Some kind of Americana, or How to watch the College Football National Championship
When I drove through Horn Lake, Mississippi in November it was the cotton harvest. From all the plains down by the biggest river dust turned up in the air and all the colors faded—the blue sky and the dark green thickets washed out all the way from the towns of Banks to the South to Walls to the West and Days to the East.
The dust in the air painted nostalgia on everything and kids of different colors kicked stones in the empty parking lot of a Baptist church where the pink flowers of common plantain were bloom unnoticed—a Wednesday in listless Mississippi,
backwards Mississippi,
hopeless Mississippi,
lowest GDP per capita Mississippi,
worst education in the country Mississippi,
banned slavery in 2013 Mississippi,
where towns try to annex their neighbors
just so they can have enough tax revenue to be a town
in Mississippi, USA.
The stone-kicking kids should have been in school but, hey, when your local school is ranked toward the bottom of list in a state that’s at the bottom of the list in a country where public education is failing rapidly, why the fuck go to school anyway?
The first time I heard Nakobe Dean talk was after Georgia’s rout of Michigan in the college football semifinals and in a postgame interview Holly Rowe asked him some things about the game and when he responded I remember thinking: that’s some real Southern shit. The kinda accent you don’t hear anymore as football has professionalized, as academies have cropped up to pluck the best talent at a young age, and bring them to places like IMG Academy in Florida where they teach you how to speak differently and ball hard and train and learn like some modern Spartans. Nakobe’s accent is the kinda thing you only really get in Black rural Mississippi, not at IMG.
And then a few moments later Holly Rowe and he had this exchange:
I’m writing this mostly because I want to say that for me Nakobe Dean is a fucking American hero and someone that should be celebrated and on Monday, 8PM EST, when Georgia plays Alabama in the National Championship game I don’t care whether you like football or think it’s too violent or propagates toxic masculine culture or whatever—you should root for Nakobe Dean.
In sixth grade Nakobe won a middle-school wide math competition and in high school he kept a 4.3 GPA and missed being Horn Lake’s valedictorian by just a hair. Reading a bit about the way people talk about him, coaches, friends, etc., it is clear: he’s absolutely brilliant. But also, an incredible person.
When he was on the varsity team his mom and he were lamenting how the local police force were pulling Black folks over for no reason so they organized a join fundraiser 5K for the (mostly Black) football program and (mostly white) police force, bringing the two together into a shared space. That year, his senior year, Horn Lake won the State Title.
And I don’t know what to call it…it’s like a, chill, or confidence? I think maybe it’s just maturity. In this local TV segment on him when he was in high school, when he’s literally the top football recruit in the entire state, there’s this moment when he’s like, ‘yeah, I’m visiting colleges, going on recruiting visits, but like, I’m kinda just trying to enjoy my senior year, hang out with friends, and be a kid for a little longer. You’ve got to enjoy life while you can.’
There’s this other video of him caught up in some weird reporting moment at like a park, but the reporter asks him about his being recruited by LSU and about his recent visit and the first thing he says is like, ‘I liked that they talked more about academics and I even got to talk to an engineering professor about a plan for making an engineering degree possible while also pursuing football.
But he landed at Georgia, where he’s a mechanical engineering major with a 3.53 GPA who on the weekends works with a nonprofit in Athens, GA aimed at bringing more young people of color into STEM fields. He’s also the best linebacker in the country.
For those of you that don’t give a shit about football but maybe like to know things about things here’s a thing: the middle linebacker is the quarterback of the defense. Generally, they are the one standing right behind the defensive line (“line-backer”) and call defensive plays, call shifts, read the patterns of the offense, and have to be able step up and make tackles when the offense runs the ball and also drop into coverage when the offense throws the ball. It’s the headiest and hardest position in football and this is what too-small-for-the-position Nakobe from dusty Horn Lake plays—a position that is all about pattern recognition, doing your homework, and anticipation.
In the third clip (against Michigan) in this highlight reel below you’ll see this shit in full action where you can see #17 Nakobe reading the play literally before the ball is snapped, sprinting across the field at the perfect angle so that at the same moment the ball hits the receiver’s hands so does Nakobe’s body. He is brilliant to watch. Or rather, in some weird type of gaze, it’s wonderful to watch him watch the game. It is a kind of presence that only sport or dance can really bring to bear.
Anyway, on Monday night I’m going to be thinking of the biggest river, and the churches, and the machine-harvested cotton like big Easter marshmallows and when Alabama has the ball I’ll be watching Nakobe along with all of Horn Lake, hoping that Georgia can get over the top for the first time since 1980, all, again, up against Alabama who’ve won six national titles since 2009.
Monday, 8PM EST.
I love this.