Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

by Ed Southern
Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

by Ed Southern

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Overview

A wry and witty commentary on college sports and identity in the complicated social landscape of the South.

Ed Southern, lifelong fan of the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons, the smallest school in the NCAA's Power 5, set out to tell the story of how he got tangled, in vines of history and happenstance, with the two giants of his favorite sport: the Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers. He set out to tell how a North Carolina native crossed the shifty, unmarked border between Tobacco Road and the Deep South. He set out to tell how the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, from beyond the grave, introduced him to his wife, a Birmingham native and die-hard Alabama fan.

While he was writing that story, though, 2020 came along.

Suddenly his questions had a new and urgent focus: Why do sports mean so much that so many will play and watch them in the face of a global pandemic? How have the South's histories shaped its fervor for college sports? How have college sports shaped how southerners construct their identities, priorities, and allegiances? Why is North Carolina passionate about college basketball when its neighbors to the South live and die by college football? Does this have anything to do with North Carolina's reputation as the most "progressive" southern state, a state many in the Deep South don't think is "really" southern? If college sports really do mean so much in the South, then why didn't everyone down south wear masks or recognize that Black Lives Matter, even after the coaches told us to?

Fight Songs explores the connections and contradictions between the teams we root for and the places we plant our roots; between the virtues that sports are supposed to teach and the cutthroat business they've become; between the hopes of fans and the demands of the past, present, and future.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781958888087
Publisher: Blair
Publication date: 09/05/2023
Pages: 308
Sales rank: 994,670
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ed Southern is the author of The Jamestown Adventure, Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas, and the short-story collection Parlous Angels. His work has appeared in South Writ Large, the Asheville Poetry Review, storySouth, the NC 10x10 Play Festival, and elsewhere. Since 2008, he has been the executive director of the North Carolina Writers' Network. He lives in Winston-Salem.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Story I Set Out to Tell

1 Once There Lay a Land 1

2 No More Fun & Games 7

3 Maybe the Best Story I Have 15

Part 2 O My Loved & Lovely South

4 Almost the South 25

5 Neither of Us Drawl 39

6 My Name's Got Nothing to Do with It 51

7 War, Games 69

Part 3 Tobacco Road

8 I Want So Badly to Have Been There 95

9 Paving Tobacco Road 111

10 Deacon Blues 129

11 Yea, Alabama 141

Part 4 The Glories of Our House

12 Barbecue with Mister Wake Forest 161

13 The Names 177

14 A Dangerous & Predatory Business 191

15 The Complications 227

16 The Stories We Tell Ourselves 245

Afterword 271

Acknowledgments 285

Bibliography 287

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