“Fresh and funny… St. John has crafter successful.” -Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic

In the life of each sports fan, there comes an instant of reckoning. It may happen whenever your group wins on a last-second field goal and you instantly end up clenched inside a loving embrace with a big hairy man you’ve never met . . Or in the lengthy, hormonally depleted days after a loss, when you’re felled by a sensation like the one you first experienced following a death of the family pet. about Rammer Jammer Yellowish Hammer: A Journey into the Center of Lover Mania At such occasions the fan is definitely pressured to confront the query others-spouses, friends, children, and colleagues-have asked for a long time:

Why do I care?

What is it about sports that turns otherwise sane, rational people into raving lunatics? Why does winning compel people to tear down goalposts, and dropping, to drown themselves in bad keg beer? In a nutshell, why do fans care?

In search of the answers to these questions, Warren St. John seeks out the roving community of RVers who adhere to the Alabama Crimson Tide from video game to video game across the South. A movable feast of Weber grills, Igloo coolers, and die-hard superstition, these are characters who arrive on Wed for Saturday’s video game: Freeman and Betty Reese, who skipped their very own daughter’s wedding since it coincided with a Bama game; Ray Pradat, the Episcopalian minister who pieces the games on the tv beside his altar while executing weddings; John Ed (pronounced as three syllables, John Ay-ud), the wheeling and coping ticket scalper whose access to good seats gives him power on par with the governor; and Paul Finebaum, the Anti-Fan, a wisecracking sports activities columnist and talk-radio sponsor who makes his living mocking Alabama fans-and who has to live in a gated community for all the threats he receives in response.

In no time at all, St. John himself is usually drawn in to the globe of full-immersion fandom: he buys an RV (a $5,500 beater called The Hawg) and joins the caravan for a football time of year, chronicling the world of the extreme fan and learning that

in the darkness from the stadium, it could all begin to seem strangely normal.

Along the way, St. John will take visitors on illuminating forays into the deep origins of humanity’s sports activities mania (did you know that tailgaters could possibly be found in eighth-century Greece?), the mindset of crowds, as well as the surprising neuroscience behind the thrill of victory.

Reminiscent of Confederates in the Attic as well as the functions of Bill Bryson, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer isn’t only a travel tale, but a cultural anthropology of enthusiasts that goes quite a distance toward demystifying the universal urge to consider sides and to win.