The Lost Cause
by Virginia Ottley Craighill
Disaster Artist
It’s raining and cold. The massive crowd is going nowhere fast. Mashed together like cattle in a stockyard, we are about 30 yards from the entrance. From here we can see only two security screens, like the ones at the airport. Some guys farther behind us get ugly, start pushing, and scream at the gatekeepers, “What’s the fucking holdup?! You guys are idiots! We paid a lot of money to stand here in the fucking rain. Get us inside now, ASSHOLES!” People close to the entrance turn and collectively roll their eyes, although we’re probably all thinking the same thing. It’s 7:15 and kick-off is in an hour.
We’re waiting outside the Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta, Georgia with tickets to the 2018 College Football National Championship Game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. The Tide vs. the Dawgs, in the vernacular. The guy behind us is right about one thing: everyone in line likely paid a lot of money to be here. My husband went to Georgia, and he loves football, so he paid some obscene amount of money, an amount I never want to know, to take us, our son and daughter and me, to this game.
The problem, I suspect, is Donald Trump. The President of the United States flew to the game earlier on Air Force One and is now ensconced in a cozy luxury box with former Georgia Governor and current U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. My suspicion is later confirmed by one of the ticket takers, who says Trump’s arrival set security back hours and caused traffic gridlock and unconscionable waits at the entrances. Trump knows he has a fan base in Alabama and Georgia.
We’re now 30 minutes from the coin toss and have only moved two feet. The man behind me presses his crotch into my backside. I am tempted to #MeToo him after watching the Golden Globes, but he appears to be pushed forward by the aggressive crowd behind him and probably can’t help where his crotch ends up. I give him the benefit of the doubt. My husband keeps telling the people in line around him how badly he needs to use the bathroom, which is probably not what they want to hear. My son, who wears a Georgia sweatshirt and a red ribbon in his hair, points out a woman a few yards ahead of us in line. She has a whitish translucent pointy poncho over her head that we all agree looks disturbingly like either a condom on a penis or a KKK hood. But her hair will be fine once she gets inside. My husband holds up a broken and ineffectual umbrella
The National Football Championship Game would be an excellent setting for a disaster film. Instead of a vengeful sniper (Two-Minute Warning) or a suicidal Vietnam vet flying an explosive blimp over the stadium (Black Sunday), in my version the electricity in the stadium would be cut once everyone is inside and the stadium doors locked while kidnappers with night-vision goggles hired by a secret cadre of Republican senators seek out the President. This is not as far-fetched as one would think since the electricity went out at the Atlanta International Airport two weeks before Christmas.
When I mention this to my family, my daughter, who is wearing a Georgia football hat and ear plugs, tells me to keep quiet in case the Secret Service is listening. In disaster films of the 1970s, the smart, attractive people always made it out alive, while the stupid, unappealing characters died in horrifically entertaining ways. The drunk, screaming guys behind us would definitely meet their maker in my film. Even a nice character like the one played by Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure had to die because she was fat and somewhat old. At least she drowned sacrificing herself for one of the cuter, younger characters. At fifty-seven, I most likely would not be saved in my own film, but my children would probably make it.
Getting inside has become a matter of increasing urgency for my husband. We slowly inch closer to the security screens, jamming ourselves toward where you empty your pockets into the little bowl, raise your arms and submit to metal detectors. Shouts of joy come from those who have finally made it through to the other side. The women in front of me have clear plastic purses with the Georgia bulldogs insignia on them; they get through quickly. The men take longer because they have to pull everything out of their pants pockets and often forget some piece of change. That sets off the scanner, and they have to get a pat down from the guards, who probably do not enjoy it any more than the fans do.
My husband goes first, after telling the guard, the woman scanning the electronic tickets, and everyone around him that he’s going to piss himself. He does not get a pat down. The woman points him in the direction of the nearest bathrooms, three floors up. He hands me his phone with the electronic tickets for the rest of us, and runs. Not having bathrooms on the ground floor seems like short-sighted planning for a building that costs 1.5 billion dollars. After our son and daughter scan in, they take off for our seats. It’s close to kick-off. They yell back at me to go to Section 309. I stand on the gray concrete floor and wait for my husband, though we did not communicate about where to meet, and I have his cell phone, which has the seat numbers on it. After five minutes, I get anxious and head up the first flight of stairs. The stadium is cavernous, bigger than anything I’ve ever been in, bigger, probably, than the ship in The Poseidon Adventure. It has no logic. Crowds of people who just made it through the scanner run past me to their seats; it’s a blur of red and black. Someone has urinated on the second flight of stairs. I pray it’s not my husband.
“Fuck Trump”
Section 309 is all the way on the other side of the stadium, about two miles away, over something called the Sky Bridge. The announcer introduces President Trump, and there are sounds of booing, hissing, and cheering. My feelings about him become more negative, if possible, because of the inconvenience he has caused the people trying to get in, and I mutter under my breath, “fuck you, Trump.” I realize I sound like the rude people in line behind me, but their anger was misdirected at the security guards. Apparently, I am not alone in my sentiments: protesters projected “FUCK TRUMP” in giant letters onto the stadium before he arrived. At this point, people are mostly in their seats, though many are frantically buying $8 beers. We had our beer and chicken tenders from Publix earlier while sitting in our car in a vacant lot where we’d paid some guy $30 instead of $50 to park. We gave the attendant a piece of chicken, and he left to get a cup of coffee and never came back. My husband will probably spend the rest of his life trying to make up the cost of these tickets, so I hope our car is still there when we get back.
I see my children standing in the hallway outside Section 309. They don’t know where the seats are, and they don’t know where their parents are, who know where the seats are. I pull out my husband’s cell phone and show them, but they’re angry that I left him. He’s a big boy and probably knows where to go, I say. We spot him a few minutes later. His pants are clean, so we all embrace for a moment before heading in. We’ve missed the anthem, the president, the coin toss, and the kick-off, but are otherwise on time
0 to 0
There is no way to express the hugeness of the new stadium; it is huger than Trump’s hands, and the crowd — over 77,000 people — is possibly bigger than his inauguration. Our seats are high up on the 25 yard line, but the field and players are clear; we can see every play. And if we can’t, there are multiple Jumbo-trons that make it possible to see each hair on UGA quarterback Jake Fromm’s scruffy beard. We’re in the UGA section and the fans around us seem reasonable enough. All of them are white, though I don’t correlate reasonableness with whiteness. In the first quarter, UGA makes some stunning plays, and the crowd erupts. The woman in front of me wears a black sweater, black pants, and black booties, has a red and black G painted on her cheek. She turns around and high-fives me every time something good happens for the Dawgs. The man next to me high-fives me, too. Everyone’s congenial and rabidly excited by Georgia’s strong opening.
13-0
I should explain that I am not a football fanatic, or even a fan. I’m from Atlanta and went to graduate school at UGA but never went to a game, so my loyalty is questionable. If I watch football, it’s because people in my family are watching it. I’ve come along with a sort of anthropological mindset. What makes so many people spend their hard-earned money for this event? Why is it so important? What will change if Georgia wins? Or loses? Why is college football like some kind of religion? The man next to me graduated from UGA in 1997 (he looks older). He flew out to Pasadena the week before for the Rose Bowl (Georgia beat Oklahoma, which is why we’re here). The woman next to my husband flew down from Washington with her husband, but left him in their hotel room because he is older, she explains, and she doesn’t want him to have a stroke or a heart attack if the game gets too intense. People should not die over football games. Neither my son nor daughter went to Georgia, but my son feels some esoteric emotional connection with this team, perhaps inherited from his father. My husband and my son played football, but my daughter is the real athlete of the family, and her interest stems from a physical and intellectual understanding of what it takes to do what these players do on the field.
What they do on the field is slam into each other a lot. The Tide plays dirty. Because of the Jumbo-tron, we can see when one Alabama player takes down the UGA ball carrier then knocks him in the head after he’s on the ground. We can see another ‘Bama player put a last minute choke-hold on a UGA player that doesn’t get a flag. It’s beginning to make me mad, and this surge of emotion is actually helpful because now I’m standing up and screaming at the ref and cheering “sic ‘em, sic ‘em, sic ‘em” when Georgia kicks to ‘Bama after another touchdown. My husband takes a picture of me doing this to send to his friends who bet him I would be reading a book throughout the game. It suddenly seems hopeful and joyous, though there is a gnawing sense that the evil genius Nick Saban will never let Alabama lose.
At the end of the second quarter, Georgia is up 13-0 and the crowd is elated. My son notes that, curiously, Saban has benched his first-string quarterback and put in the second string “true freshman” quarterback, a guy from Hawaii named Tua who’s never started a game. It interests me that Tua is from Hawaii, which is nowhere near Alabama. A “true freshman,” by the way, is someone who is actually a first-year college student, not someone who’s been sitting on the bench for a year. So the two quarterbacks in this game now are just around 18 years old. What would it be like to be eighteen and the center of this storm of insanity and adulation? What would it be like to know that the President of the United States (whoever it is) has flown down in Air Force One to watch you? What would the rest of your life be like after this?
Kendrick
My son is excited that rapper Kendrick Lamar is the halftime entertainment. It’s the first time the National Championship has had a halftime performer, and certainly the first time Donald Trump has seen Kendrick Lamar perform (it turns out Trump did not see him perform; he supposedly left before halftime). When I comment to my son that the majority of the people in the stadium are white, so Lamar’s rap might be lost on them, he notes that the majority of people who go to Georgia and Alabama are white, with the exception of the players on the field. I tell him this sounds racist, but he tells me it’s not racist if it’s true.
Lamar appears on the Jumbo-tron but he’s not on the field. They’ve set the halftime show outside in Centennial Park, a free, non-ticketed venue, instead of inside the stadium, which makes sense. Why should Kendrick Lamar perform for all the rich white people in the stadium (including Trump, if he were still here), who probably only listen to Tony Bennett or Taylor Swift, when he can entertain the people of Atlanta, the majority of whom are of color (at least it appears so on the Jumbo-tron) and have been waiting outside in the cold and rain? It seems like a very egalitarian choice, except for the fact that we’re inside a warm, dry stadium, and they’re outside freezing
Most of the people working in the stadium are also of color, blacks, Latinos, immigrants: the servers, bathroom staff, security, no doubt a few of them from what Trump will allegedly call “shithole countries” this very week. When I go to the bathroom (surprisingly empty), the woman cleaning has a knitted rainbow scarf around her head. I thank her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. No one seems terribly happy to be working the game. Maybe because Trump is here. Maybe because we’re playing Alabama
And fans of other teams hate The Crimson Tide. Sometimes that gets mixed up with the state, though having just marginally disposed of racist and alleged pedophile Roy Moore in the special Senate election, one is inclined to cut Alabamians some slack. To be fair, the whole stadium is a sea of red, and it’s not just because both teams wear the same colors. Both Georgia and Alabama are red states, and I wonder how many rosy-robed fans here voted for Trump. An Alabama judge once described former Governor George Wallace, a demagogue in the same mold as Donald Trump: “’[Wallace] keeps tellin’ ‘em, ‘You the children of Israel, you gonna lead this country out of the wilderness!’ Well, goddamn. We at the bottom of everything you can find to be at the bottom of, and yet we gonna save the country. We lead the country in illiteracy and syphilis, and yet we gonna lead the damn country out of the wilderness…’” And maybe that’s why some people love the Crimson Tide the way they love Trump. Because they’re always on top. They are always winners. Nick Saban is gonna lead them out of the wilderness and into another National Championship. But not yet.
20-10
Halftime passes quickly while everyone catches up on their texts. People are sending pictures and Snapchats to their friends watching the game at home, or they are posting on Instagram or Facebook. I have friends in San Antonio and Italy who keep sending me game emojis. People who have no reason to be Georgia fans are completely invested in the outcome. Once we were in Seville when Spain was in the finals of the World Cup Soccer tournament; our lodging was on a big square in the heart of the city and every single bar and restaurant set up enormous television screens on the border of the square. All the patrons were sitting outside drinking and screaming at every play; everyone was unified in their desire to beat Germany, or whoever it was. It felt good to be there, to be a part of a larger organism, something that everyone agreed on and cared passionately about. It felt very human. But maybe there’s another side to that, like possibly rabid nationalism.
The good part, the unifying part, seems to be what’s happening here, too, but not quite. The walls of the aptly named Mercedes-Benz stadium contain a fairly rarified group, most of whom have paid full price. A man on our row walks past us on his way to the bathroom and says something to my son. After the man has gone, my son tells us what he said: “I hope you know how privileged you are to be here.” This is curious and somewhat ambiguous. Does he mean my son is privileged to be watching the University of Georgia play in the National Championships? Is he privileged to see Georgia beating Alabama, to see Kirby Smart defeat Nick Saban? Is it a privilege to be in the same building as the President of the United States? Or is everyone in this arena simply privileged because they have enough disposable income to blow on four hours of football?
20-20
In the somewhat inevitable, at least to my mind, denouement of the fourth quarter, Tua rides the now rising Crimson Tide the way he might ride a surfboard in his native state. Since he’s never started before and hasn’t played much in other games, the Dawgs don’t know what to expect from him. He’s creative and unpredictable. We start to hear from the other side of the stadium, as the Alabama fans get louder and louder and the Georgia fans look more and more like deflated balloon animals. “Sweet Home Alabama” plays over the loudspeaker, a song I like, but know I’d better not sing or dance to now. The woman in front of me is no longer reaching back to give me high-fives. Someone several rows back dumps what must be a Coca-Cola onto us. I feel the sticky, syrupy mess drying in strands of my hair as the Tide gets closer to a tie. And then it is a tie game. You can almost hear the breath leaving the balloon animals as if they’d all been punctured at the same time. Alabama is going to kick a field goal in the last 3 seconds of the game, which seems to me to be a cowardly loser way to win. This would be a good time for the electricity to go out.
The kicker misses the field goal. The lights stay on. We’re in overtime.
23-26
It’s midnight. I pray for a quick ending, and hopefully a positive one for Georgia. It is quick. Georgia’s Roderigo Blankenship, who should get credit for his name alone but is also a great field goal kicker, makes one, and it’s 23-20. Now the ball goes to Alabama. The quarterback gets sacked, then he throws, the ball is caught, and ‘Bama scores. As fast as that, all the hopes and dreams of the people on our side come to an end. Suddenly, the other side of the stadium bursts into cheers on the other side and glittery confetti explodes from the ceiling of the dome. Everyone in our section stands there dumbfounded. My husband sits down. Our daughter has her hands on her head. Our son says, “We’ve got to get out of here, NOW.” There might be tears in his eyes. The feeling seems familiar, as if it had happened before, maybe back in early November of 2017.
Exodus
As if all the Georgia fans had the same thought at the same moment, like ants silently communicating, there’s a unified and dignified movement out of their seats and into the hall. No one says anything as at least 50,000 people march towards the stairways. And just like the beginning of this disaster, we are suddenly pinned in a flesh press of bodies all moving the same way. On the stairs, one man has the temerity to squeak out, “Roll, Tide,” in a tiny, uncertain voice, but he recognizes the danger of being celebratory on this side and fades into the crowd.
I am holding my husband’s hand with one hand and grasping my son’s sweatshirt with the other because this is the kind of crowd that would trample you in an instant, the kind of crowd where you could get shanked and your body would be carried along upright until you got outside, the kind of crowd where you could lose your children forever. My daughter is farther ahead; I can tell she’s pissed and she’s not going to hold anyone’s hand; she’s just going to get out, but we keep track of her.
The short-sightedness of the stadium planners again becomes evident as tens of thousands of sad, angry, disappointed, possibly suicidal and/or homicidal Georgia fans attempt to squeeze through two solitary exits before Alabama fans really start celebrating. Personally, I am not feeling all that bad now. It was a good game, and it was exciting; Georgia played better than Alabama. But nobody around me wants to hear it. My son starts whining about how it’s a curse on Georgia teams and recounting the admittedly depressing story of the Atlanta Falcons’ loss in last year’s Super Bowl against the New England Patriots.
This attitude makes me think about a line from the film “Talladega Nights,” which, I should point out, is set in Alabama. Ricky Bobby, the main character played by Will Ferrell, is a race car driver at Talladega, and lives by the motto, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” It doesn’t matter if Georgia won the Rose Bowl and the SEC Championship; it doesn’t matter if they had a fantastic season and played honorably and well in their home state in the National Championships. If they’re not first, they’re last. This could be Trump’s motto, too. Trump loves winning, thinks of himself as a winner, no matter the facts. The president is no doubt now an Alabama fan even if he was a guest of Sonny Perdue because Perdue is now on the losing side. Later this week, Sonny’s first cousin, Senator David Perdue, will defend Trump’s profane comments on immigrants from Haiti and Africa, claiming he cannot recall the president using any such derogatory terms.
We’ll Get ‘Em Next Year
Once outside, we head in the wrong direction and have to walk all the way around the stadium. The crowd is still eerily silent and controlled. No one screams or fights or curses. The concrete barriers around the stadium are covered with beer cans and bottles from earlier tailgaters. I think about the stadium workers and their grim, stoic faces, who will be cleaning up this mess until dawn. A tall gangly black man coming from the direction of Centennial Park walks in front of us and yells, “Fuck Alabama! Fuck Saban!” to some white fraternity guys with Georgia shirts on. They hesitantly high-five him and mildly respond, “Yeah Dude, Fuck ‘Bama!” The frat guys walk closer together. The man keeps on walking beside the boys, mumbling to them, “Yeah, fuck that! We’ll get ‘em next year!” He kicks some empty beer cans and kind of trips off the curb. The fraternity boys walk faster.
Virginia Ottley Craighill grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and received her Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. She has been teaching English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee since 2001, and lives in Sewanee. She has commentary on the letters of Tennessee Williams in the Winter 2018 issue of The Sewanee Review and has a chapter on Eudora Welty in the upcoming volume Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty. Her poems have been published in Gulf Coast, The Chattahoochee Review, and Kalliope, among others.