I promised the Hills between games yesterday that I'd be back after the Alabama game to sample the Texas-Pete-Cookoff-winning ribs, and when I saw 20,000 taillights trying to leave the stadium at the same time, hopping a golf cart to the Hills' campsite seemed like a very good idea. Two bowls of jambalaya and a beverage or two later, it was.

Cary Hicks is the cookoff champion, and he was holding court with his fellow motor-homers under their crimson pop up tents between two RVs. Cary is a man most in his element while feeding his friends, and he and his wife Janie were every bit the gracious hosts, offering me three kinds of food and every kind of cold beverage appropriate to an uber-tailgate. Cary introduced me to his dog, 'Bama, who he dubbed "the best travelling dog there is" and muscled me into trying some of his friend Billy's reheated jambalaya. Janie followed with brownies from another friend's motor home down the way, and every meal was served with a mini-bottle of Texas Pete -- Cary won a box of hundreds of the little bottles along with his new portable grill and a championship banner that hung proudly from one of the tents. Cary's the two-time champion after all, and the promotions people that came through to accept his invitation for a few cold ones after the game said he had one more year to win it all before they declare him a dynasty and kept him out of the competition. Doesn't bother Cary at all, and chances are it won't stop him from making his signature six sides of ribs for everyone around him at every opportunity.

After a fair amount of ribbing about being from New Yawk City, I got to hear the highlights of a long career of motor-homing in the name of Alabama. Cary said he and Janie had been on the road for those games since before Bear Bryant retired (in 1982), and now they keep their motor home in Tuscaloosa full-time, while they live and he works as a stockbroker "a ways" away. The party for a football Saturday starts the Wednesday before, where the Hills stake out their territory and begin the party that will last long after the game ends. There was the time a police officer cracked down on the noise and showed off a Tennessee t-shirt under his uniform when the 'Bama fans objected. There were plenty of other stories, off the record, since Cary explained there's "insiders" and "outsiders", but everyone gets fed.

For baseball the scene is much calmer -- there are only 150 RVs allowed in the Hoover Met campground, but with three lots and counting in Tuscaloosa competition for a spot can be as fierce as the competition on the field. Cary claims he's going to follow the Tide all the way through to Omaha, starting with the regional they plan to host in Tuscaloosa next weekend. First, though, Janie wanted to make sure I knew I was invited back Saturday morning for cheese grits and Saturday night for their annual baseball fish fry.

The way I see it, from a bit of knowledge I picked up while visitin' last night: If life is a banquet and some poor suckers are starving to death, Cary and Janie Hill are around to make sure that at very least, no Alabama fan goes hungry.