The moment was filled with just enough irony that even a tired, uncomfortable sports writer couldn’t help but take notice.

I was passing time on a flight home from Chicago yesterday flipping through an entertaining story about the hold the Volunteers of Tennessee and Crimson Tide of Alabama have on their states during college football season. It’s year-round, across all generations and knows no bounds. Fans who sing “Rocky Top” in their sleep and let out blood-curdling yells of “Roll Tide” for no apparent reason fill those states. Similar passion exists in Florida with the Gators, Georgia for the Bulldogs and all across the South in the best college pigskin league of them all, the Southeastern Conference.

Then I turned to my left and saw 15-year-old Brittany DeRouin and her dad, Alan. Brittany wore a Daisuke Matsuzaka T-shirt. She and her father had matching, red hats with large B’s stitched on the front.

Being an intrepid reporter, I asked Brittany if she had been in Chicago to watch the Red Sox-White Sox series.

“Every game, except [yesterday],” she said. “We flew out Thursday but that one was rained out. So we went to the doubleheader Friday and then the game Saturday. It was great.”

When I asked Brittany if this was her first road trip to watch the Sox, she shot me a “You-have-no-idea-who-you’re-talking-to,” look.

“This year we’ve been to Tampa, Baltimore and now Chicago. But we go everywhere,” the Pilgrim High junior said.

Everywhere? For how long?

“I think we first started doing this about seven, eight years ago,” said Alan DeRouin, a Warwick resident. “So Brittany was about eight, I guess.”

DeRouin and Brittany, the youngest of his five daughters, have been to Yankee Stadium and Toronto, too. They’d love to go to California and see the Sox play the Angels. Brittany said she’d love to see Detroit, too. (Stick with L.A., kid. Let Pop brave the Motor City.)

The Sox’ trips are a bond for father and daughter, what they do and what they talk about. Brittany found the tickets for the White Sox games online and gave them to her father for his birthday. She thinks her dad would make a great candidate for president of Red Sox Nation. They’ll look for tickets to games during the pennant drive at Fenway Park but they only drive to Boston if a friendly season-ticket holder passes some freebies along.

“You can’t find any at Fenway,” said Alan. “Besides, you get much better seats on the road. Especially in Tampa. You can sit real close there.”

The DeRouin’s aren’t alone, of course. Any Red Sox fan who turns on the TV to watch a road game knows the Sox have fans everywhere. Most reside in areas close to opposing ball parks but thousands circle their calendars and spend their summer vacations traveling around the country to watch Manny, Big Papi and the boys.

This is a relatively new phenomenon for Red Sox fans, clearly an offshoot from the franchise’s 2004 World Series title. That win brought Sox fans out of the woodwork and now it’s cool to wear your red, blue or pink Sox hat in any ballpark.

But this is how fans in the South have treated college football for decades.

It’s impressive when 15,000-20,000 Red Sox fans drown out the White Sox supporters at U.S. Cellular Field but that doesn’t scratch the 40,000 (or much more) college pigskin fans who annually flock to BCS bowl games. We may debate the merits of the Red Sox pitching rotation while watching a December snowfall, but Florida Gator fans have broken down the merits of Tim Tebow’s quarterbacking skills ever since their heroes won the national title last January. We have Ted Williams, but the Georgia Bulldogs have Herschel Walker. Red Sox tickets are like gold, but if you have enough cash, you can scratch out a box seat to plenty of games at Fenway. Offer thousands of dollars for a prime seat for Alabama-Auburn or Georgia-Florida this fall and you’ll get laughed at.

That’s a passion football fans in New England will never feel. And don’t try to equate the crazed Southern college football fan with what we feel for the Patriots. Trust me, it’s not even close.

The obsession here is for baseball and the Red Sox. They are New England’s Crimson Tide, baseball’s team of the moment and a year-long obsession that drives fathers to fly their daughters around the country to catch a glimpse of their heroes.

kmcnamar@projo.com