Sally - your story is funny. The first time I went to an Alabama game, our son was there, I was overwhelmed (our oldest daughter had gone to East Carolina, and we had been to many games there, but they definitley are not quite the same)I have never seen anything like it in my life - we were way up at the top of the statium (in Tuscaloosa) and we could see the whole town from there, and during the game there was not a soul anywhere on the streets, and the people with the big RV's at the tailgating areas were just amazing.
A few years back, Alabama played UCLA in LA, so our whole family went out, mostly to see some really close friends and spend time with them, but also to go to the game, and I didn't go, but the guys told me that UCLA was overwhelmed with ticket requests and actually had to come up with more tickets for the Bama fans, and they could not believe the number of people who came in their big RV's and in the end there were more Bama fans at the game than UCLA - even our UCLA friends were amazed.
On a cruise about 3 years ago, we got very friendly with the duo who played in the bar before dinner everynight, and one night they sang "Rocky Top" and my husband went "oh no no, you can't play Rocky Top unless you play Sweet Home Alabama", and they said "well we don't know it but we'll check it out." The next to the last night, they said "this song is for Frank," and they had gone online, downloaded the music and played "Sweet Home Alabama" for him - they played it several times in the last two days - he was pretty impressed.