Your Friday Hoo Doo Thread: Southern Miss

The Tide made it through South Carolina with a victory, but another defensive starter went down so we need to step it up this week. The Southern Miss Golden Eagles come to Tuscaloosa as big underdogs, but college football fans know that anything can happen. Bring it, folks, and please send your content to be featured in future Hoo Doo posts to RBRhoodoo@gmail.com. We need it.

Ground rules:

We know that you miss the Friday Hoo Doo thread, and that we are at least partly to blame for Alabama’s poor injury luck. The problem is, any one person has only so many stories to tell. I do not have the time or creativity to make something up every week just so we can have a thread.

I do, however, have an idea and modest proposal. None of these traditions are really about the writers anyway, they belong to the community at large. Why not feature some of your own infamous moments, in full color?

I have created a new email account, RBRhoodoo@gmail.com, for the express purpose of receiving Hoo Doo photo and video submissions. We will review them and select one each week during the season to feature. As usual, readers will comment below with their own tales.

The only criteria, being that this is a #familyblawg and all, is that all submissions must be PG rated. Please include a quick story behind the visual and permission to post. Videos will be published to Youtube if you send me a file, or you can send a link if it is already on the web somewhere that will allow an embed. Photos can generally be uploaded with no issues. Also, tell me how you wish to be credited, by name or your RBR username.

This week’s Crimson centric submission comes from new user WalterSobchak25. Here we go:

I’m not ashamed: Alabama Football is my identity. A few disclaimers. First, everything I’m about to say is true. Second, all of this occurred before Freddie Kitchens became fashionable. Third, the mystic power of Hoo Doo is absolutely real.

My ‘Bama bona-fides run pretty deep. I grew up in a quaint little neighborhood where side-yard football ruled the day. As the resident fat kid – think Eric Cartman – I pretty much barked around orders to my compatriots on the gridiron. This was during the era of our beloved former quarterback Freddie Kitchens.

During those impressionable years, I came to adulate Freddie. The Tennessee games, the SEC Championship games, the ’95 Iron Bowl. My family jokes to this day about the worst car trip we ever had, in which yours truly complained non-stop on the ride back to Birmingham why we didn’t go for two against Florida. While we fell short in them all, there was something cool about that dogged tenacity Freddie had.

This is when the idol of Freddie took hold of me, and it has only grown ever since. Despite lacking any meaningful talent at the quarterback position whatsoever, and many would affix that description to Freddie, for years, I forced my fellow neighbors to play 100% of our games with me as the quarterback – so that I could emulate Freddie.

Flash forward to my high school / college years. I begin to hear the legends about Freddie’s time off the field in Tuscaloosa. It occurs to me: oh my God, this is not just an athletic irregularity, it is a total anomaly. How was this guy ever the starting quarterback at the University of Alabama?

So how did this historical jewel of an artifact, a jersey that literally embodies 1990’s Alabama Football, come into my possession? Well – it was a Christmas joke. By way of background, let me begin by saying that I am a firm opponent of the charade wherein grown adults feel entitled to Christmas presents from their spouse, or any other family member, as if they were children. It’s just lame and absurd.

Well my ex-wife, on the other hand, she placed a high premium on that silly ritual of giving each other stuff we ultimately don’t like or use. Coincidentally, my mother is also of that same school-of-thought. So that December, when mother asks me what I wanted for Christmas, I jokingly responded that I wanted a Freddie Kitchens jersey, knowing full-well there was no market for them. It was a veiled shot at how stupid I thought this whole thing was.

Predictably, Christmas rolls around and the ex-wife is disappointed with her presents, and I pretend to like what she gave me. Later that day, we go over to my mother’s house. Somehow, she has procured me a custom-made Freddie Kitchens jersey. I literally went nuts: it was so unexpected, so original, so awesome, so hilarious and, so ‘Bama. That evening we go home and the ex-wife has been utterly demoralized and expresses her dismay, the Queen of Christmas has been thoroughly outdone by the crudest of Christmas gifts – and it was never even close.

So what kind of Hoo Doo value does this Kitchen’s jersey bring to the Alabama football team and my fellow ‘Bama Gumps? A whole lot my friends, because we have won four (4) National Championships ever since, and won a whole lot of other big games along the way as well. But perhaps, my favorite story is this:

One of my favorite pre-season traditions is to attend the annual SEC-Media Days in Hoover (that will now be a thing of the past). There’s a multitude of bars in the Galleria, and pretty free access to Radio-Row. So it was – I told my brother & a cousin that we were going to get blitzed and hang out at SEC Media Days that night. Well sure enough, with just enough liquid encouragement, beer in hand, adorned in my jersey, I demanded to speak live on the local Matt & Scott radio show. They acquiesced, and what followed was a 10 minute monologue on the greatness of Freddie Kitchens.

So let me close this thing out folks. The Kitchen’s jersey has enjoyed immense success with indisputable characteristics of Hoo Doo. To this day, it is still only employed under the most urgent circumstances (SECG/Playoffs/Etc.). As usual, we are a strong team this year. But, as is the case with every team, we do have some vulnerabilities. Therefore, I implore you: embrace the Hoo Doo, develop the Hoo Doo and, spread the Hoo Doo. Our team needs it. Roll Tide!

-Walter Sobchak

-Birmingham, AL

That is one fantastic jersey, Walter, and say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, Dude. At least it’s an ethos.

May this, along with all of your confessions in the comment section, be sufficient to get us through another week with a comfortable victory and no major injuries.

Hoo Doo away, for the good of the team, and think about any photos or videos you have to submit to Football Loki in the future.

Roll Tide.