Editor’s note: The Iron Bowl, the annual Alabama-Auburn game, is Saturday, Nov. 30. This one is for all the irons. 

I’ve been an outsider living in the state of Georgia for about three years now. I’m from Alabama and attended the appropriately-named University of Alabama.

You might have heard of us. We currently posses the Eye of Sauron, also known as the AFCA National Championship Trophy. Each year we must contend for possession of it. When our inevitable victory occurs, we load the football-shaped crystal into Coach Nick Saban’s sponsor-provided pickup truck. We drive it to every Walmart in Alabama so all of god’s slack-jawed hillbilly children can gander.

Every once in awhile, however, a barefoot hillbilly critter known as a Barner emerges from a hole in his home in the Plains and attempts to steal the Eye from us. And –  in an even rarer once in a while – the Barner takes it from us. The Barner is also known for being saved by giant condors at suspiciously convenient moments.

As University of Georgia fans are aware, one such condor magically guided the Barners’ 4th-and-18-pulled-directly-from-their-anus pass into the end zone in the final milliseconds of this year’s UGA-Auburn football game.

Barners may lack fancy book learning, but they have a druid-like kinship with various animals that allows them to achieve inexplicable feats of what-the-f&*!ery. It’s our job as the peace-hating Death Star of college football to continue or celestial steamroll across the CFB universe. Next stop: Farmville, the Barner planet.

You Georgia folks may not understand the particulars of our hatred. Even if I explained the history of the series, it would not make our loathing any clearer to you. You will not be able to comprehend why an Alabama fan felt so aggrieved by a nearly-unheard-of Iron Bowl loss that he used hippie-nightmare-strength tree poison to destroy historic Oak trees on Auburn’s campus.

These animosities are absorbed through the skin over longer periods of time. If you’re born in Alabama, there’s actually a specific chromosome that determines your Iron Bowl allegiances. Even if you claim to be a fan of the other school, a simple cow-affinity test will be used to determine your true nature.

Such is the joy of growing up in Alabama. I feel a great deal of sympathy for you Georgia folks, with your lottery, and your film industry and professional sports teams. You may be rich in wealth, but Alabama is rich in hatred. Sweet, delicious, unyielding, backwards, misplaced hatred.

We defy you Georgia and Georgia Tech fans to provide a spectacle that will match our mindless brutality.  You called your game Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate? That sounds like a slogan for bourbon. Your rivalry is so traditional it’s almost quaint.

Our rivalry includes random acts of eco-terrorism. I’d wager that none of your fans has poisoned something the other team cared about.

We have truly set the bar for lunacy. Trying to match it will bring great shame to your families.

Do not seek the treasure. Do. Not. Seek. The treasure.