Product Description

What is it about sports that turns otherwise sane people into raving lunatics? Why does winning compel people to tear down goal posts, and losing, to drown themselves in bad keg beer? In short, why do fans care?

In search of answers, Warren St. John seeks out the roving community of RVers who follow the Alabama Crimson Tide from game to game. A movable feast of Weber grills and Igloo coolers, these are hard-core football fans who arrive on Wednesday for Saturday’s game: The Reeses, who skipped their own daughter’s wedding because it coincided with a Bama game; Ray Pradat, the Episcopal minister who watches the games on a television beside his altar while performing weddings; and John Ed, the wheeling and dealing ticket scalper whose access to good seats gives him power on par with the governor. In no time at all, St. John buys an RV (a $5,500 beater named The Hawg) and joins the caravan for a full football season, chronicling the world of the extreme fan and learning that in the shadow of the stadium, it can all begin to seem strangely normal.

Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is not only a hilarious travel story, but a cultural anthropology of fans that goes a long way toward demystifying the universal urge to take sides and to win.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21140 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-31
• Released on: 2005-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
St. John's account of following the University of Alabama's football team as a part of the team's fanatical legion of tailgaters is just as much fun as the book's title (words to a school chant). As St. John, an Alabama native who writes for the New York Times, tries to join Bama RV nation, he spends five months obsessing about every tiny detail associated with Alabama football and, in the process, comes into contact with a slew of good ol' boys, well-to-do entrepreneurs and the most hated man in Alabama. Despite his own passion for Bama football, St. John is an outsider and must go to the extreme, like buying his own dilapidated RV (astutely nicknamed "The Hawg"), to be completely accepted by the hardcore RV-owning regulars. Driving the country roads from Gainesville to Nashville, St. John uncovers the ugly, quirky and splendid qualities of both football fans and the states below the Mason-Dixon line. But this book is more than a beer and barbecue–fueled travelogue. St. John also explores the sociological and physical effects of being a rabid sports fan. These journalistic asides contrast nicely with St. John's superstitious, obsessed sports-fan persona, which rules much of this amusing and insightful book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School - With the intent of investigating hard-core "fandom" in all its extreme manifestations, St. John, an Alabama native and lifelong fan of the Crimson Tide, spent a season commingling with those who trail this college football team from stadium to stadium. He purchased a motor home and joined the dedicated crowd that often arrived for the Saturday game on Wednesday, jamming the roadways of the host town and jockeying for prime parking in lots where they quickly deployed all of the amenities of ongoing tailgate parties. The narrative is lively and entertaining, punctuated by rich regional speech patterns and sports-related profanity. A modest amount of space is devoted to analyzing fan moods/behaviors from a sociological standpoint (why fandom "is as much about opposing as advocating"), but the greater portion of the book consists of memorably drawn portraits of the regulars in the crowd, including a couple who skipped their daughter's wedding because it conflicted with a game. The coach, the team, their stats, and headline-generating plays are certainly on scene, but it is the fan action that St. John captures with empathy and wit. - Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Wearing a very thin veneer of journalistic detachment, veteran reporter St. John decided to follow his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide football team during the 1999 season, intrigued by one couple who chose an Alabama game over their daughter's wedding (they made the reception). The team slogan, "Roll Tide," is coin of the realm here, and the author uses it liberally to insinuate himself into a large, highly individuated group of RVers who follow their team each week from stadium lot to stadium lot throughout the Deep South. With perfect balance and deadpan humor--think Ball Four--St. John brings a journalist's clarified sense of detail and narration to his story, both the unfolding of the Alabama season and his slow-developing but enduring friendships within the RV community. The portraits of his fellow Bama fans are sharp, sneaky-funny, but not unlovingly drawn. But he just can't help himself: he is forever a fan, subject to every quicksilver high and low, every triumph and indignity and cosmic mystery that befall the rest of us. He never professes to completely understand the nature of being a fan, though he reveals here and there, as if by accident, some simple truths. "I chose Alabama the way a baby bird chooses its mother," he offers at one point. "It was the first thing I saw." Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved