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

In the life span of every sports fan, there comes an instant of reckoning. It could happen when your group wins on a last-second field objective and you all of a sudden find yourself clenched within a caring embrace with a big hairy man you’ve never fulfilled . . Or in the long, hormonally depleted times after a reduction, when you’re felled with a sensation similar to the one you initial experienced following a death of a pet. about Rammer Jammer Yellowish Hammer: A Journey Into the Center of Fan Mania At such moments the fan can be compelled to confront the question others-spouses, friends, children, and colleagues-have asked for a long time:

Why should i care?

The facts about sports activities that turns otherwise sane, rational people into raving lunatics? Why does winning compel people to tear down goalposts, and dropping, to drown themselves in poor keg beer? In short, why do followers care?

In search of the answers to these questions, Warren St. John seeks out the roving community of RVers who follow the Alabama Crimson Tide from game to video game across the South. A movable feast of Weber grills, Igloo coolers, and die-hard superstition, they are heroes who arrive on Thursday for Saturday’s video game: Freeman and Betty Reese, who skipped their personal daughter’s wedding because it coincided with a Bama game; Ray Pradat, the Episcopalian minister who watches the games on the tv beside his altar while carrying out weddings; John Ed (pronounced as three syllables, John Ay-ud), the wheeling and working solution scalper whose access to good seats provides him power on par with the governor; and Paul Finebaum, the Anti-Fan, a wisecracking sports activities columnist and talk-radio web host who makes his living mocking Alabama fans-and who has to reside in a gated community for all your dangers he receives in response.

In no time at all, St. John himself is certainly 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 severe enthusiast and learning that

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

On the way, St. John takes readers on illuminating forays in to the deep root base of humanity’s sports activities mania (did you know tailgaters could possibly be within eighth-century Greece?), the psychology of crowds, and the surprising neuroscience behind the excitement of victory.

Similar to Confederates in the Attic and the functions of Costs Bryson, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer isn’t just a travel story, but a cultural anthropology of enthusiasts that goes quite a distance toward demystifying the general urge to take sides and to win.