Alabama, holdin’ tight to tradition, is bringing back ‘Dixieland Delight’

Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrd tweeted out this graphic to encourage fans to stick to the script on "Dixieland Delight." (Courtesy of the University of Alabama)

Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrd announced this week that Bryant-Denny Stadium would once again play “Dixieland Delight,” the 1982 country pop hit from the band Alabama, resuming a tradition that was discontinued after the 2014 season.

In years past, the Crimson Tide played the song during the fourth quarter while students sang along and, eventually, added some battle cries between the song’s lyrics. Former athletic director Bill Battle nixed the tradition over concerns the added lyrics were objectionable. The song last played at the 2014 Iron Bowl against rival Auburn, during which a four-letter word was hurled repeatedly at Auburn.

(Also, the song itself isn’t even about Alabama or things that happen in Alabama. “Rollin' down a backwoods, Tennessee byway,” is the first line of the song. The chorus even clearly states that the events the song describes take place on a “Tennessee Saturday night.”)

Here’s the full chorus with the added Crimson Tide lyrics in parenthesis:

Spend my dollar (ON BEER)

Parked in a holler 'neath the mountain moonlight. (ROLL TIDE)

Hold her up tight, (AGAINST THE WALL)

Make a little lovin', (ALL NIGHT)

A little turtle dovin' on a Mason-Dixon night. (F*** AUBURN)

Fits my life (AND LSU)

oh so right, (AND TENNESSEE TOO)

My Dixieland Delight. 

And here is video from the aforementioned Iron Bowl (warning: foul language ahead):

Tide fans have also been known to periodically drop the added lines all together and just repeat “F--- Auburn!” in their place, as was the case at the 2014 Iron Bowl.

Byrd, along with tailback Damien Harris, Coach Nick Saban’s wife, Terry Saban, and the university’s student body president pleaded with fans to stick to the “Dixieland Delight Done Right” lyrics, which are simply “ROLL TIDE” and “BEAT AUBURN, AND LSU, AND TENNESSEE TOO.”

Check out this video on how to do Dixieland Delight right.

Be sure to sing #RollTide and Beat Auburn when you see it up on the video board. Retweet to share. #DixielandDelightDoneRight pic.twitter.com/HYajEM8Uy9

— Greg Byrne (@Greg_Byrne) October 11, 2018

“We’re going to do our part here and try this one more time,” Byrd said. “So we need you to do yours.”

“Remember to keep it clean,” Harris said. “Keep it classy.”

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Colleges have outlawed — or at least discouraged — bands and DJs from playing certain songs before and tried to reward students by bringing them back with clean lyrics.

LSU’s band won’t play Cameo’s “Talking Out the Side of Your Neck” with Tiger fans in the stadium because students added a sexually vulgar line.

Maryland’s band stopped playing “Rock and Roll” by Gary Glitter (the song where everyone shouts “Hey!”) because students kept shouting “F--- Duke!” Instead, the student section shouts out the tune shortly after tip off. There’s not much administrators can do about it.

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