragging rights and glory.  You need a tradition or common history to do that, and in each side's playful demonizing of the other side there is still underneath a mutual, grudging respect for each side to have their glory, their own history of their region.  The sides of the rivalry therefore affirm each other and give them respect as a worthy opponent.  

What "Al from Dadeville" did to Toomer's corner didn't have anything to do with rivalry.  He wanted to wipe Auburn out by killing the place that holds their own memories, even a small (though significant) part of who they are.  The Toomer's oaks are fading, and in this time, I'm praying that with this comes a reconsideration of what a rivalry is, and what it means.  Rivalries don't need to be destroyed, but they need to be recognized for what they are.  And those within those rivalries need to recognize the consequences of how they act.

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As much as I really do like football (and especially college football), what I really love are football fans.  The SEC fan base is one of the most thoroughly entertaining cultures I have ever seen, even though they sometimes get on my nerves, and I love reveling with the Volunteers in the rituals and traditions of the sport. 

So, that being said, I really wanted to figure out how we as a fan base were reacting to the news of Derek Dooley's recent translation from Louisiana to Knoxville, Tennessee, and I turned to Google's trend trackers to figure that out. What I discovered was really darn funny: Lane Kiffin is yesterday's news.  The real tragedy of the last week, apparently, is the end of the Layla Kiffin Era.

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Dear Mr. Kiffin,

I'm willing to let your vapid self-aggrandizement and self-denial go up to a certain point, mostly because it's pointless to expect anything better of you.  But when you suggested in your USC press conference that the students were rioting because you must have done some things right here in Knoxville, for some reason I can't let that one slide.  Is that actually what you thought when you were huddled inside an athletics building with a police escort while hundreds of students were waiting for you to step outside? You high-tailed it out of Knox faster than a snake-bit hound.  You were there; you know better. 

I know better, too; I was there to watch the crowd.  And, after having done something you wouldn't-- hang about to observe the aftermath of your hatchet-blow to this campus, I just want to point out one thing.

Lane, sweetie: try taking a page from your Daddy's play-book and man up just a little, for heaven's sake, before you embarrass somebody.  Take a look at the photos.  That wasn't sadness or disappointment I saw last night-- that's outrage.    None of these students are waving with all five fingers. 

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Wow, lol vol should just retire after his or her first post.

-- Joel

There was something about watching a nice guy like Tim Tebow last weekend laid out like a dead fish on ice that bothered me.  Actually, that wasn't what bothered me-- it was listening to Urban Meyer talk about how "terrific" Tebow "looked" (as if he can see his brain) and his insistence that LSU was not necessarily off the table for him.  And he said that right after admitting that Tebow was still having headaches and still can't watch TV or read,  possibly four days after getting hit on the head.  To me that raised a red flag because that means he's still post-concussion symptomatic.

Okay, so I'm not a doctor, but Tebow's plight intrigues me. For one, when I started college, I suffered three concussions in three years, one of which included getting slapped upside the head with a folding chair (yes I was on stage, but no, I wasn't on Jerry Springer).  It's made me naturally curious about getting one's head smacked.  And, since I teach research techniques as part of my job, it's fairly easy for me to turn a vague, passive interest into a dissertation project.  So I did some poking around in the medical journals over the last couple of days just to see where the state of the field lies on concussions.  What I've read suggests that the current "conventional wisdom" on concussions is mostly based on anecdotal evidence; based on this same convention, Tebow might be play-ready in time for LSU.  But a lot of other research coming out suggests that that only a one or two week window to heal might not be what's best for a smacked head.  The medical understanding of concussions is complicated, diverse, and there's no real medical consensus.  On balance, however, it seems that the safe thing would be for Tebow to sit out just one more week; that would put him in a compromise between the different suggested waiting times, and it would also reduce his risk of getting Second-Impact Syndrome if he gets hit hard.  I just doubt that's what he's probably going to do.

So before I continue, let me reassert that this constitutes neither a thorough treatment of the research nor sound medical advice.   I was curious and I was bored.   Are we all clear?  Then let's begin!

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