[revrew]

Our first few weeks of season six were filled with crucial games. Tampa Bay was considered by many to be our biggest threat to an NFC South title, and we faced the Bucs in week 1. A hard fought defensive battle gave way to our 12-6 overtime win, putting us a game up on the Bucs all year--a game that had playoff significance by the end of the season.

Game two, of course, was our matchup against New England, a team that would prove to be the class of the AFC. Prior to the game, however, some key events began to rattle the Rebel cloisters of power.

Keaton Graves had been struggling to keep the egg off Jeffrey Davis' face. Davis, who had so secretly masterminded his Southern ambition in the early Rebel years, was beginning to get cocky. He had let his ambitions and his political leanings slip in a few bastions of power and country club lunches, and Graves was spinning madly to keep the madman from monologuing his way into trouble. Just as the evil mastermind in comic books and cartoons has to tell the world of his evil genious or he'll bust, Davis was beginning to pop at the seams, looking for someone to pat him on the back for his plan of Southern conquest.

Before the Patriot game, Davis couldn't keep it in any longer. In a public interview on a non-related subject, Davis let it slip in that he was looking forward to "those damn Yankees" coming to town to get "a proper Southern welcome; welcome to go home!" The words got leaked onto SportsCenter, who thought it was fun and games, a tongue-in-cheek story with a wink-wink toward its ability to draw up ire in our "enlightened" day.

Apparently, SportsCenter underestimated both the offense the Patriots would take and the fervency of Southern pride. A couple of the Pats players spouted off about the comments, followed by a rally behind the flag in Birmingham before the game. Suddenly, the pot was stirred.

The police were called in again to Rebel stadium the day of the game--this time, not because of racial tension, but because of geographic rivalry. There were more fights in the stands between Confederate flag wavers and Boston fans than there were in the first couple of tension-filled Rebel games. People came to the game dressed in graycoats and were told by guards they had to leave their muskets at home. "Go home, Yankee" banners and "American by birth, Southern by the grace of God" banners were everywhere. It was a nightmare. It was exactly what Jeffrey Davis wanted all along.

"Finally," he said in the luxury box, "Southerners standing up for their ground against these Northern aggressors."

Keaton Graves, however, was lost. For the first time since I met him, Graves didn't know how to spin out of a sticky situation. Davis was manageable when his ravings and opinions were kept quietly behind a mahogany desk. But when he showed up at the game wearing Jefferson Davis' military dress hat, Graves days of spinning and hiding the truth were over.