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The last real sports
fan
Posted: Tue October 6,
1998
Sports Illustrated staff writer David Fleming posts the
Fleming File each Tuesday on
CNN/SI.
The first time I passed Miss Flo, as I
juggled several beers on the way to my field-level seat
inside LSU's Tiger Stadium for last Saturday night's SEC
showdown with Georgia, I thought to myself,
Oh, how cute, someone brought their dear little old grandma
to the game; as soon as she falls asleep I can put my feet
on her
chair. Just then, however, a rather intimidating herd of coeds
from Georgia planted themselves in the walkway in front of
us, right smack in the middle of our sight line. Because
it's a rule of mine not to get my ass kicked before
kickoff, I had decided to
suffer in silence when all of a sudden Miss Flo stood up,
adjusted her perfectly coiffed golden hair and, with the
force of all her 80 pounds, hollered, "Hey, girls, do
ya'll mind? MOVE
IT!"
A few seconds later a Louisiana state trooper, a rather
large fellow with bullets on his belt, stopped in the exact
same spot. Miss Flo took care of him, too. That's when I
decided to borrow a pen and begin jotting down Miss Flo's
story on the back of
napkins, ATM receipts and any other scraps of paper I could
find. In a world clogged with passionless, PSL-purchasing,
fair-weather, bandwagon-jumping fans who leave at halftime
(or as soon as the chablis runs out in their luxury box), I
may have stumbled
across the last real sports fan in the
world.
Meet Florence Stallings, 78 years young and the "spunk
that holds our family together," according to her
daughter, Melinda Thompson. A lifelong resident of Baton
Rouge, Miss Flo has three kids, all LSU grads, and two
little granddaughters, each of whom
sits next to her in the stands inside Death Valley—one
wearing tiger ears and an LSU cheerleader's outfit, the
other wearing nacho cheese all over her
forehead.
On this night Miss Flo is part of the second-largest crowd
to ever watch a game in Tiger Stadium. How appropriate that
she is, in some small way, a part of LSU history. You see,
no one enticed her into Death Valley with a Beanie Baby.
There are no hot
tubs. They don't serve sushi here, either. And Miss Flo has
no idea what a PSL is. Her first ticket to Tiger Stadium
cost 25 cents in 1936. Back then the stadium was open at
one end and the woods came right up to the field. She wore
her Sunday best and a
corsage to each game. "I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Tiger
fan," she tells me, her fiery, golden-brown eyes never
once leaving the field. "I've pretty much seen it
all."
She watched The Ghost gallop. Forty years ago she
celebrated a national title. She saw Archie Manning cry.
She wept herself when the goal posts came down after the
Tigers beat Florida last year. Yeah, she's missed a few
games during the last seven
decades, but only when she was pregnant. On this night, she never
stops cheering or pumping her fists or screaming the fight
song or dancing with the band. At all times, her hands are
either clapping or folded in prayer. She listens for other
SEC scores over
the loudspeaker and she yells at the cornerbacks to
"PLAY THE BALL, YOU BIG DUMMIES!!!" She never
leaves early. Hell, she's always in her seat or on her
feet. "Why come at all if you're not gonna watch the
whole thing?" she says. Almost 50 years her
junior, I am exhausted trying to keep
up.
In an age when bad-weather forecasts keep people at home,
Miss Flo is still willing to sit in Death Valley with water
halfway up to her knees. One hundred-degree heat? Freezing
rain? Sub-zero temperatures? Hopeless losses? Boring
blowouts? Miss Flo
hasn't budged. Late in the game Saturday night she stood there
praying for a defensive stop even as so-called fans with
their faces painted gold and purple filed past her on their
way out of the stadium.
"I'll never leave early and I'll only stop cheering
for the Tigers when I'm six feet under," she said.
"And I hope when that happens they'll bury me at the
50-yard
line.""
Better yet, I hope the big guy upstairs awards her with her
own luxury skybox. Until then, Miss Flo will be busy
shooing away loiterers in front of her perch inside Tiger
Stadium, located at Box 9, Row A, Seat 12. If you ever get
the chance, stop by and
pay homage to Miss Flo—the last real sports fan in the
world.
Just don't stand in her
way.
Spanning the strange and wonderful world of sports, the Flem File has visited
a nudist colony, investigated nasal strips, tried out for the Olympic bobsled
team and endured injury and humiliation at the NFL Experience. What, or who,
should we riff on next week? If you've got a suggestion, a comment or a
question, don't just sit there, bring it on! Click here to send an e-mail to
Flem, or address it yourself: flemfile@aol.com.
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