This is an opinion article. Any views expressed belong solely to the author and are not representative of The Cluster or Mercer University.
Mercer’s Campus Life office sent out a list of restaurants near campus at which Mercer’s football game against the Alabama Crimson Tide was being televised. Naturally, a game that has four quarters mixed with an offer of visiting four establishments during the game led me to visit each bar, one quarter at a time.
The scenes at each restaurant were underwhelming. Despite Macon’s only Division I football team playing against a perennial powerhouse, there was little support for the Bears. Margaritas at Mercer Village has a smattering of jerseys and helmets from the football team over the years, but the interest in the team seemed tepid at best. One family was watching, vocal with their support, but there were few, if any, supporters at the watch party. Mercer Village Pizza had the greatest number of students - five, by my count - and that was when the game was still relatively close.
Engagement with the school, and its sports teams specifically, seems like it is at an all-time low each year. In my (nearly) three years as a student at Mercer, I have never seen a student section filled past the third quarter. Home openers? Nope. Homecoming? Ditto. Basketball, which used to be the school’s bread and butter, filled less than two-thirds of Hawkins Arena’s capacity for the men’s basketball home opener. Less than a quarter for the women’s squad.
Now, when Mercer’s football team traveled to a high-profile game against a team that could feasibly win the College Football Playoff Championship this year, fans were reluctant to watch.
Quarter one: Margaritas at Mercer Village
After a few punts from each side to start the game, No. 9 Alabama nearly turned the ball over on a pressure from Mercer’s defensive line, leading Jalen Milroe to fire the ball into the air. The Bears could not come down with the errant pass and Mercer was called for roughing the passer, eliciting a groan from the crowd gathered in Margaritas.
Later, the restaurant, in which sat about 25 people, was given a taste of Mercer’s defensive prowess. With about 6:45 left in the quarter, it looked like the Bears had forced their own turnover on Alabama on a fumble forced by Andrew Zock. However, an official review of the play showed that the Alabama player was down before he lost control of the ball, giving the Tide the ball in Mercer’s half.
While the fumble itself got some reaction, there wasn’t much hubbub when Alabama got the ball back following the review.
Quarter two: Mercer Village Pizza
After a few minutes of uneventful football to start the second quarter, Alabama forced a fumble on a Parker Wroble ‘25 reception at around midfield, returning the ball 68 yards for a touchdown. The sparse crowd in Mercer Village Pizza was vocal with their frustration.
When asked how she thought the game would go, a friendly bartender was skeptical.
“One touchdown, maybe. Maybe,” she said. Wearing a University of Georgia shirt, she might have been holding her breath for Saturday’s matchup between the No. 6 University of Tennessee and No. 11 Bulldogs.
Not too long later, the Bears proved her right. A 31-yard, circus-like catch by Kendall Harris ‘28 from Whitt Newbauer ‘28 put the Bears on the board. It was just the third time in five games against the Crimson Tide that Mercer scored. Mercer Village Pizza was muted, though, without so much as a yip of excitement from the play that could have very well been nominated for a place on SportCenter’s Top-10 list.
“They did it,” the affable bartender said later of the Bears’ lone score, as the Bears went into halftime down 31-7.
Quarter three: The Brick
Jimmy McInnis, the announcer for Bears football on Saturdays, was at The Brick on Saturday to start the second half. In the first drive of the third quarter, Heisman candidate Jalen Milroe led the Tide 67 yards down the field in 10 plays, and then was taken off the field for the rest of the game to avoid any risk of injury.
The rest of the game was, as McInnis put it, conditioning for the Crimson Tide players. The team cycled through quarterbacks the rest of the game, but former five-star recruit Ty Simpson had control of the offense for the two remaining drives Alabama had in the third quarter.
What was missing at The Brick, though, was any measurable level of support for Mercer. The Brick is a chain restaurant that sits about a mile from campus, but still, there was a stark absence of interest in the game. Most of the patrons there seemed more interested in the LSU-Florida game, in which the Gators beat the ranked Tigers, or the Arkansas-Texas game, during which the Longhorns easily handled the Razorbacks. Other than McInnis and the person with whom he was watching the game, the game didn’t seem to grip the crowd gathered.
Quarter four: Amici
To finish the quartet of bars offering a seat for Mercer’s game in Tuscaloosa, Amici was on the map. At the second-most crowded restaurant of the day, some onlookers at the bar were curious about whether the game’s final score would beat the under, a gambling statistic. In sports betting, an under bet, contrasted to an over bet, is a wager that two teams will combine for less than a certain total of points in a game.
“At least we scored,” one diner said. “We had to at least keep it under 44.5,” came the response from his friend.
As the final seconds ticked off the scoreboard, Mercer’s (few) supporters were stoic, if apathetic. A herculean task of unseating the No. 9 team in the country had proven too much for the Bears from the start of the game. “Oh well,” came a sighed response to Alabama’s final touchdown late in the fourth quarter. Luckily for the Bears, there is always next week.
Gabriel Kopp '26 is majoring in Journalism and Law and Public Policy at Mercer University. He has written for The Cluster since he started at Mercer, and currently works as co-Editor-in-Chief. When he isn't studying, he enjoys going for runs and reading The New York Times or the AJC while sipping coffee.
