It’s only fitting that the admissions tour for the University of Alabama starts in Bryant-Denny Stadium. On game days, the campus’s iconic quad — a painterly expanse of lawn, majestic trees and bell tower — becomes a crimson and white tent city of numbered tailgating plots, some with electricity. Coach Nick Saban is so revered that as rain threatened this year’s sorority rush, prayers went out to “Lord Saban” for sunshine, which brings us to the second thing Bama is famous for: Greek life. Banners flew along Colonial Drive after the August rush. One, for Alpha Omicron Pi, descended over four white pillars boasting, with a pun on the house’s floral symbol, of recruiting success: “We Rose Higher Than the Rest.”

November 3, 2016 ・ From The New York Times