We appreciate the Executive Director of NCWN and author of Fight Songs, Ed Southern taking the time to answer these questions. I have read this book considered one of the best sportsbooks you will read, and found it is all about the south and our southern fanaticism about college football as well as our history. Although I am not a sports fan, I found it totally engaging and it kept me reading page after page. Be sure you join us on Zoom when Ed is featured on Writers' Night Out, sponsored by NC Writers' Network-West, November 12, 7:00 PM. Contact me at glendabeall@msn.com if you want to sign up for Open Mic that evening.GLENDA: I
grew up in a male-dominated household that loved sports. I never played team
sports and am not a football fan. Please tell me why someone like me will enjoy
your book.
ED: Fight Songs isn’t really about sports. It’s about the roles that sports
play in our culture and in our lives, and how and why they took on those roles.
I like to think that anyone with an interest in the South would enjoy this
book.
GLENDA: Your
wife, Jamie, is a huge football fan and she is from Alabama. Your love story is
told throughout the book. How did she influence you as a football fan?
ED: My football fandom was
pretty well fully formed by the time we met, but she certainly reinforced it.
Watching football and reading are our only two shared hobbies.
GLENDA: Some
of the men in my family, when UGA lost a game, said it ruined the entire
following week for them. Are you the
kind of fan who takes losing this seriously?
ED: I can’t be: I’m a Wake
Forest fan. Wake lost way too many games for me to let them ruin my entire week.
I’d have never had a good week growing up.
GLENDA: You
say that NC is more of a basketball state than a football state. Why are sports
fans in NC more interested in basketball?
ED: Well, you have to read Fight
Songs to get the full story, but the short answer is that NC college
basketball teams won national championships, and college football teams didn’t.
The question then is, Why?
GLENDA: North
Carolina is known for great writers, its higher education and medical centers.
In your book, you say that some southern sports fans claim that NC is not really
a southern state and the south ends with South Carolina. How is NC different
from the deep south states?
ED: The short answer is, one,
NC didn’t have as large or as powerful an antebellum plantation aristocracy as
the Deep South states; and, two, the state had a longer time between its
“frontier” period and the Civil War. Really, though, we’re not all that
different than the Deep South. We just managed to avoid having demagogues in
our governor’s mansion during the Civil Rights Movement. We managed to keep a
better public image.
GLENDA: My
husband, Barry, was obsessed with college football and particularly the SEC. He
taught my niece to love and understand the game of football. It is hard for me
to understand the passion men have for the sport and harder to understand it in
women. Does it have anything to do with the male ego or does it have to do with
belonging to a group of like-minded men?
ED: I’m sure male ego has a
lot to do with it for some men. I’m sure the sense of belonging – which can be
healthy or unhealthy – has a lot to do with it for some people, male and
female.
I love it for many
reasons. I love how the game combines great intricacy of technique and tactics
with brute force and raw speed. I love that it’s usually played outdoors, in
the fall. I love how you find a story – a set-up, rising suspense, climax, and
resolution – not only in every game, but in every snap of the ball, and in
every season as a whole. I love the sense of community I feel, and how it
connects me with my friends and family.
GLENDA: Fight
Songs, your book, began as an essay but became a highly praised book. Will you
tell us how this happened and how a fun little love story about sports, became
what is called “one of the greatest sports books you will ever read?”
ED: My editor at Blair, Robin
Miura, also edits an online magazine called South Writ Large. I spoke to
her about the essay for SWL. She passed on it but asked if I’d be interested
in expanding the essay into a book. I didn’t think there was enough there for a
book, but she convinced me otherwise, and she was right.
GLENDA: You
say that football is a game of violence and basketball is a game of assertion.
I don’t enjoy football because I abhor the violence on the field and the
violent language in the stands. Since deep south fans seem to be rabid about
football, is it the violence, the physical damage done to the players that
intrigue them?
ED: For some, I’d imagine that
it is. Some may be sadists who like watching damage done to others. Some may
imagine the players as their avatars, inflicting damage on their behalf. I
don’t think that’s limited to football fans in the Deep South.
I think what appeals more
in the South is how football embodies notions of domination and honor, notions
that held sway in most of the South long before anyone saw a football.
GLENDA: There
is talk lately of paying college football players who earn millions of dollars
for the colleges where they play. If they get hurt playing for their college
team and can never play professional ball, their hopes of earning anything from
the game are doomed. In your research did you find support for this and what do
you think?
ED: Yes, public opinion has
turned in favor of paying college athletes. College football and men’s
basketball have generated tremendous revenue for decades, but that revenue has
grown exponentially since the 1980s, with the rise of TV contracts. It’s way
past time for the players to get a fair share of that.
GLENDA: Will you tell us how the COVID-19 pandemic
influenced sports and the fans. What were the major effects, and will they last
after the pandemic is finally over?
ED: Again, you really have to
read the book to get the full answer to that. The pandemic influenced some fans
greatly. They began taking sports less seriously, willingly stayed away from
games, even lost their fandom entirely. Others, though, weren’t influenced by
the pandemic at all. They saw it as an inconvenience, keeping them from
watching their beloved games.
I think the widespread
effects will not last, once the pandemic ends. I think the effects on
individuals might.
GLENDA: You are just coming off a book tour. Did your publisher schedule the tour or did
you plan and pay for it?
ED: My publisher and I worked
together to plan it, and they scheduled it.
GLENDA: What did you like and what did you dislike
about the tour?
ED: I loved visiting people
and places I hadn’t seen in a while, and I was humbled by readers’ enthusiasm
for this book. I disliked touring during a pandemic, which was fraught with
fears and doubts.
GLENDA: Do you have a certain place and/or time when
you write?
ED: I usually write early in
the morning, before anyone else has woken up. I like the quiet.
GLENDA: Thank you, Ed, so much for giving us your time
to answer these questions. We appreciate your being our guest on Writers’ Night
Out, November 12. I am sure our members and others will want to meet you and hear more about this interesting book.
