Worst. Gatorade. Bath. Ever.
Stay strong. A message to all my brothers and sisters in orange-and-blue, back home in what yesterday’s comment thread universally agreed was Occupied Alabama: this too, shall pass.
Remember: they won of these things in 1979. It took them another 13 years to get the next one, and it took them another 17 years (and countless fiascoes) before they got this one. Yes, they have an immensely talented roster and their coach is the evil robot Maximilian from The Black Hole. But the last time he won a crystal football, he wasn’t even at the same school two years later.
The point: I can’t guarantee anything. But the odds are firmly, firmly against this happening again anytime soon. Stay strong. We’ll be OK.
Because. I recognize that this and the things I wrote yesterday are a lot easier to write for someone who isn’t surrounded by an avalanche of crimson crap on a daily basis. Still: as inextricably tied to Alabama as Auburn is, as difficult as dealing with houndstooth-mad coworkers and relatives and radnom loudmouths at the bar may be, last night’s win had nothing to do with our team.
Well, maybe not nothing. But certainly not much; with our team it’s nothing but sunshine, lollipops and rainbows right now. Our laughingstock of a coach just engineered a three-game improvement in one season with what I maintain was a less-talented team than the final one fielded by his predecessor. The recruiting class our team is now a month away from signing will rank amongst the best our team ever landed, a deep and immensely talented crop of players that will solve many of this year’s crippling depth issues overnight. Even if our team’s chief rival is at the very pinnacle of the sport, the majority of teams in our conference and on our schedule seem to be either spinning their wheels or actively backsliding while ours is moving inexorably forward.
So: regardless of what happened last night or how many “Roll Tahd!”‘s we’re subjected to over the next several months, the fact remains that’s it’s a hundred, a thousand times better to be an Auburn fan today than it was on this date a year ago. It’s not even close.
And one last thing. From the Auburn perspective, there’s a very simple and very available method of preventing Alabama national championships: beating their sorry asses. If it really means so much to Auburn that Alabama not win national titles*, we’d best quit relying on other teams to do our dirty work for us, then.
Which, of course, is exactly what our Tigers have done for the majority of the last 30 years, and will do again soon. War Eagle.
OK, so about the game … the requisite scattered thoughts:
– Obviously it’s a very, very different game if McCoy’s healthy, but that’s the risk you run when your backup is a true freshman and you decide it’s never worth developing a running game, right? Considering what a complete nonentity McElroy was for the entirety of the game (save for his application to Nosepickers Unanimous), it’s safe to say that he could have been knocked out of the game on the first series and Alabama wouldn’t have missed more than a beat or two here or there. It’s too bad Texas’s roll of the dice came up snake eyes at the worst possible time, but they’re the ones who chose to roll them in the first place.
– There can be no better encapuslation of who and what Nick Saban is than last-night’s 45-second sequence, in which he orders his team to score a meaningless, classless touchdown on a team that had already conceded the game*, then responds to his celebratory Gatorade-bathing with brutal disgust and not even the tiniest hint of joy. The reason “Saban is a machine” jokes have become de rigeur over the past couple of years is because the very signs and signals we associate with being human–emotion, empathy for others–often seem to be beyond him. At times like that particular sequence, Nick Saban is not something we can even recognize as a person.
*Even one of my Alabama friends disagreed with the touchdown, texting me that it was “Meyer-like.” Given that Texas had the opportunity to call a timeout and extend the game and didn’t, I couldn’t agree more.
– Do I get to crow about having Marcell Dareus on my All-SEC ballot now? I do, but I shouldn’t? Gotcha.
– On the one hand, there’s not much doubt that Alabama was the best team in the country over the course of the season. But on the other, they say you need some luck to win a national title, and the Tide sure as hell didn’t disprove that theory: the blocked kicks against Tennessee, the missed call against LSU, Chris Todd and the Auburn special teams’ charitable donations to the Alabama Field Position Fund, and finally–the coup de grace–Colt McCoy lasting all of one series. And the ‘Horns still outgained them by 13 yards! It’ll probably be a while before we see a national champion who was outgained three different times again.
– It’s fair to say “What was Mack Brown thinking?!?,” but not for the play that’s gotten the most attention. The shovel pass before the half should have been a safe, low-risk play with a good chance of picking up enough yards for Hail Mary range against ‘Bama’s deep coverage; it’s not Brown’s fault a) Gilbert threw it too high b) the back inexplicably let it get out his hands (after the initial ricochet, he still has an easy chance to grab it) c) his team’s attempts to tackle Dareus were just this side of pathetic. No, Brown’s worst mistake was deciding to kick a field goal from the freaking 1-yard line with McCoy already out of the game. Because leaving four points on the board is always a good idea when you don’t know if your star player will see the field again.
– YES YES YES K-SCAR they most certainly will repeat next year and no doubt about it. Nevermind that Florida returned more this year than ‘Bama returns next year–they are destined for a second straight championship. This is correct. Please repeat as often as possible in as many possible ways for the next eight months, and please ask your media colleagues to do the same, for you will all be proven correct.
Regardless of what went down for the bammers this year, I had a terrific time taking my boys to all but one Auburn game this year, and we have never been more excited about the future. Auburn Football is fun again. It sucks that everyone gets the luck and we don’t (reference to 04′), but you have to believe our day is on the way. You just have to believe. War Eagle.
Can I just say one thing, before we start discussing the taint on the trophy, the injustice in the universe, and, well, everything else…
Leading up to the beginning of the game, while watching all the pregame talk and hype videos and whatnot, ONE thing was racing through my mind:
We HAVE to get there. Soon.
I’ll say this for Alabama — and it’s something I noticed in their opener against VTech. Those players are going 100% full throttle every single play, especially Ingrahm and Richardson. The announcers made a lot of the yards after contact, but my GOD do they ever look like a tornado of knees and elbows once a hand is laid on them. And they continue that way until they are held down and practically hog tied.
That is not to say that our players aren’t trying HARD, but right now Alabama is playing like they are going to run play X and do it hard and they know it’s gonna work. Our players still look like they are going to give play X a shot and they hope it’s gonna work.
I know it’ll come; at least I hope it will.
WDE!
Right on Jason.
When Auburn goes undefeated every 10 years or so, we are either (a) on probation or (b) preseason #1 and #2 run the table, which has only happend ONE TIME IN FREAKING HISTORY!
When Alabama goes undefeated every 20 years or so, the rest of D1A has no other dominant team to mount any serious challenge either in the polls or on the field.
Them’s the brakes. It’s the Auburn Way.
Just think, we were about a minute and a half from completely ruining this entire season for them.
pfhhhhhh.
Too bad that injury thing happened. UT actually had Bama on the ropes (witness the un-flappable Mcelroy chewing out the O-line on the 3rd series I think it was.)
I was really hoping for some sort of strange “tremor in the Force” type thing when UT closed to within 3 with about 5 mins on the clock. Maybe a sack w/fumble, or a Ingram gets stripped type thing followed by a 50 yarder to go to overtime would have been nice. Unfortunately that Gilbert kid has a slower release than Phil Neikro so that didn’t happen.
We have 10 games and 300+ days before we line up across from them again. It would be great if the game was for the SEC W, in their building, one for the ages. Can’t wait.
JB
Another NC for SEC. This time the SEC Refs won the NC.
War Damn Eagle.
Know what gets me through today? The 11 teams we play before them next year are all VERY beatable:
-3 nonconference slam dunks
-1 winnable but challenging game against Clemson (at home, probably at night)
-South Carolina, Arkansas (possibly with a new QB), LSU (without Lafell or Scott), and Georgia (even more QB problems, plus problems on D might stick around) at home
-road games are state, miss, and a uk team replacing their coach and their entire o-line
I’m not sayin…I’m just sayin
I guess we need to stop talking about that other team soon. It seems that the Google ads are picking up on our subject for the past two days. It’s just making it worse.
A woman brought a Rose into the office this morning and has been singing “We are the Champions” all day. Its like something out of a bad disney movie where I (as the main character) must swallow my pride and maintain civility.
btw, nice pic. ha
Can you dump the water cooler over her head?
I finally got up the gumption to figure out where the Crimson Tide got their team name last night, because, frankly, I’d just accepted it for years. So their colors are red and in 1906 some sports writer called them the Crimson Tide. Okay. I’ll bite. But I also found out that phrase refers to a seasonal algal bloom (I’m serious) that can be found in the Gulf of Mexico and that’s just too close to calling them ‘pond scum’ not to endear itself to me.
Incidentally – why do we catch flack for being called the tigers while chanting ‘War Eagle’ when they’re called the big red team, essentially, and have a fuzzy elephant on the sideline (or Tennessee is called the Volunteers and have a hound dog named Smokey on their sidelines and sing ‘Rocky Top’ – talk about schizophrenia)?
Regardless – kudos to our Auburn Tigers for a great season and bright future and I’m just glad I don’t have to spend all off-season going to ESPN’s Auburn page and being greeted with a reminder of a 36-0 shellacking in the ‘last game’ section for months on end. Nice to go out with a W.
The shot of McElroy is priceless… “Fifty bucks the Smails kid picks his nose…”
Running the ball between tackles with a minute to go is running up the score? I disagree. Bama wasn’t doing anything fancy at that point, Richardson was just giving effort.
Meyer runs up the score passing, running, screens, and tricks if he can (Carroll too).
Fifty Bucks the McElroy kid EATS IT!!!
Pre McCoy injury, Texas was poised to stomp on the UAT Pond Scum, a/k/a the luckiest invertebraes in college football. Everyone has to cling to something, and I’m affixing myself snugly to the asterik that should be placed next to their bogus title.
Here’s to Auburn’s non-asteric NC hopes in 2010!
War Eagle (it’s much better than Roll Pond Scum)!!!
Alex,
So you don’t think BT goes 100%. See him carry 5 NW players 6 yds in the OB bowl. Tell Ziemba, McCain, & Pugh. The ’08 team, maybe. The ’09 team NOT SO MUCH.
Doc, they earned a first down on that drive that meant as long as Texas didn’t call their timeout, they could run out the clock. Texas didn’t call their timeout; instead of kneeling, Alabama scored. Yes, they were running up the score, and yes, even though Meyer most certainly does that sort of thing, that doesn’t make it right.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach has his eeeearly 2010 top 25 posted. No surprise who’s on top; I agree with Jerry — let’s hope the media crows long and loud about how inevitable a repeat is.
It’s also good to know AU’s being underrated already.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=4804655
Jerry, thanks for the message of solidarity and the encouragement to stay strong. Thanks for recognizing our plight (-: We need all the encouragement we can get here “behind enemy lines”. War Eagle.
I don’t know about yall, but my Facebook is going nuts with Bammers torn between two main trusted sources of information; ESPN, and their T-shirts.
Only Alabama can go to the National Championship, win, and lose a net of four titles.
It’s been hilarious watching them.
WBE — Do you get the strange feeling that, despite their victory, all the potential positives you listed in your previous article feel kind of moot? Seeing as how they not only didn’t dominate, but almost lost to a McCoyless team? I mean I don’t know, but they weren’t a GREAT football team this year. I guess we should just hope that Saban and the players don’t really realize it.
P.S. Wouldn’t it be great for Saban to dip out to Seattle? All the way across the country, to an irrelevant NFL team, so we’ll never have to even hear from him again.
I’m not quite sure what would be funnier to watch; Saban starts to level out and disappoint and is subject to the wrath of ridiculous Bammer expectations, OR Bammers continue to build him up as God only for him to dip out and hang them left to dry.
I suppose the latter, seeing as I hate Bama as a whole more than Saban. Slightly.
I’m resisting the urge to hope the whole Saban-is-God/Bama-sells-soul-to-win-football thing implodes in the near future. Instead I just hope Auburn gets better and beats them at their Apex. Saban is good, but he is a more intense and disciplined version of Tuberville philosophically, and I feel we can successfully be the yin to that yang with our 80 snaps a game aggressiveness.
Hey Jack,
If you (or anyone for that matter) want to make Bama fans singing “We Are The Champions” shut up, ask them if they know what the song is actually about. Turns out, Freddie Mercury is singing about the struggle for equality in the gay community, not football.
WDE
As a Georgia fan looking in from the outside I was simply pulling for the SEC. You guys blow my mind with your pathological envy and hatred of Alabama. Alabama won fair and square. If the rest of us, UGA included, want to do something about then we need to win. I may not like Saban, but he won it ALL. Congratulations to Alabama.
Scott –
You are right about one thing — we do have an intense hatred for Alabama, and everything they stand for. It’s the most bitter rivalry in all of sports. You don’t understand it because you aren’t a part of it. If you’ll notice, we consider our game against you assholes “brother vs brother”, just because that’s how nice and fluffy it looks by comparison.
Envy? Please. You obviously don’t know enough about Bama as a whole. I wouldn’t trade for 13,000 National Titles for my school (and neither would you) if it had to become as empty of integrity as UA.
Anyway dude, in case you didn’t notice, this article was posted the day after the title game. What else was it supposed to be about? There weren’t any other games Thursday that we should be talking about instead were there? You’re extremely close-minded to confuse an article about the National Title game with obsession and envy with a school. In that case, all of sports television and newspapers are completely envious of and obsessed with Alabama. Hell, so are YOU, because that’s what YOU were talking about at the water cooler Friday.
Excuse us for keeping up with the world of sports, and excuse us for having differing (albiet more informed and experienced) opinions than you.
“It’s 11:59 on Radio Free Auburn; this is War Eagle, with music, and the truth until dawn. Right now I’ve got a few words for some of our brothers and sisters in the occupied zone: “the chair is against the wall, the chair is against the wall”, “john has a long mustache, john has a long mustache”. It’s twelve o’clock, Auburn, another day closer to victory. And for all of you out there, on, or behind the line, this is your song.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke711OW9fAE&feature=related
Sullivan013
AubOrange,
You’re right…..I don’t understand the Iron Bowl from an emotional point of view, but I appreciate it as an SEC fan.
I guess I’ve only had to put up with GT (they beat us once or twice a decade) & Florida (post 1990). I’m sure it has been hard growing up in the shadow of the greatest tradition outside of Notre Dame.
Why the name calling, man?
Scott -
I would venture to say that the name calling comes from you entering an AUBURN message board and then attacking the character of AUBURN fans. You worry about Georgia, let us worry about Auburn (and any rivals that we may loathe).
Scott –
You admit that you don’t understand the rivalry, yet you still assume that it is somehow envy-driven on our end.
Having grown up right in the heart of neutral Alabama, I can honestly say that there is no great shadow cast over the state. People (like you) feel that it is one of the great programs in the country (as far as tradition goes), but when you get close enough, the image starts to fall apart.
They claim 12 (now 13) national championships, while in reality there is only six or seven credible ones. They claim this long stable of amazing players — Joe Namath, Kenny Stabler — yet until a few weeks ago they had no Heisman trophy winners. They build up Paul Bryant as the Bear, the mighty football God, but when you talk to older fans in the state they can recall when he would show up on the coach’s show drunk, and when he would accept well over a hundred of the south’s best players, before there was a limit, and steal their collegiate careers just to keep them off opposing teams.
This is one of the main reasons we hate Alabama. Because they are an absolute sham. It’s not envy. It’s the exact opposite.
I’m not saying you don’t understand the rivalry because it’s above you or anything, because it’s not. I’m saying you don’t understand the rivalry because you’re too far away from it.
I can admit to other rivalries being “bigger” — both the Red Sox and Yankees have fans scattered across the globe. I can admit to other rivalries being “grander” — the Iron Bowl has hardly ever come down to the end, and hardly ever been a battle of two top 5 teams like Michigan and Ohio State has been. But no rivalry is more bitter — because nobody has more passion for a team in sports than college football fans in the south, and Auburn/Alabama is the nastiest rivalry in the south. And worst yet, we have to live amongst eachother.
(As far as the name calling, I used the A-H word just as somewhat of a grammar trick; it built up the AU/UGA rivalry to being pretty nasty, which it is, only to then call it nice and fluffy by comparison. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be offended by it though — it is what it is. But no hard feelings obviously.)
Brad–yes. Making it the 2nd-greatest trick gay ’70s musicians pulled on mainstream America, No. 1 of course being “YMCA,” the song that gets 67-year-old grandmothers from Clay County dancing in celebration of the joy of anonymous gay hookups.
I apologize if I sent the wrong message.
Today I googled the NCAA. I count 8 Alabama NC’s in the modern era to tie them with Notre Dame. What about the Wade & Thomas days? Do they count like the championships GT & Notre Dame claim from the teens, twenties & thirties?
As for the UGA/AU rivalry, yes I want to beat you, but I can’t hate Auburn for more than 60 minutes like I do GT & Florida. I’ve known too many good Auburn people & you gotta admit we are a bit like kissing cousins.
Well it’s hard to count national titles from the teens, twenties, and thirties when in the teens, twenties, and thirties there was NO SUCH THING as a national title. That’s just ignorance. It’s all retroactive BS, while the people that were actually on those teams and at school at those times would just tell you that they just happened to win the eight random games they played against nearby colleges and high schools that particular semester. I mean, SPORTS was hardly invented then, let alone a national championship.
It’s funny to me when I see the Bammer t-shirts that actually show 12 championship rings — because those first four or so never existed and were never given to the actual players.
(As far as the 8 “real” ones you saw; seven are from the AP and one is from the UPI. Back in the day the AP declared national champions before the bowl seasons. Twice, Bama was named champs, and then went on to LOSE their bowl game, so you can throw both of those out. Both of those happened within like a six year span, I think, and it caused such an outrage that Bama got gifted a title twice like that that the AP changed it to declaring AFTER the bowl season, from then on. A few years later, the UPI gave them the title, once again, before a bowl loss. The AP went on to name someone else champs that year. This is most ridiculous of all of them for real. How can you accept the ruling for the AP seven times when they think you’re champs, and then ignore their ruling and accept the UPI when they don’t?… So, anyway, there’s only 8 real ones, only 7 of those are from the AP, and a few of those are debatable. It’s a far cry from the 12 or 13 on their t-shirts.)
“It’ll probably be a while before we see a national champion who was outgained three different times again.”
Perhaps, but it was only as recently as ’07 that LSU was outgained 3 times. Same with UF of ’06.
UF doesn’t surprise me; LSU does. Damn. Oh well. That’s the nice thing about hypotheticals; even when I’m obviously wrong, I’m very technically not.
Not a big deal – it’s a very reasonable assumption. I looked it up out of curiosity more than anything.