This is a opinion column.

I feel guilty sometimes. About how much I care about college football on game days.

My head tells me most of the time it’s just a game. And I believe it. But on fall Saturdays my DNA says it is existential. And I believe that, too.

In many ways I’m the classic Alabama guy. The best Christmas I ever had came when I was 12. I got a crimson jersey, with the number 14 stitched on with real thread.

I thought it was perfect. But when I opened the next present I found tickets to the Alabama vs. Penn State Sugar Bowl that would be played four days later in the brand-new New Orleans Superdome. Not the famous one with the Barry Krauss goal line stand, but it was a 13-6 thriller, and Richard Todd – No. 14 – was MVP.

It was heaven, Roll Tide. And thank you, Bear.

It’s hard to believe I haven’t seen an Alabama game live since 2003. It’s all because Nick Saban drove me away. Let me explain.

My children were young then, and hardly into football. They didn’t know the thrill of “The Kick” or the heartbreak of “Punt Bama Punt.” They didn’t know the joy of watching George Teague and Co. dismember mighty Miami and Gino Torretta to restore, temporarily, at least, the divine order of college football.

All they knew of football was dad, yelling at the television for what seemed like no logical reason. It was unlike him. It was disconcerting.

They didn’t yell at the screen at all. So I realized that as an Alabama kid, an Alabama fan, an Alabama grad, I had failed them. I resolved to take them to a game.

I got tickets, which wasn’t hard, because Alabama only won four games that year, which is unfathomable to anybody born this century.

But there were still 83,000 fans in the stadium when we arrived in Tuscaloosa that evening to play the LSU Tigers, led by Nick Saban and en route to a shared national championship.

Nick Saban. Lord, how I hated him that night.

Our tickets were in the end zone, and we were surrounded by Cajuns yelling words my youngest did not yet know. A pair of women in purple and gold threw punches in the row below us, and by the third quarter Saban’s team was up 24-0 on Alabama, at home.

I’d never seen that. I’d never felt the hopelessness other fan bases must experience on the regular. So I did something I never thought I’d do, something my father would be ashamed of.

I herded my children out of that tiger’s den, out the gate and into the car, with most of the second half left to play.

And I got exactly what I deserved. When we reached the shady spot I’d paid to park our ‘90s minivan – a battered Chevy Lumina to make things worse – I realized we were blocked in on all sides. By LSU fans.

So we sat in the car, and waited for the game to end, forced to endure the 27-3 shellacking by radio. LSU fans stayed inside until the end, singing St. Nick’s praises on hallowed Alabama ground.

It was midnight before we got home. Tired. Sad. Angry at traffic and bad decisions and Mike Shula. The kids were mystified.

That was supposed to be fun?

That was the last Alabama game I saw live.

I never saw Nick Saban coach an Alabama team. Not live, anyway. I never got to see him walk the sideline, or hug Miss Terry, or spank a quarterback, or berate an official. Not live.

Somehow avoiding live games became a superstition.

When I stayed away, Alabama performed better. When I stayed away, Alabama won. I began to believe the superstition, I think. Especially after Saban came to Tuscaloosa for real.

I embraced it, and why not? It was about winning, and had nothing at all to do with the advent of HDTV, the convenience of the yellow first-down marker, or convenience. Or laziness.

From time to time people asked me to go to Alabama games with them, and I always said no. I have a responsibility, I said, to the team.

And most of them nodded as if they understood.

I came to believe that as long as I ate seafood for game day meals, and as long as I watched the games from the comfort of my home – yelling if need be but not so much after Nick arrived – Alabama always had a chance. It became very real. Disturbingly real.

I stayed home, because of Nick Saban.

But I fell back in love with the game because of Nick Saban. And because of him my children – grown as they are now – learned to understand, too.

I just wish they wouldn’t yell at the TV so much.

I still worry, down in the heart of my heart, that we put too much emphasis on football in Alabama. But I know, too, that it is in the DNA.

And I believe Nick Saban was more than just a good football coach. He was a pretty good influence on Alabama, too.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner for AL.com.