Dixieland Delight!

On the Tuesday September 30, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty One More Thing Podcast...

• The very uniquely American tradition embraced by fans of Alabama's football fans.... 

Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is going to have an awful lot of
F bomb Sorry about that. It's one more thing.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm strong Andy.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
One more thing, Boss, I was not consulted.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I do not approve.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Well, here's one thing I try to remember. We're sixty
flipping years old, and people our age drop f bombs
like they're nothing.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
I know, for some of you, it's it's a fairly
course language. For some of you it is apparently not
based on my being a human being in America currently,
since I hear.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
It everywhere all the time.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
But this thing we're about to play, it's from Alabama
football games. Apparently this is a tradition they have there,
and every school has these sorts of traditions, right with
their chants and songs and everything like that. I find
this particular. For whatever reason, I found this musing. I
hope somebody else does do. Alabama has been the biggest
deal in college football for like the last decade or so,

(00:56):
and they play the song Dixie Land Delight by the
country group Alabama, which in the eighties was the biggest
musical act in America, and it's a very popular song,
and then they have some it was.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
The men without hats guy, but whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Uh yeah, I gotta believe back in the day Alabama
was making the Men without Hats would have been polishing
the Alabama's guitar players car for the kind of money
they were making. So they shout various things during the
in between the words, and some of it is sexual
and some of it is just taunting other teams that
they play. So this is during one of the timeouts,

(01:34):
and I will fill in the words since it's a
little hard to understand. Go ahead, they say many times
in chance as we go along.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Still it's a little more grain and beer, real time
against the wall.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
All night.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's the sex.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Part, and LSU and Tennessee too, and just the visual
if you can see the visual, we gotta post it.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
We got to post it at Armstrong in getty dot com.
That is the happiest group of ninety thousand people you
could possibly have does does do you ever?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Do people ever get.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Happier than in that moment there where they're talking about
drinking beer, having sex and hating their rival colleges. What
an interesting thing to bond over.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
When I was at Cambridge studying chaucer, we did not
indulge it's vulgrase.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Hold it up tight against the wall.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Almost one hundred thousand people chanting that and shaking their fists.
Just what that has got to be as old as
human beings, right, that's sort of getting worked up. I
think usually probably for battle throughout history. Most of the time,
when a village would get together and have various chants,
you'd be ginning yourself that kind of fired up to

(03:26):
I don't storm the castle or fight off the invaders
or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
But without the knowledge that your head might get stoven,
so you can really enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
One of my favorite writers, Joanah Goldberg, often talks about
how he is he is bothered by that sort of thing.
He's bothered by crowds in general. Enthusiastic crowds, he says,
are really like the most dangerous thing we can have
in society because people lose their minds. And you know,
I see his point. Yeah, it's absolutely true. I guarantee you.
In that parking lot there were Auburn dudes and Tennessee

(04:02):
dudes beating the living crap out of each other over
the kind of enthusiasm that is spurred by that sort
of thing. I'm not denouncing it, and it's all fun
and I'm pro chanting and all that sort of stuff,
but in general, really whipped up crowds are not We're
not at our most intellectual.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah. What was that book? Was it?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Did Craig Gottwaals recommended to us or I can't remember
the it's the old French scientists who wrote like the
original Analysis of Crowds.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, I started reading that. It's really interesting.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Oh it's it's the printic is tiny and it's not
even trying to be entertaining. I want some good Malcolm
Gladwell pop science.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
But the point is crowds can get all worked up
about practically anything, and once you get that that fever
that was in that stadium right there that you were
listening to. When you've got that fever, somebody can point
to like practically anything as the villain right now, and
you will enthusiastically kick it.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, I remember, as a kid, an adolescent, teenager or
whenever it was, I first heard the expression the voice
of reason against the howling mob. Yeah, and I found
that very disturbing because I read a lot as a
kid and revered the founding fathers and stuff like that,
And you know, I was a real big believer in
the power of ideas. But then to be forced to

(05:27):
reckon with no If there's an angry mob shouting incoherently
for blood over some moronic point of view, the voice
reason doesn't stand a chance.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
So you don't think somebody could have stood in the
middle of that football field and said, Auburn is a
college much like this one. The socioeconomic background of the
students almost exactly the same here. And as a matter
of fact, I have the stats in front of me.
A third of you applied for that college in addition
to this one. You just happened to go here.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Deemographically speaking, they and their student body are indistinguishable from you,
good people.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right, and same with Tennessee.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Which is the truth, sure, is that one of the
greatest tricks that we've pulled off in Western civilization that
we funnel that human need through sports, so we can
get that out of particularly young men, that enthusiasm, feeling
part of something whatever, without.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
The violence that goes along with it.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Usually well, and even in fandom, it usually doesn't turn
into actual horror or violent very very seldom.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
If your team wins a championship. Usually that's about it,
or you beat your main rival. Sometimes that happen you
tear down the goalposts and flip over a bus or something.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, but you don't beat somebody to death usually not generally,
not if it's so rare. It makes the papers when
it happens, or somebody gets now you know, featured on
viral videos and can boned and docked and the rest
of it.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Maybe the way to look at it would be that
it's amazing that you can get and this happens in
you know, college and professional arenas all across the country weekly.
But you can get fifty to one hundred thousand people
that flip and worked up and plied with alcohol and
almost never have any violence or disruption or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
We're well behaved people sometimes, you know, sometimes too little,
sometimes too much, I think in a lot of ways.
But that's an essay question for another day. But yeah,
it is amazing that it doesn't turn into mayhem more often.
You know. What is also interesting an aspect of humans
is like, for most of the last thirty years or so,

(07:44):
the school where I went to, the University of Illinois,
which has long been part of the big ten has
had a sometimes pretty good but mostly mediocre football program,
and the University of Michigan, for instance, has had a
sometimes mediocre but mostly excellent football program. I remember running
into Michigan fans who carried themselves as if that was

(08:07):
their doing.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
And that is another interesting aspect of human psychology.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yes, I'm familiar with that.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Like a electrical engineer student. You couldn't throw a football
across this dinner table, and much less tackle anybody, but
you're strutting around as if you're some sort of superior
human because of the exploits of those fellas.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
But yes, Michael, oh no, just that image just made
me laugh. They did it, It's true, and we've all
done it to a certain extent. I suppose feeling a
little superior because the team that we root for as
winning or won or like I had anything to do.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
And as a freshman I had to learn the fight song,
which has lyrics that sound as if they were written
in like the nineteen twenties, because they were. And so
it's not like this is some sort of Internet age phenomenon. No,
you're going off in your beaver fur coat, in your
open car with your pennant and your best gal who

(09:15):
is a flapper you know, to the game, and then
singing the same damn song and acting more or less
the same damn way.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Fuck Auburn and LSU and Tennessee too. That's course, these
courses are our future leaders. I weep for the country again.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
When I was at Cambridge studying chaucer, our chant was
harass them, harass them, make them relinquish the ball.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Sounds like fun. Well, I guess that's it.