Pride in Southeastern Conference football runs deep.
So deep, in many cases, that fans who have spent an entire season trash talking SEC rivals somehow find it within themselves to root one another on come bowl time.
But the Alabama-Auburn rivalry is different. Different than just about anything you’ll ever find.
For that reason, finding a real-life dyed-in-the-wool rammer jammer yellow hammer Alabama fan like quarterback AJ McCarron, to say they’ll be hollering “War Eagle” during Monday’s national championship game against Florida State could prove a daunting task.
Right?
“I’d rather go through hell wearing gasoline covered drawers than root for little brother Auburn,” said Sonia Daniels, who sports a Crimson Tide tattoo on her lower lip and is known to local sports talk radio fans as “Bama Girl.”
But surprisingly enough, not all of the most strident Bama boosters think like Daniels.
“Big George” Harrison, who owns a pickup truck so decked out in Alabama paraphernalia his wife — “she says it looks like a homecoming float” — won’t ride in it, not only uttered the phrase “War Damn Eagle,” but added a “by God” for emphasis.
“I’m rooting for Auburn. You better believe I am,” the former Crimson Tide basketball player said. “SEC. And I got three good friends who all played football at Auburn. I hope they win it and bring the crystal football home.”
Harrison said he’d love to see Auburn win its second national championship to go along with three for Alabama in the last five years.
“It’d be five years in a row that crystal football came back to the state of Alabama,” he said.
Teresa Graham, who works with Daniels at Mother Earth’s Cafe in Fort Walton Beach, is as big an Alabama fan as her cohort, but is leaning toward Auburn come Monday.
“Got to stick with the SEC. Got to,” Graham said. “My son’s going to kill me. He’s diehard FSU, but I got to stick with the SEC.”
Amy Williamson is an Alabama girl at heart who said she’d normally be rooting for Auburn against anyone but her beloved Crimson Tide.
But her 17-year-old son Dalton has begun contemplating an FSU education, so this year she’s torn.
“My son loves FSU and plans on going to college there. He wants to play lacrosse for them, so at some point I will have to root for them as well,” Williamson said.
Hollis Tompkins sounds like he tried very hard to talk himself into rooting for Auburn over FSU, but ultimately failed.
“We just can’t find it in our heart,” he said, speaking on behalf of his family of rabid Tide fans. “And I know unequivocally if we were playing FSU the majority of the Auburn fans would be screaming ‘Go Seminoles’ and doing the chop. That’s just the way it is.”
Tompkins said most of the time he’s as much an SEC man as anyone. He swears he rooted for Georgia, LSU and South Carolina on New Year’s Day.
“It’s only when it comes to Auburn,” he said. “We have to draw the line somewhere.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.