Crimson Red Sports

What would college football be without the trash talk, the drunken battle cries, the simmering, adolescent feuds? A lot less fun, that's what. Still, the whole football-as-warfare thing can sometimes get out of hand, as one rogue soldier learned last winter in the bitter archrivalry between Alabama and Auburn. Ben Austen heads south to investigate one of the nuttiest episodes in the annals of fandomBy Ben AustenSeptember 2011

Last January, two weeks after the Auburn Tigers vanquished the Oregon Ducks for the national championship, Paul Finebaum, the host of a radio sports show in Birmingham, took a call from a listener who went by the name "Al." Al's real name, police would later learn, was Harvey Updyke. A 62-year-old retired Texas highway patrolman, Updyke had moved to Alabama only two years before to be close to his favorite football team, the Crimson Tide. His first year in his new home, he'd attained sports-fan nirvana. The Tide had won the 2009 national title, and Updyke had been in the stands to see it. His second year in Alabama was more like sports-fan hell.