The Beatless Beat Writer: A Crimson Tide Family

Today is a good day for two reasons.

Following finishing my time at the University of Alabama as a student last week, I decided to venture outside of Tuscaloosa for the first time since the middle of March to see family.

My parents now live in Georgia despite both being born in Alabama. If I were to attribute my Crimson Tide fandom to someone, it would undoubtedly be the both of them.

After the usual greetings and catching up, the conversation shifted over to my younger brother and his wife and their new baby (my first niece). Naturally, this brought up a bunch of memories with my parents about raising their two sons, myself and my brother.

During the discussion, my mom felt it necessary to start going through old baby clothes from our childhood. One article of clothing stood out in particular:

An Alabama jumpsuit.

According to my mom, the jumpsuit had been a gift from a family friend when I was still in the hospital. Ironically enough, the man who gifted it to my parents was a huge Tennessee fan.

It was the first piece of Alabama clothing that I ever owned, and I wore it often during football season.

As a child, my earliest memory is of me sitting in a highchair, with my dad sitting in his recliner and us both watching an Alabama basketball game. When I recall this memory to my mom, she is always impressed by this being my first memory, as I couldn’t have been any older than 16 months old.

Needless to say, Crimson Tide athletics have been a life-long tradition for both me and my family. While neither of my parents went to Alabama, both my brother and me have now graduated from the school. This reminds me of how Alabama fans can come from all walks of life and doesn’t solely consist of alumni.

To me, the Alabama jumpsuit is more to me than just an article of clothing. It represents tradition and family.

Thanks to my parents, I am part of multiple families. One of them is my physical, blood family. The other is my Crimson Tide family. While you who is now reading this may or may not be a graduate of Alabama, if you are a Crimson Tide fan we are undoubtedly related.

This is the beauty of sports and why I find them so intoxicating. I have spoken on this blog before of why I love sports so much, and the unifying aspect of them is the key quality in my passion for athletics. When it comes to sports, there are few things that can unify (or divide) a city, state, region or country more than sports.

While at the end of the day sports are just games, they mean so much to so many people. All you have to do is look on Twitter for more than 30 seconds and see all of the passion in fans as they wait on their favorite teams to resume games and practices.

I for one can’t wait for sports to come back so that I might be with my Crimson Tide family once more.

Oh, and for those of you wondering about the second reason as to why my day has been so good, check out this tweet from my good friend Jacob Harrison who I talked about in this series a few weeks ago:

Excited to announce I am back at Townsquare Media as the new voice of @BamaTraffic! Thank you to everyone who helped get me back behind a mic! pic.twitter.com/zvGEqa5hJs
— Jacob Harrison (@JacobHarrison_3) May 4, 2020

The Beatless Beat Writer is a series of stories by BamaCentral's own Joey Blackwell. The series is meant to reflect on and discuss Alabama athletics and its fans in Tuscaloosa during the current pandemic.