Lesson learned by John Jakes

By JOHN JAKES - 08/28/05 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When I grew up in the Midwest, genuine college football consisted of the Big Ten period. Sure, they must have played the game at other places on the dim gray map of America, but Chicago kids laughed at the pretensions of fifth-rate teams way off in the Louisiana bottoms somewhere.

Then, in 1978, my wife and I picked up and moved from Ohio to coastal South Carolina. My old adviser from the DePauw English department cautioned that, as a transplanting Yankee, I could never qualify as a Good Old Boy but might with luck one day considered an Old Sport.

hether that's true even after 27 years, I don't know. What I do know is that in the South, I quickly learned what powerhouse football and football fanaticism are all about.

For the first time, I saw autos streaming to Columbia on Saturday with Gamecock pennons flying from rooftops.

Our youngest South Carolina grandson, when still an infant, could identify the Gamecocks' "Cocky" cartoon mascot before he could recognize his grandfather.

At a luncheon with faculty friends at the University of South Carolina, it was pointedly noted that I'd worn a bright orange dress shirt under my blazer. I was warned that I'd better ditch the hated Clemson color before I was stoned, mobbed or otherwise disposed of on the USC Horseshoe.

Then one bright autumn day, courtesy of my son-in-law, a USC grad, we sat in Williams-Brice Stadium as smoke belched from the tunnel, Strauss' cyclonic "2001" theme thundered from speakers, the Gamecocks materialized in the murk and stormed onto the field. The opponent that day was Vanderbilt, "everybody's favorite SEC homecoming team because they always lose."

Obligingly, they did.

Thus, Old Sport or no, I have put the rust-belt conceits of the Big Ten behind and turned into a wildly partisan, hoarse-shouting fan of the only conference that really matters to me anymore ... my only regret being that they don't graduate enough members of the football squad, in the SEC or at any other college.

But that's another story.

The New York Times Book Review calls John Jakes, author of the "North and South" triology and several other books, "a master of the ancient art of storytelling." Jakes splits time between homes in South Carolina and Florida.