Profunksticated

Profunksticated decided that in order to expand his network, it would be a good idea to finally attend one of those local alumni football game viewing parties this past weekend.

I’ve gotten regular such invitations by e-mail for years, but simply ignored them. Save watching a couple of bowl games in recent years, I’ve been mostly indifferent to sports teams involving Big State School in the South since my graduation 26 years ago. I’m more of a fan of professional sports.

But being unemployed and needing to meet new people, I felt this party represented the perfect networking opportunity. I e-mailed the host, the president of the local alumni association, and expressed my desire to attend the party. He e-mailed me back, sure we’d be happy to have you.

Let me tell you something: This white guy is probably younger than me, but yet he appears to be living as large as the old campus. He graduated a couple of years after I did so we may have crossed paths somewhere on campus. But I certainly didn’t know him until this weekend.

After driving an hour, I got there late. This guy’s home was on a side road that’s hard to find in the dark. When I found the house, there was a note on the front door telling folks to let themselves in. I walked in and immediately felt like a burglar. There was no one in the living room or the kitchen. It took me a full minute to listen for where voices were coming from. I was opening doors to closets trying to find these guys.

I finally found my way to the guy’s basement, where the staircase is lined with trophy cases filled with sports memorabilia. When I finally joined the group of about 15 people, I think a guy sitting at the end of the bar and looked at me like "who the hell is this nigger?" But he noticed I wore a hoodie bearing the school logo, so I must have belonged there. Then, the first words out of his mouth were not "Hello!" but "You’re late!"

That pissed me off for a second. OK, so the game was into the second quarter. I thought, sorry, but I have a life, too, dickhead. Then, I figured the guy’s attitude must have been the combination of white-privileged arrogance and alcohol. So I’ll try to forgive his dumb ass.

I then learned this rude guy was the host’s old college roommate. The host was a lot more gracious, and we shook hands. I had a couple of cokes, introduced myself to a few of the people, and finally during the game settled into a pleasant conversation with another guy, an late ’80s graduate whose life took several twists and turns before landing as a stockbroker.

Still, the irony wasn’t lost on me: Well-to-do white folks cheering for their big time college football teams, that, like ours, are comprised primarily of not-so-well-to-do African American athletes. And as I wrote in my first post, this school we all attended is an institution that didn’t admit black students until the early 1960s.

So this gathering could count one African American alumnus among its members. If these white people had been uttering phrases like "that nigger sure can play" before I arrived, now they’re gonna have to watch their tongues lest I shoot them a dirty look.

Back to host’s apparent large living. He is an outsized fan of his alma mater, so far as to create in one room of his basement a virtual shrine to the school, complete with signed football, basketball and baseball jerseys of every style, signed football helmets, several display cases, carpeting with the school logo and even a multimedia presentation of the football team on a flat screen LCD TV that includes smoke shooting from pipes installed in the baseboard, while playing 2001: A Space Odyssey, the school fight song and the alma mater. The room looks like something you’d see in the concourse of a stadium or arena or in the school’s athletic offices.

The host told me has season tickets to the home football games and attends as many away games as possible, which entails a lot of travel. He also has hosted receptions for the school president whenever said president visits the area, and also for teams that play opponents up here.

Did I tell you he also has a tiki bar on his back porch?

I’m thinking this is one of those guys known as a booster, a wealthy businessman who likes donate large sums of money to the school and to do "$100 handshakes" (for the unititiated that’s simply handing out cash on the sly) whenever he meets a student-athlete (technically a violation of rules governing college athletics). To have bragging rights about a successful football program is paramount in business circles.

That said, I still don’t know what this guy does for a living, but I’ll find out.

Despite my initial discomfort, I’m planning to stick around and ride this group’s wave to see where it leads me. Time to order some more gear from the school’s online catalogs.

An update: As of last Friday, I hadn’t heard anything from my two recent interviews. That’s OK, I’ll keep moving on.

Peace.