A Small Town's Dynasty

As you ride down the streets of Lincolnton, you feel a certain calmness of small-town atmosphere, the kind that makes you want to go back time and time again.

This peacefulness, along with hospitality, is what small Southern towns are known for. But as you reach the wide street in the middle of town that the football stadium is on, the tall, metal light poles and the concrete stadium wall loom over everybody who rides by. This combination of peacefulness and intimidation is reflected in the citizens that hold the football team so near to their hearts. There is a politeness that you can't find anywhere else: the small-town, approachable style of people that you only see in movies. However, each and every one of them also has the serious side that is brought out whenever Red Devils football is talked about or watched on Friday nights. This combination is what makes Lincolnton so unique as a football town.

That is how David Lee, a 2008 LCHS graduate, begins his ethnographical paper about Lincoln County and its love for its football team. The paper was written for a class at Georgia Southern last fall. (Ethnography is "a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures.")

[Click here for the full paper as a PDF]