Upon my recent visit to Chicago for my cousin’s wedding, I wasn’t too surprised to hear someone say “Roll Tide” from the back of the plane as it landed, seeing as we had departed from Birmingham.

I chuckled quietly to myself as I thought of all the ways in which our battle cry “Roll Tide” is used as a comic response, a way to express positive agreement in any situation. We all remember the ESPN commercial of “Roll Tides,” reminding us that “it’s not crazy, it’s sports.”

But it is not just sports, it’s a way of life that extends beyond the University. While the “Roll Tide” as the plane landed did not surprise me, I was surprised at how much response my cousin’s Alabama T-shirt received as she walked down the streets of downtown Chicago.

I was even more surprised to see an SEC game on ESPN in the lobby of our hotel room. Was our hotel filled with a business group from the South that requested that particular football game be turned on? Who knows.

I had a conversation with a few soon-to-be family members from Chicago who told me that the only thing they knew about southern football was the movie “The Blind Side,” to which my aunt responded, “Honey, that only scratches the surface.”

They could only picture Sandra Bullock’s charming yet fake, Southern accent and refusal to wear the gaudy orange of Tennessee, not realizing that here in the South, loyalty to a particular team is practically a birthright.

Both of my parents graduated from The University of Alabama, so when I was younger, I would never use the orange and blue crayons on the same page and was taught that the words “War Eagle” were curse words.

In the South, asking someone which team they affiliate with is almost as important as other necessary questions you ask when getting to know someone. Where are you from? What do you do for a living? Or, as someone asked me in elementary school, “Who do you go for?” It becomes part of who you are, part of your identity.

At my cousin’s wedding, it wasn’t too difficult for everyone to figure out who the relatives from Alabama were. Sure, part of it may have been due to our southern drawls, obsession with college football and ridiculous use of heavy winter coats in the windy Chicago weather.

But it was more than that. It was the fact that my new cousin-in-law knew to come to us for that southern hospitality of some good fried okra and sweet tea on the back porch. It was our friendliness and Southern charm.

So it’s not crazy and it’s not just sports. It’s a culture, a way of life, recognizable even of the streets of downtown Chicago.

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Hannah Waid is a junior majoring in English. Her column runs biweekly on Tuesday.