As an SAE pledge that fall, I had memorized by fiat the words of The True Gentleman but I had not yet learned them.  My Gators - they were mine as I had completed my first semester and believed I had earned the equity such a pronoun requires - were matched with the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Gator Bowl.  It was to be a triumphal homecoming. 

I am home from 'the University'.  And my team is playing here, in my home. And I am going to see them play, as is my passion.  And being the game is graced by my Gators, in my hometown, I and I alone shall determine my course.

If you didn't count the vodka, pre-game passed uneventfully.  I ate and drank and danced and strutted.  I sought out Iowa fans and yelled at them.  They were, after all, pretenders, worse, encroachers.  My exhuberance knew no bounds.

By kick-off, I had worked myself into a kingly lather of ostentatious pomposity.  I was, I am told, quite the arrogant #badword#.  

Let's go Gators!  #badword# Idaho!

"It's Iowa," the old man sitting nearby told me, "not Idaho."   Ha!  My disdainful joke had worked! The rube was clearly perturbed.   

 IOWA, IDAHO - IT'S ALL POTATOES TO ME!  HA!  #badword# IDAHO!

And I went on like that. Obnoxiously.  For the rest of the game.  The rest of the game for me, anyway.

After a time, I learned, the old man from Iowa had had enough.  Enough of the young king from Jacksonville.  He informed me of the end of his patience in the form of a right uppercut which, I am told, landed glancingly upon my royal chin.  I wobbled, yes, but I did not go down, much as I might have deserved it.  What I did do was take a majestic, mighty, breathtaking swing at the old man.  A swing so august and resplendent and executed with such unrestrained power and sovereignty that, I am told, the whole of the section of onlookers dove aside for fear of it landing upon their own personage.  Alas, my looping, grandiose right hook had a hole in it the size of a Dustin Pedroia homerun swing without the homerun.  I had missed and missed badly.

Here ends my ability to tell the tale.  For the next thing I knew, I was in the royal carriage in which I had arrived, my trusted companion having negotiated my way out of the clutches of Jacksonville's finest, whom had removed me from the stadium with not a little coercion.

I knew not the score, nor the time or even the place. 

Thirty years later, when I attend games, my manner is friendly, my passion subdued.  I take umbrage at young, drunken whippersnappers who rudely intrude on the enjoyment of other fans, most especially the older ones.  And, importantly, I leave potatoes and their derivatives to the farmers of Iowa and Idaho and thank them silently for their contributions to the feeding of America.  And I know, quite well, that Iowa is the state whose fans and football team gave my team and this would-be king, all we could handle.