







FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Jeremy Pike is a 37-year-old native and resident of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Like all proper fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide, he maintains an abiding hatred of Southeastern Conference rivals Auburn and Tennessee.

But there is a third member of his unholy fan trinity, and always has been.

"Oh, I hate Notre Dame," Pike said. "I never pull for them."

On Nov. 3, Pike and about 50 other Alabama fans were in Louisiana getting ready to watch the Tide play LSU – the most anticipated game of the year. But before the game, they were glued to the TV screaming for Pittsburgh to upset Notre Dame. All of them.

"Notre Dame, Auburn and Tennessee, I can't pull for them ever," Pike said. "I can't put them in order; it just depends on the year and what's at stake."

[Related: SEC's bowl showings should give Notre Dame a boost against Alabama]

What's at stake next week is the national championship, and the opponent is the Fighting Irish. So for now, they are No. 1 on Pike's Enemies List.

He has a lot of company.

For two schools that haven't played each other in 25 years, and have met just six times in history, there is a very active contempt between the powerhouses. And for a whole host of reasons that extend far beyond this particular matchup, the hate seems to flow with particular fervor from South to North.

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This is in part a reaction to Notre Dame's position of historical primacy, a position that rivals, if not exceeds, Alabama's. But that's not all. It's also a matter of sociology and hagiography. The roots go beyond mere football, extending to cultural and possibly even religious divides.

"There is a real defensiveness in the South in general, but Alabama in particular, about everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line," said Wayne Flynt, the founding editor of the Encylopedia of Alabama and professor emeritus of History at Auburn. "And that includes Notre Dame, which is a huge image of success in America.

"When you rank in the bottom five in the nation … in almost every quality-of-life category, and get hammered in the national media about how backward you are, you sort of get a 5,000-pound chip on your shoulder. We don't excel in almost any other category than college football – and we're kind of gangbusters in that.

"There's one team that vies for supremacy with Alabama in college football. That's Notre Dame, which is the ultimate example of ‘The Other,' to use a sociological term."

From the Southern viewpoint, here is why Notre Dame was "The Other": It was the media darling, the golden program, literally and figuratively. The Irish were the glamour boys with a far-flung fan base, a showcase of academic excellence coupled with football power. Alabama was the standard bearer for the downtrodden, undereducated, underappreciated South, striving to show that the region could look the rest of a disdainful nation in the eye and not blink.

Fighting Irish fans undoubtedly stoked the fires of Southern defensiveness with the popular T-shirt leading into this game: "Catholics vs. Cousins." The shirt is a derivative of the famous "Catholics vs. Convicts" T-shirt of 1988, which was Notre Dame's shot at the lawless Miami Hurricanes.

This one takes aim at the last semi-safe stereotype to lampoon in America: the ignorant white Southerner. The shirt includes the Jed Clampett-ish image of a classic Southern bumpkin, just the kind of guy who would marry his cousin, right? Get it?

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