Ah, sweet victory by Warren St. John

By WARREN ST. JOHN - 08/28/05 - For the Journal-Constitution

There's much to appreciate about college football — the marching bands, the spectacle of tailgating, the thrill of a moth-flecked night game. But I suspect that, as with all spectator sports, the game's chief appeal to most is as a delivery device for the dopamine rush that comes from winning.

As most fans know at least intuitively, the strength of that rush is determined by how much or how little you expect it. There is no more intense thrill than winning when you were certain up until the last minute that you were going to lose. I was watching Alabama play Auburn in 1985 at a friend's house in Atlanta, hours before we were supposed to go watch R.E.M. play at the Fox Theatre. When it seemed clear that Alabama would go down, I told my friends they could have my ticket; I was too depressed for rock 'n' roll. Moments later, on the last play of the game, Van Tiffin launched a 52-yard field goal into the Alabama gloaming for the win. Shocked, I leapt into the air and put my hands into the blur of blades in the ceiling fan overhead, ripping it from the ceiling. R.E.M. sounded great that night.

As a fan anyway, I came to losing late. I grew up in Alabama in the 1970s and early '80s, when national championships rolled in with the regularity of Gulf Coast hurricanes. But in college my debt came due. I went off to Columbia in New York, in the midst of what would become the longest losing streak in the history of college football — 44 games straight. Losing was such a certainty that in 1987, I piled into a New Jersey Transit local with a throng of Columbia students to see our team play Princeton for the game that would propel us past Northwestern's then-record of 34 straight losses. When we lost to become the undisputed worst team ever, a group of us made what will go down in history as the lamest attempt ever to tear down a goal post.

Imagine the thrill then when, a full season later, Columbia broke its losing streak at home against Princeton. We rolled every tree on 114th Street with toilet paper — though Toomer's Corner it wasn't — and took over an intersection of Broadway for a little while, blocking a column of honking cabs and buses driven by men untouched by our victory.

Of course, no fan should have to suffer such prolonged indignity just to savor the exquisite taste of the surprise win, and it seems foolhardy to set conditions on the kinds of wins one will stoop to enjoy — especially after Alabama's last few seasons. So this year I plan to take the wins however they come (if they come). But should a game get close in the final quarter, I know enough now to turn off the ceiling fan.

— New York Times reporter Warren St. John is the author of "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania" and a Birmingham native.