BY: Kaleria Jackson
I went to my first college football game this year. I went to the Alabama homecoming game against Missouri. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived on Alabama’s campus. I live next to Auburn so I knew traffic was going to be a problem but, as for the experience I didn’t have a clue.
My older cousin invited me to go with her to the Alabama homecoming game since she was an alumnus of the University of Alabama. The first thing we did when arrived on the campus was get ready to go tailgating. I have never been to a tailgate as large as that one. There were tents and music playing everywhere, children in their Alabama gear running around and throwing little footballs to one another. There were televisions set up under every other tent. We didn’t stay at the tailgate for long after we ate. Leaving the tailgate, we went to visit some of the vendors that were around the stadium. We were able to get some pom-pom shakers and some t-shirts.
Walking to the stadium was so tiring given the fact that our gate was on the other side of the stadium from where we were coming from. Our seats were towards the top, but not in the nose bleeder’s type top. This was the day I realized that I, Kaleria Jackson was out of shape. Unlike my cousin who was in shape and was not out of breath by the time we got to our seats. The walk was long but the view was breathtaking. We got there right when the team was jogging onto the field.
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labama won the game with the ending score being 39 to 10. Despite winning the game the one thing I will remember would be the return of Dixieland Delight. Dixieland Delight has not been played at Bryant-Denny Stadium since the Iron Bowl of 2014 against Auburn. I am not a huge country fan, but this song caught my attention. It could have been that everyone around me was singing this song. It could have been that every pom-pom shaker was going in the same direction. It could have even been the lights from the multiple cell phones that lit up the stadium that night. From my view it could easily be the most jaw dropping site. It was beautiful. I guess I was so in awe that my cousin said, “Leria there was no point of you buying a shaker, you haven’t even used it since we got here.” She was right, I barely used it. I replied back to her saying, “Yeah…I’m just observing everything right now. I got to take this all in.”
As we left the game, there was only one thing that stayed on my mind. To be honest I do not think I can say I have ever had an experience like that at AUM. I want to have that at my university. A tradition that I can be proud of when I come back as an alumni. As a student I want to know how I can bring this feeling of unity and tradition to Auburn University in Montgomery? What can we as students do to bring this to our small community? Overall, I never want to forget that game and the emotions that it brought me. That experience will be the one thing I will take with me forever.