Gratitude. Thanksgiving is still a couple months away, but I’m getting a head-start this year by expressing my beyond-sincere thanks that those in charge of the SEC’s 1992 expansion had the common sense God gave the humble sea urchin. You wouldn’t think “OK, we’re going to keep Auburn and Alabama, Ole Miss and LSU/Mississippi St., Florida and Georgia, and Tennessee and Vandy/Kentucky all in their same divisions, then preserve as many cross-divisional rivalries as we can” would be so brilliant a plan that it could never be replicated again, but here we are.
Big 12: “No, we don’t have to make sure Oklahoma and Nebraska play every season or anything. It’s not like that rivalry means all that much. The Huskers will be perfectly happy without it.”
ACC: “Of course we’re going to split up Miami and Florida St. into separate divisions with no ties whatsoever to geography or rivalry or anything other than a ‘Canes-‘Noles title game rematch. No, it won’t matter that even the most diehard of college football fans won’t be able to keep the names of the divisions or which team is in which straight. Interest will be through the roof regardless!”
And now, the Big Ten: “Splitting up Michigan and Ohio St. into separate divisions and having them play midseason in the 1-in-15 chance they’ll meet in the title game is a no-brainer! No, it doesn’t matter it’s the only annual Big Ten game the rest of the country recognizes as truly important and that by explicitly labeling it as the preliminary, practice-type meeting before the hopefully real showdown at year’s end we’ll ruin what made it special in the first place! This is a great idea!”
So assuming you’re like me, Auburn fans*, and the idea of not playing Georgia or playing Alabama in October with a chance of playing them again in December makes you break out into hives, and not just the normal hives but hives that sing Ke$ha songs at you when you try to take a nap, take a moment to express some thanks. It could be us, you know.
(One other point: my gast is somewhat flabbered that Orspencerson Shwallindle has felt the need to twice talk down to the Wolverine and Buckeye fans up in arms over this, first by telling them they should quit caring about the things they care about, then today suggesting that the problem is that Big Ten fans are too slavish to tradition … despite the fact I’m sure USC-UCLA fans, Pitt-West Virginia fans, Oklahoma-Oklahoma St. fans, Ole Miss-MSU fans, etc. would all be pretty damn pissed if they were in the current M-OSU boat. And as for the first point, it seems odd for the same writer who introduces us to FIREHORSE over a comparatively minor rule change to tell two other fanbases to chill out over the disruption of a season-long buildup they’ve spent 80 years developing, no? It feels like being told by a baseball fan to quit watching soccer because it’s boring. I *heart* Orson like everyone else, but he’s way off on this. Then again, Tennessee fans seem to feel the same way; maybe it’s just the lack of a historical all-or-nothing rival in the season-ender that’s talking?)
OK, that’s a lot of discussion for that issue, so we’ll take the rest of the links in rapid-fire style:
— The odds you haven’t seen Chad Gibbs’ “The SEC’s Aughts as according to Facebook” post by now are pretty much zero, I know. But if you’ve just gottne back from a trip to the Costa Rican jungle or something …
— Linked this yesterday in the OL preview, but Andy Bitter’s breakdown of Auburn’s 2009 penalties is well worth your time. Most notable: Auburn’s defense yielded 30 automatic first-down penalties. Penalty yardage doesn’t actually matter as much as you might think, but handing away that many free first downs? Oh yeah, that matters.
— A second interesting TSK link, this time on why college rushing attacks can still flourish while the NFL’s grind to a halt.
— Interesting tidbit from P-Marsh:
What do Samford coach Pat Sullivan, UAB coach Neil Callaway, West Alabama coach Bobby Wallace, Jacksonville State coach Jack Crowe and Troy coach Larry Blakeney have in common? They all coached on Pat Dye’s Auburn staff.
— The Auburn Arena appears set to open with a game against UNC-Asheville. Eh, at least it’ll be a victory. I can’t work up any more disappointment for the basketball team at the moment.
— I couldn’t care less about the FWAA’s decision to just vacate their 2004 title by this point, I really couldn’t. But if other team’s fans–even ones that hate Auburn–want to stump for us, hey, more power to ’em.
— I suppose someone had to do the “countdown with pictures and descriptions of a player that wears that jersey number” for Auburn, and Joe Auburn is that someone this year. Elsewhere in the blAUgosphere, Acid previews Alabama and predicts an instant classic. Oh, and Will is the first out of the gates with a new roundtable feature at al.com myself and Kenny Smith will also be participating in.
— Enjoy.
— Lastly, you’ve got this post at And the Valley Shook which notes that LSU actually did more improving in the win column than either Auburn or Arkansas did in 2009 and asks why AU and UA are “on the rise” while LSU is seen as on the decline. “I’m not saying that trends will determine this season … but if someone is giving how the team is trending as a reason to pick against LSU and pick Auburn and Arkansas… then they must be looking at different trends than I am,” Poseur writes.
So, yeah, the trend I’m looking at, at least where Auburn is concerned: LSU’s per-game yardage margin in SEC play has gone from +81.0 to -3.7 to -33.4. Their per-play yardage margin has gone +1.4 to +.4 each of the last two seasons. Auburn got worse from 2007 to 2008, of course, but last year went from -48.9 to +6.9 per SEC game, and -.4 to +.9 per-play. I think that’s trend enough; after all, Auburn fans should know.
*The SBNation Michigan blogger claimed in the MGoBlog comments that he’d talked to Auburn fans who didn’t care if the Iron Bowl was moved or not. Which, wha? But maybe I’m in a secret minority–out of curiosity, what are you guys’ thoughts on a hypothetical move-to-midseason for the Iron Bowl?
I would strangle an SEC official or two if they moved the Iron Bowl. Maybe three.
Moving the Iron Bowl to midseason would be like moving the Fourth of July to the Fourteenth of August. Only, y’know, more ridiculous.
I think the point that that MGoBlog commenter is trying to make is that he talked to Auburn fans, and they said that they would still hate Alabama regardless of if they moved the Iron Bowl to midseason or not.
But that’s still kind of a moot point, because, while of course we would still hate them, it doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be in an outrage if they considered moving the Iron Bowl.
That would be insanity if they were to try something like that. I’m playing out the scenario in my head and I’m seeing both universities withdrawing from the NCAA and playing the Iron Bowl in an unofficial, and probably illegal, exhibition game, at the end of November the way God intended.
But maybe I’m just entirely too staunch a traditionalist. I don’t even want Texas A&M to join the SEC, despite what benefits they would bring, because that would mean we would bump to the East and probably play Georgia in September or October or some other unheard of blasphemy.
That would be blasphemy. Pure blasphemy.
It belongs at the end of the year:
UGA – Off Week – Alabama
That order until the end of time.
I made the point in EDSBS comment section about the demise of the AU-UT and AU-UF rivalries and that AU-UGA isn’t what it once was since we reside in a totally different set of standings. Hate for that to happen to our biggest rival.
Don’t even like that Alabama is on or around Thanksgiving these days.
For all the big rivalries, this is untenable for the reasons you and MGO discuss. Extenuating 2001 circumstances notwithstanding, these are the season-ending games. Such change would be the biggest in a long list of thumbs in the eye of fans. For many of them, I fear, it would lead to an irreconcilable divorce.
I was laughing through the article until the “*” You need to put those kinds of thoughts in that part of the brain that holds your secret affection for watching things burn.
I think it’s safe to say the riot would be of extraordinary magnitude.
Although, i agree that I would still hate bama if they were in the other division. I’d also hate them if they weren’t in the SEC. I’d hate them if they quit playing football. I’d hate them if they abolished their athletic program.
So, to sum up, my hatred for UAT knows no bounds
Jerry or anyone else,
Have you every read of hear anything about Malzahn scripting the first 20 plays of a game? Ive never read this anywhere. Is this just a lie perpetrated by Gumps?
……I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a fan on either side of the rivalry who would like to see the game moved. To me, the Black Friday thing borders on heresy!
…..At least it wasn’t Thanksgiving Day, like back in 1992. I had to watch Pat Dye’s last game with a bunch of Tennessee and Ole Miss grads in Jackson, Mississippi. It was really weird…
Kramer totally screwed Auburn when the SEC went to the two divisions. Auburn should have been put in the East with traditional rivals – Tenn, uga, and Florida – then kept Alabama as one of the constants from the other side.
As it was Auburn had to give up it’s game with Tenn immediately, then Florida later.
Meanwhile, he puts Vandy as one of Alabama’s constant “traditional rival” games from the opposite division? Only a bammer would find that anything but laughable.
That gave Alabama an immediate 1/2 game lead on everyone else in the West division each and every year until they scaled it back to only one constant rival. Vandy, really!?!?!
All Alabama fans should be ashamed of that. Anyone ever hear them defend that decision? (Oh, Vandy plays you tough every year…)
Auburn gets Florida and Georgia.
Alabama gets Tennessee and VANDY.
What a bunch of wimps.
Political firecharges aside, “I’ve spoken to Auburn and Alabama fans who believe…” is the logical and journalistic equivalent of saying, “I have in my possession a list of names…”
OK, glad I’m not crazy.
AO, you’re right that the commenter in question was focusing on the hate aspect of it, but he was using it to say “they hate each other so much they don’t care when they play,” which is just patently false, certainly on our side of the equation and I think for the majority of Alabama fans as well.
Plainsman, on one hand I agree with you about the respective difficulty of the schedules, but at the same time 1. an Iron Bowl rematch in the SECCG would be an abomination unto the football gods, so I think AU and UA have to stay in the same division 2. wimpy as it might have been, we had oodles more history with our East rivals than ‘Bama had with any of those teams other than Vandy. They were just trying to protect as many rivalries as possible, which I find to be a noble goal. When it didn’t work out ,they changed it. Works for me.
John: yes.
Hell, I’m pissed that they moved the game from Saturday to Friday, so don’t get me started with a hypothetical move to late October.
Jim Fyffe was an advocate of moving AU-uat to the first game of the season. Jim believed that would take some of the nastiness out of the rivalry and let both teams settle down for their SEC slates without having always looming at the end.
As much as I liked and respected Jim, I heartily disagreed. For one thing, I don’t think it’d change the intensity of the rivalry one iota. For another, it would make the rest of the season anticlimactic for both teams. Finally, that rivalry deserves the best out of both sides, and any team that plays at the top of its form in the first week of the season is about as rare as a full set of teeth among the “SOS” bozos.
uat’s Hootie Ingram actually demanded to have Vandy as a “traditional opponent” back in ’90 when the division schedules were first pounded out. Pat Dye, then the last of the head coach/athletic directors and at the very peak of his power and influence, demanded Florida and Georgia.
I don’t think changing the date of the game would make any Bama fan less arrogant. It could be played as the first game, and they would still be miserable company. As a whole that is.
That being said, I would never even contemplate a move away from it’s current time frame. I mean my GOD, they don’t call it “Rivalry Weekend” for nothing.
To move this game to any other place on the schedule is pure blasphemy, as mentioned above.
WAR EAGLE!