There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football
in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast
stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road
every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory.
In September 2006, popular sports columnist and lifelong University of
Tennessee fan Clay Travis set out on his "Dixieland Delight Tour."
Without a single map, hotel reservation, or game ticket, he began an
8,000-mile journey through the beating heart of the Southland. As Travis
toured the SEC, he immersed himself in the bizarre game-day rituals of
the common fan, brazenly dancing with the chancellor's wife at a
Vanderbilt frat party, hanging with University of Florida demigod
quarterback Tim Tebow, and abandoning himself totally to the ribald
intensity and religious fervor of SEC football. Dixieland Delight is
Travis's hilarious, loving, irreverent, and endlessly entertaining
chronicle of a season of ironic excess in a world that goes a little
crazy on football Saturdays.