Oh, and they can

Will Alabama bring home its second Heisman Trophy tomorrow night? According to Grantland, no, at least not if people who can read have anything to say about it. And the latest straw polls seem to back them up. Trent Richardson’s chances at winning were supposedly tripped up by not playing last weekend. Thank God for small scheduling miracles.

But I’m preparing for the worst, planning to again rezone my Auburn pride as we all had to that dark night in 2009—”Got Two?”—when Mark Ingram’s name was so undeservedly uttered and the huge, seemingly insurmountable lead we enjoyed for a quarter of a century cut in half. I still can’t believe I have to, though. I still can’t believe that the luxury restored so amazingly and immediately to the Auburn psyche by the healing stiff-arm salve of the Blessed Individual is again in jeopardy. So I’m digging deep. Just in case. Here it is.

There is one thing related to the Heisman Trophy that Alabama will never have, can never have. Sure, Auburn remains the only school where John Heisman coached football to have a player win the Heisman Trophy. We know this. We brag about it in media guides. We put it on T-shirts. But I’m talking more than trivia. I’m talking deep down, historical assurance that John Heisman—Big Papa H. we used to call him*—didn’t just coach football at Auburn, he loved Auburn. I’m talking about something physically and emotionally tangible.

I’m talking about a letter.

He wrote it after deciding to resign from coaching in order to become, get this, a Shakespearean actor. (That didn’t pan out and he instead headed over to Clemson, sure, but they don’t have any Heisman winners, so who cares?) It was printed in The Plainsman (then called the Orange and Blue) and later in Rich Donnell’s great book of quotations on Auburn football, “Down Through The Years.” And it’s beautiful.

December 11, 1899

Dear Auburn Boys,

At last we are to part. Is it not hard to believe? There are tears in my eyes, and tears in my voice; tears even in the trembling of my hand as I write you.You will not feel hard toward me; you will forgive me, you will not forget me? Let me ask to retain your friendship. Heaven knows I never felt more in need of it than I do at this moment.

Can a man be associated for five successive seasons with Grand Old Auburn, toiling for her, befriended by her, striving with her, and yet not love her? No. Where on earth’s surface have I found better friends, manlier sportsmen, truer gentlemen than among the sons of the deservedly popular A.P.I.

The many fresh evidences I have lately received of your unwavering respect and esteem for yo me have touched me to my heart’s center. It is true that “prosperity brings friends and adversity tries them” Our friendship has more than once been thoroughly tried and never yet found wanting.

You believe in me—you trust me. Let me ask for a continuance of that faith. It shall be my life’s endeavor to prove myself worthy of it.

I hope this is not the end. I hope that we shall meet again. The recollection of these years of mutual endeavor, of mutual joy over all that was good for Auburn, of intermingled sorrow over all that was bad for Auburn, shall never fade. To you, to your faculty, to your friends, who have all been so kind, so just, so unfailingly true to me that I doubt I deserve it, I say “Farewell and yet I say “Aufs Wideuschen.”

May God bless you, everyone!

Devotedly yours,

Heisman

Devotedly ours, now and forever. And no post-millennial string of undeserving Bama running backs can ever change that (DO YOU HEAR ME, GOD?!)

* Totally made up, but I mean, maybe.

Related: The press release announcing Bo Jackson as the 1985 Heisman Trophy winner.

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So you’re obviously wanting to relive Auburn’s national championship season now more than ever.

Go to WarEagleDVD.com and enter TWER as your promo code. You’ll get free shipping… and you’ll help your favorite Auburn website keep the lights on during the long winter.

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The Auburn Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Some give it great reviews, some give it terrible reviews, some mediocre, whatever. Maybe I give “Love Song for Bobby Long” (2004) a pass because, whoa, is that a hungover John Travolta getting out of bed half-naked in a vintage Auburn T-shirt? And is he hitting on that waitress in an Auburn hat? And dude, does he actually drive to a BBQ joint in “Auburn”? But I didn’t know that any of that was going to be in there when we rented it from Hastings six years ago, didn’t know that it was based on a book written by an Auburn grad, but it called to me nonetheless, and I know I probably still would have bought it and would watch it again on certain nights to feel a certain way (Spring ’98, Spring ’99, 2001, 2003) regardless, because man, I know people like that and I’d be willing to bet that the folks who whine that the southern cliches (sure, most of the accents are pretty terrible) make everything but that slow motion-loop-on-YouTube-inspiring scene of ScarJo in a towel unwatchable haven’t sat around in circles with people like that or slept in the sweaty smoke of houses like that and maybe haven’t even toasted damp books over noon breakfasts of dirty glass orange juice like that. It happens, yo.

The plot: John Travolta is a burnout Auburn English professor squatting in a shotgun house in New Orleans with a backsliding Auburn grad student, Gabriel Macht, who is writing a book about him, or trying to. Some weird stuff went down at Auburn: infidelity, beat downs, divorce; they ran away. They’ve got this complicated symbiosis thing goin’ and they communicate by making each other guess the author behind the random literary quotes they work into their conversations. Scarlett Johannson is the estranged daughter of the house’s rightful owner, Lorraine, a recently deceased handbill legend of the New Orleans music scene who somehow established a life-changing level of intimacy with everyone in the movie, Travolta and Macht most especially. ScarJo’s porn-addled boyfriend neglects to tells her that her mom died until just before the funeral. ScarJo tries make it from their Redneck Riviera trailer to the Big Easy in time to attend. She doesn’t. She learns that Lorraine left her, Travolta, and Macht each one-third of the house. Except that Lorraine left her the whole house. Travolta’s lying to her. Being a jerk. Trying to run her off. She stays. They fight. They cuddle. They read. They sing. They smoke. They drink. They discover.

The book (“Off Magazine Street“) is way dirtier, at least language-wise (and Lorraine is morbidly obese). I read it alone in an empty house during the final weeks of Lubbock bachelordom. It was great. I tried tracking down Ronald Everett Capps, the author, to talk about all the above, writer to writer, or at least writer to feeler, and about how much the movie veered from his story, which supposedly pissed him off, and to tell him “War Eagle.” Didn’t happen. Googled him and Glom’ed him and filled out form emails on his bare bones-ish website (that loops that pretty good song he wrote) and called down to Fairhope arts organizations to see if I could get someone to go knock on his door. Nothing. (I even tried contacting the roots rocker son who cameos a bar scene and plays Auburn occasionally. Nothing.) But that he’s apparently a classic literary recluse, when I think about it, seems pretty perfect.

Thanks to all those who have sent “Did you know?” emails over the years, I definitely took too long to write about it.

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When it comes to celebrating at Toomer's Corner, Auburn fans might have to start getting really, really creative.

You get the feeling that no one wants to say much about it because no one wants to think about it, which you have to think factored (understandably) into the decision to maintain the cherished status quo for at least one more season.

Most of the folks I talked with from the Office of the Auburn City Manager and Auburn University’s Office of Communications and Marketing about the future of rolling Toomer’s Corner beyond 2011 as imagined in a recent university press release spoke only in the most general of generalities. Maybe. Could be. Time will tell. There are, after all, still so many questions in need of answers—about the future of the oaks themselves, yes, but also regarding the nature of Auburn’s relationship with toilet paper. Do Auburn fans have to roll something to celebrate a victory? The issues wrapped up in the reason why are trickier to untangle than the Toomer’s oaks on a pre-Updyke Sunday morning, but right now, and for the foreseeable future, the answer is yes.

“I think our fans would understand if we didn’t allow rolling this year, but it’s such an important tradition, and really what made continuing it possible this year was the feedback from our horticulturists and foresters that said rolling them wasn’t going to hurt them,” says Auburn University Communications Director Mike Clardy, current point person for an unofficially official joint City of Auburn and Auburn University committee to study the logistics of preserving the Toomer’s tradition. “If we go in there and pick it off piece by piece by hand, then they told us it’d be the same the Monday after the game as it was the Friday before the game.”

But whether Saturday afternoons and nights will—or even can—ever be the same, even with a green light from the experts, is another issue.

“It’s going to be interesting to see,” Clardy says. “We’ve heard from so many people through Facebook and email and phone calls. Some that are normally up here every week are saying ‘well, we want to protect the trees and I’m not going to roll this year.’ Then some who don’t normally come [to the corner] after games are saying ‘if this is the last year, I’m going to roll ’till we run out of toilet paper.’”

The problem is that Auburn fans are never going to runn out of toilet paper; when it comes to gameday, the spectacle of rolling Toomer’s Corner is as established in the modern Auburn psyche as tailgating and Tiger Walk. However, unless God’s green thumb reaches down for a horticultural miracle, the oaks’ days are numbered.

Enter the “attractive intersection structure.”

“The university’s Facilities Division is exploring a long-term solution we hope will return the tradition permanently: Create an iconic, attractive intersection structure, in partnership with the city and with its approval.”

What exactly does that mean? For the time being, whatever you think it means.

“Understand that we’re very early in this process,” says Clardy, the one Auburn official able / willing to elaborate on the subject. “But that was one option we (the committee) had discussed—some sort of permanent structure at the corner that fans can roll after a ball game.”

Let that sink in: The heart of downtown Auburn might soon feature some sort of structure, apparatus, erection, fill-in-the-blank designed (by whichever architect wins the contest) and built specifically to be rolled with toilet paper.

According to the press release, the purpose of the system of portable poles, or the life size bronze replicas of the oaks, or the toilet paper-filled bounce house, or cops on motorcycles, or whatever it—if there is an It— turns out to be is to return the celebratory epicenter to the town-meets-gown neutral zone in the center of the intersection.

“The idea is getting back to the original tradition of rolling the corner and not the trees,” Clardy said. “People didn’t start rolling the trees until the early 80s, or I guess the late 70s.”

He guesses right. The oaks—noble Auburn icons in their own right, but not yet imbued with their modern, almost religious significance—were actually all but off-limits back in the day. Folks who were there will sometimes remind you that rolling them was generally considered to be something close to tacky, at least until 1978, when the power lines that received the brunt of the toilet paper were buried beneath College Street, a development that in the minds of many actually threatened the tradition—“What will we roll?” Despite the etiquette, the trees were the instant answer.

This time, there are no obvious solutions. The traffic lights that have always received some strands somehow don’t seem up to the task.  The university has discouraged the proliferation that last year kept you rubbernecking all the way to the arboretum. Clardy says that transferring the tradition to other trees at another spot on campus—as the equestrian team did this spring —was deemed impractical (and bad for downtown business). Location is everything. And the location is, and can only be, The Corner. The Corner. Something at The Corner.

“We had discussed so many options, from bringing in something temporary to building something permanent. Something that stays there at the corner to something that gets put up every fall,” Clardy says. “We’re going to get a group together that has interest and expertise in this area and try to come up with ideas for the future… but we don’t want to rush in. Being able to still roll the trees kind of bought us another season.”

See you at Toomer’s?

Related: Graffiti On the Barricades Around the Toomer’s Oaks.

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God only knows how he makes Georgia fans feel.

One of the biggest laughs I ever got actually came at my grandparents’ 35th wedding anniversary celebration at the just completed Auburn Hotel and Conference Center when the black and white slide of my dad and uncle sitting on horses as toddlers was in the projector and 9-year-old me found the perfect pause in the dinner conversation to quip “Shoot low boys, they’re riding Shetland ponies!” Which is to say that growing up, the beloved cultural shadow of Lewis Grizzard loomed [insert Grizzardism for "very large"].

So if the page-view friendly thrill of Auburn references in pop-culture—the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who wore an Auburn jersey, the Hollywood legend who discussed Auburn’s victory in a fictional 1960s Iron Bowl, the radio broadcast heard during the yard sale scene of a classic punxploitation film that was indeed of an Auburn game—comes (at least somewhat) from the confirmation that Auburn exists outside our own private Idahos, then for me this thrilled as if it was confirmation that nothing else exists outside of Auburn.

And not just any Auburn—Platonic Auburn, 1972.

I saw it while scrolling through The Plainsman microfiche several years back (they reprinted it a couple of weeks after it first appeared in the Atlanta Constitution). A lot of Auburn fans have probably had a transcript forwarded to them in an email. Today, TWER thrills at the opportunity to give it a permanent digital home.

Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Lewis Grizzard… on Auburn:

I must admit the fact an Auburn man once saved my life has something to do with all of this. And I must admit further what follows will be completely biased. I simply couldn’t allow the opportunity to pass without saying a few more words in behalf of the 1972 Auburn football team.

And in behalf of Auburn itself.

I got my first taste of sin at Auburn; 16, or close to it, with a bottle of Old Something an of-age friend had purchased at the state store up the road at Opelika. As I recall it now, I wound up in a lonely stall in the third-floor restroom of a fraternity house while the party roared onward downstairs. There, as my life flashed in front of me and, being grateful I had at least heeded my mother’s words not to smoke, a kind Auburn student, a veteran of such incidents, wet-toweled me back to health.
I never got his name, but I have been forever grateful, and I have held a warm place in my heart for Auburn ever since, although I sought higher education elsewhere.

It is with that preface I hereby state I do, indeed, hope Auburn wins its Gator Bowl game against Colorado, and that is the signal for all my poison pen pals from down the road in Tuscaloosa to start buying stamps.

Auburn.

I think of purity for some reason. Of nothing to do but go to Toomer’s and talk about what you talked about the day before and the day before that. Of a low hippie ratio on campus. Of real grass growing on the football field. Of grown men in sweaters and open-collared shirts with 50-yard line seats.

I think of Gerald Rutberg, a friend of mine, who edited the college newspaper at Auburn and used to ask me every day how I thought “The Big Blue” would do against whomever. Of Bottle, Ala., which is actually a suburb of Auburn. Of the Yearouts. Of Pat Sullivan, still the most exciting college football player I’ve ever seen.

Of Shug Jordan.

There are two remarks that still stand out in my mind concerning Shug Jordan, and those two lines say it all. I once asked Harry Mehre if he thought Shug would quit coaching amidst the illness and the rumors.

“Shug will coach as long as he can. He still loves the things most coaches don’t think about anymore. He still loves the rah-rah part of this thing. He walks onto the field and hears all that War Eagle business they do down there, and Shug knows it’s all worthwhile,” said the old coach.

The first time I went to Auburn on business, I asked former Journal colleague, Tom McCollister, what kind of interview was Shug Jordan.

“Talking to Shug,” Tom replied, “Is like talking to your daddy.”

Auburn.

I think of the basketball coach, Bill Lynn, who looks and sounds like a hard-shelled Baptist preacher. Of journalism professor David Housel saying, “Auburn is in the best interest of the American dream.” Of Buddy Davidson, who has never found either of the two topcoats I have left in the Auburn press box. Of Bill Beckwith, the worst golfer in history ever to score a hole-in-one. Of a golf tournament they had at Auburn once and the beer they carted to you on each tee, and of shooting 95 after being one-over through seven holes. That damn beer. Of Randy Walls.

Randy Walls was the quarterback in 1972, Sullivan’s successor. He was the number four quarterback at the end of spring practice. “It wasn’t what Randy did for us this year,” said an Auburn coach. “It’s what he didn’t do. He didn’t make mistakes.”

Actually, he did make one. So excited was he about starting Auburn’s first game, the young sophomore went out for the pre-game warm-up with his jersey on backwards. In the Georgia Tech game, Randy Walls didn’t do anything right but win the football game. “I didn’t know Walls could run like that,” somebody in the press box said after a 30-yard jaunt that resembled your grandmother going after the mail. “He can’t” was the reply. He can’t. But he did.

Auburn.

I think of the pasture land adjacent to the campus. Of my favorite Auburn line, “What do you get if you cross an Auburn man and a gorilla?”

“A hairy county agent.”

Of not being able to smoke in the Auburn Coliseum. Of the old Sports Arena and Layton Johns. Of Terry Henley. “Them FSU players bit me on the leg in the pile-ups,” said Terry Henley, college football’s answer to Will Rogers.”They must not have had their pre-game meal.”

Did Terry Henley get tired carrying the football 25 times a game? “Hell, no,” said Terry Henley. “I carried it 50 times a day in spring practice.”

Auburn.

I think of unlisting my telephone number after an irate Auburn fan, a woman, called my home and said she hoped poison darts rained down on my body and I died. Of a fellow from my hometown writing me and saying to never come back because “you stink, stink, stink.” And all because I wrote Pat Sullivan was bush for not talking to writers after losing to Alabama. Of picking against Auburn all year long, except once—the LSU game. Of Owen Davis’ line, “Jordan waved his hand, and the Red Shirts parted.” Of Auburn students covering the whole town in toilet paper after the Alabama victory and somebody saying, “You mean they used both rolls?”

Auburn.

It went 9-1 when it wasn’t supposed to win three, defeated three top 10 teams, stopped the nation’s longest winning streak three times, got a bowl bid, and did my heart a lot of good.

Click often, boys…

…

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The New York Knights pitcher has lost faith and is throwing the game, bought off by the silver dollars of the corrupt co-owner who can’t stand bright lights and wants the team to lose. And yet the game is close.

Roy Hobbes picks up Wonderboy, the bat carved from the wood of a lightning-struck tree (mystical Christ-child allusions). Wonderboy splits in two — His body, broken for us — on the first pitch. Roy tells Young Bobby of Cyrene, the Bat Boy of Arimathea, to go “pick me out a winner,” and comes back with his own creation, the Savoy Special. (John 14:12: “I tell you the truth, you will do even greater things than these.”) Wilford Brimley looks on, the Nicodemus of the dugout.

Next pitch, another foul. Two strikes. Two days.  If he truly is the greatest, let him step up to the plate and hit a home run. The umpire offers him vinegar wine —Roy, you ok fella, can you go on? Roy turns his head away, back toward the mound. “Let’s play ball.”

Blood issues from his side, pierced with an ancient bullet. It soaks his uniform. The catcher sees it and readies the demon knuckle ball.

Third pitch, the crack, the earthquake, the eyes toward heaven… and with the shattering lights, the falling sparks, the winning run guaranteed, corrupt co-owner cowering in the shadows of the owner’s box, the Magdalene of his youth weeping with joy in the stands, the hands outstretched to hi-five his wounds with belief as he rounds the third day base, defeat loses its sting.

He touches home plate. Ascension.

Goodbye Mr. Spalding, truly this was the Son of God.

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From the 1990 Glom: "Erica Duh stays busy on her job at the College of Liberal Arts Dean's Office. In her photo which appeared in Playboy she was posing with two football players."

Playboy is returning to the Plains next week to once again exploit that curious corner of male fan psychology that requires the coeds at the school whose team it identifies with be hotter than those at its rivals.

The magazine is holding a casting call April 3-4 for its latest “Girls of the SEC” pictorial, which will be featured in its October 2011 issue. Playboy was last in Auburn in 2007 (or was it Waverly?). They first came in 1981 and they were here in 2001.

But of all Auburn’s “Girls of the SEC” contributions, those from 1989 are the most immediately intriguing*, for three reasons: 1) unlike any of the others, a feature on the girls who modeled in ’89 was included in that year’s (1990) Glomerata, 2) it seems pretty much impossible for a coed — anywhere, anytime — to have a name more cartoonishly suited to the stereotype of the kind of college girl who would pose for Playboy than Erica Duh (no offense), and 3) two Auburn football players are pictured in one of the photos… the one with Erica Duh.

No. 3 is the only angle really interesting enough to serve as an excuse for a post** as it it seems reasonable to wonder whether No. 3 would fly in the age of The Auburn Family, with a fan base that has historically, and especially recently, not only kind of prided itself on going morally above and beyond other fans, but held it’s Hard Fighting Soldiers (who keep on bringing souls to Jesus) to similar standards.

Unlike Amy Eckman, an aspiring fashion designer and waitress at Touchdown’s (she had to quit because of all the attention) who was photographed kneeling in front of a motorcycle wearing ripped jeans, a Scrunchie, and nothing else (“I would much rather have liked to have had a classier photo,” she told The Plainsman, “but I figured that’s their business, and they would know what looks best, so I didn’t question a thing.”), and Maria Valens, an “Army brat” from Chicago shown coming completely out of a sundress in the passenger seat of a car, Erica was fully — if alluringly — clothed. Her shoot required 15 rolls of film, legendary “Girls of the…” photographer David Chan draping her over rocks and hanging her over the roof of the Auburn Hotel and Conference Center for eight hours in an attempt to capture the full splendor of her legs (“… he liked them because he said they were long”) before deciding to place her on top of a pickup truck*** (parked in what appears to be the Foy Union wrap-around), a veritable Neon Barbie in a “Girls Of The SEC” crop top, tighter than tight sea-foam bicycle shorts, an orange Vuarnet-ish bicycle cap, ankle socks and high tops with DayGlo shoelaces, arms outstretched (Touch Down!), legs apart, hips cocked. Samford Tower is the background, sultry, iconic, 3:16 p.m. And there on the ground in front of her in the shot Chan decided to use is running back Henry Love and wide receiver Dunican Casselberry (wearing a black Auburn Tigers t-shirt with, awesomely, one sleeve either cut off or rolled up), with looks on their faces that you might imagine two guys who just happened to be walking by and who were asked spur of the moment to step into the shot to have. Here’s how The Plainsman describes the scene:

Working with Chan was enjoyable because he was spontaneous, and he made her feel comfortable during the shoot, she said. In fact, the two Auburn football players who appear in the picture standing below Duh, Dunican Casselberry and Henry Love, happened to be walking by when Chan called them over and asked them to be in the picture, she said.

“I bet they’re freaking out right now about being in the magazine,” said Duh, who had no idea which picture would be selected for the magazine.

You have to think that Duh meant “freaking out” not as in thrilled, but as in I hope Coach Dye is a Penthouse man. So it likely raised at least some eyebrows. But with Deadspin, with Finebaum, in a culture where servers crash under the weight of Auburn football players in tooth fairy costumes, you also have to think that Onterio McCalebb and Trovon Reed would live in Gene Chizik’s “no comment” doghouse for half a season or something were they to photobomb their way into Playboy.

True, the water-skiing enthusiast with dreams of opening either her own bar or gym wasn’t naked, or even close to naked; Duh surely showed much more skin in the “Miss AU Tan” contest, a then annual celebration of high-waisted thongs and Panama Jack spray oil that the Glom regularly covered in full golden glory. But it’s the context: no one could much object to published photos — yearbook, newspaper, Sports Illustrated — of football players joining in on the ogling at a fraternity/Budweiser sponsored student tradition. But two football players posing with a coed, however innocently, in the pages of an adult magazine just seems so… Florida… so LSU… so not something Auburn fans, or at least today’s Facebook page-campaigning, Never To Yield‘ing, Auburn Family (TM), would be down with, curious corners of male fan psychology notwithstanding.****

Here are the other photos from The Glom’s feature:

"At Touchdowns, Amy Eckman picks up a strawberry daiquiri for a customer. She quit working at Touchdowns because of the recognition she received after posing in Playboy."

"On a rainy day, Amy and Erica meet outside Haley Center. They have done promotional appearances together for Playboy on the radio at a Montgomery shopping center."

* That I am privy to these facts is explained not by a preoccupation with pornography — morally against it (as opposed to art) — but with Auburn lore. It’s a dirty job… you understand.

** TWER also exploits male fan psychology — our two Molly Sims posts from November are currently receiving thousands of hits from a link in an Auburn message board thread debating who is “The Hottest Auburn Girl Ever” — but with a strict non-nudity clause, and as subtly as we can.

*** Car? Motorcycle? Truck? Congratulations if you were in Auburn in 1989 and managed to escape sans auto fetish.

**** I could be totally wrong on all of this.

…

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The magazine also includes a shortened version of a short story they asked me to write about the national championship celebration at Jordan-Hare. It was a quick, stilted attempt at capturing at least a sliver of the spirit of… whatever the hell just happened to us as Auburn fans, something I haven’t been very good at recently, if ever. But I thought I’d go ahead and share it here, too.

Yes.

The concessions stands that had been de-winterized for the occasion of Auburn’s national championship celebration at Jordan-Hare Stadium on January 22 were down to funnel cakes and popcorn crumbs before the players had even been introduced. The hotdogs and nachos had been gobbled up by 78,000 people from Birmingham and Atlanta and Mobile and Nashville and everywhere — 8,000 more than the university planned for, 30,000 more than the city of Auburn expected, and 40,000 more than the University of Alabama had at a similar event last year.

The Auburn Family was hungry.

There were old men there, bundled against the cold in new, officially licensed sweatshirts bought at midnight at sporting goods stores that reopened after Wes Byrum’s game winning field goal, men who six months ago knew they wouldn’t live to see another one.  There were Baby Boomers there, just babies when it happened the first time, who thought they might not live to see another one. And there were young Auburn fans there that said to themselves, “so this is what a championship looks like in color.”

It’d been 53 years since Auburn won it all.

But it’d only been six years since Auburn should have won it all.

The finally healing wound that was Auburn football’s undefeated 2004 season, which has since become universal shorthand for the coulda, woulda, shoulda injustice of the BCS system, was re-salted just weeks before the start of the 2010 season: The USC Trojans, the team Auburn should have played for the national championship and which eventually won it — the team Auburn players from that year are certain they would have beaten — was stripped of it’s title due to NCAA violations. The folks in charge of these sorts of things had to decide whether they would leave the record books blank or retroactively crown the undefeated Tigers as No. 1. And once again they said ‘no’ to Auburn football.

By the time Athletic Director Jay Jacobs introduced Coach Gene Chizik to the podium six months later, 2004 was just another year.

“We got a big God,” Chizik said. “And he said ‘yes’ to Auburn football.”

Beside him on the stage there were trophies that proved that God said yes, more trophies than anyone knew existed, gleaming in the sun.

Behind him were two goofballs — a “blessed individual” that won the Heisman Trophy, and a Lombardi Award winner who pretended to be a wrestler — that proved it.

There was a new flag flying above him that proved it.

There was a giant mass of students in front of him who showed up hours early to stand on the field, and they were holding free posters that proved it.

(Sometimes the posters would get dropped and the wind would blow them across the grass, and they would be chased by young kids who were playing pick up football games and who shouldn’t have been on the field, kids who sneaked across the end zone wall when security wasn’t looking, and sometimes even when they were — and that proved it, too: when it came to that kind of stuff, the day was simply too special for anyone to care.)

“There’s a lot of love in front of me and a lot of love all around this place… and there’s nothing more gratifying to me as a head football coach at Auburn University than to see so many people that have waited so long for this celebration,” Chizik said, his head bowed with emotion. “You are the best fans in the United States of America and you have helped us and been a huge part in being the best football team in the United States of America.”

“War Damn Eagle.”

People cried. People cheered. They were finally, finally full.

Photo via.

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… has me reflecting this afternoon on my own experience watching the 2008 Auburn-Mississippi State game… out in Tuberville Country.

A look back then… at the passion, at the confusion, at the pre-TWER.com relations and references inside the old country’s “Thoughts from the West Texas observatory – Mississippi State.”

…

Angelina woke up in her Auburn shirt this morning, how 'bout you?

In some ways, it was the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. I sweat, I shout, I twist, I pout, I fall in love with every single one of those guys and in my eyes they do no wrong. They are covered in the blood of unconditional grace. And they win. They dominated the game across the board.

There’s this mysterious little blog, Grotus’ Acorn, that thusly described Auburn’s defense in the bloodied wake of the ULM game (now surely the second weirdest game he’s ever seen):

Would-be skill players beware: the Auburn defense is an unending chain of demons whose only joy in life is the ruin of dreams, a bottomless pit of ravenous beasts, ever thirsting for the precious liquor they will wring from your soul. God help the soon-to-be-Croyle’d quarterback dumb enough to take a snap across from their eager maw. Mothers: send your sons to Auburn or teach them to play soccer. Your love demands no less.

After last night, I don’t even think the soccer fields are safe. Mothers: send your sons to Auburn or kill them in their sleep. Because 1988, yeah, ’88 was awesome. But holy mother of pearl, 2008? Ubermenchen, all of them. This is Fifty-Sevenian… Mongolian hordes… beyond your dreams, beyond your nightmares, beyond your morality.

Last night’s only text message? Right at the end, from my brother:

Paul Rhoads is my hero.

Muschamp who?

Sure, there’ll always be a soft-spot, but Texas can have the antics, I’ll take Lonesome Rhoads any day.

As for the offense, I hold fast to a promise made with laid-back smiles and statistics: that we ain’t seen nothing yet. Say what you will — yes, we fumbled… yes, of course Kodi should have been called out in the red zone, just like last year. But this notion (based more on the erratic method of production and high, unmet expectations) that we’ve completely stroked out on offense is nonsense (thankfully I’m not alone on that). Not good enough to win in the SEC? No offense (yes!), Col. Angus – we just did win in the SEC. We won our first SEC game, we won it at night, on the road, with Chris Todd at the helm every single play. And I don’t know much, but I do know that I finally saw hints of the vaunted arm Tony Franklin pined for this spring. It was an awkard cannon, maybe more of a catapult, or maybe a slingshot, it was weird, but it got the ball far and fast and where it needed to go, when it needed to go.

God knows I love Kodi. But though this’ll sound crazy, I promise it’s true: Chris Todd is, true story, an Auburn Tiger. Yes, we’d never heard of him. Yes, big time out-of-towner. Yes, his signing had a nepostic whiff. But no, he and Tony Franklin aren’t related, they’re not lovers, they’re not anything but a player and a coach who, heaven forbid, believes in him. So aim some sunshine at this cloud of suspicion. He’s our main man right now. Get to know him, something about him (like that his Dad coaches high school ball and is going to burn $2,000 in gas just to see Chris play this year). Read between the lines. Welcome him. It’s Hey Day. War Eagle, Chris.

It’s the damn novelty of the score, not the full-context reality of the game, that’s got everybody so pissed off, so dreading the Nelson laugh. Screw Nelson. Nelson’s offense only managed 172 yards against Tulane. Nelson is a tool.

No doubt brothers, it was a frustrating game.

But if you’re wringing those hands, keep them away from me. If you’re bashful, you’re a liar. You’re not a fan. You’re a spectator. I’m fine with (a little) critique, I’m not fine with fear. Real Auburn family: make your way to the front and raise your swords.

(Jerry, rush down there. Pedal to the medal (!), speed, don’t stop, pee in a bottle. You get those Michigan friends to the Loveliest Village post haste and you scream and believe and show them what being a fan is about, don’t worry about a thing. And drink a coke for me.)

I think to this point last year. 1 and 3. I’d gone to the game with my neighbor, an elderly gentleman. We sat in the steam. It was in the Mississippi State section. And we somehow watched Auburn lose. We watched Mississippi State fans, poor Mississippi State fans, not even know how to process victory, we watched them leave the game when they were winning because they still expected to lose, which they should have.

And now, here we are at 3-0. The score should have been 21-0. At least. But it was 3-2. That’s awesome. How many times do you see that, you 21st Century brats? At this point last year, in the disorienting wake of sorrowful loss, I was writing things like:

There are guts strewn about the Jordan-Hare of our hearts, the field sopped with tears and fluids. The rest of Auburn’s season is wide open, a grand canyon of sheer terror.

I like the odds.

And then I was predicting a win against Florida, defending (one loss – to us)- Nat’l Champs. Ask the Heisman Trophy how that one turned out.

Hope and rebellion – that’s what Auburn does. And other than the temporary mangling of Lester — hallelujah he’s OK — I think I loved every second of it.

Auburn – 49

LSU – 0

….

[Back to 2010]

I think I miss writing like that…

Auburn 55 – Mississippi State 31.

War Cam Eagle.

Whenever God closes a door, He always opens a window.

Before last year’s Iron Bowl, Holly Anderson (EDSBS, etc.) wrote me an e-mail asking me (thanks Kenny) to answer some questions related to Auburn gameday culture for Dr. Saturday’s / Yahoo Sports weekly tailgating guide, something I had forgotten about likely because she never did anything with the answers (because I e-mailed them to her too late — sorry again!).

The other day, when I got on EDSBS to look for an e-mail address — when you post screen caps from a 1987 interactive VCR football game of Jimmy Johnson strangling Barry Switzer, you do it in the hope that Orson and Co. (that’s right up their alley, isn’t it?) will make your day with a traffic-jamming link, and when they don’t take the hint, you think you should try to maybe make them take it — I saw Holly’s name (she’s posting the hell out of Media Days) and realized that I already had an address.

Memory jogged! (And only slightly tweaked).

Hopefully it’s good for a few hits of its own.

…

Hi Jeremy –

Kenny Smith gave me your name as a possible source for a Yahoo! Sports column I’m writing on the Iron Bowl. We cover a different tailgating scene every week (here’s a recent one, just to give you an idea), and I’m trying to get perspectives from as many hometown folks as possible. Would you be interested in answering a few brief interview questions via email?

Thanks!
~Holly Anderson

***

Sure Holly — I’m not much of a tailgater, but I am hometown and hopefully plugged into enough of the vibe for some decent quotes.

Thanks!
Jeremy

***

Here’s the question set; answer in three words or three paragraphs, whatever makes you happy. This goes live Thursday thanks to the short week, so anything you can get to me by Wednesday afternoon would be great.

1. Clue in the uninitiated–what defines the Auburn gameday experience? What makes a proper fall Saturday on the Plains for you?
2. Pre- and postgame hangouts: Got a favorite gameday bar? Where are the legendary watering holes in town? Where’s the best spot to fill up before an afternoon game or get a hangover breakfast Sunday morning?
3. Any anecdotes from past years you’d like to share? (Anonymity guaranteed, if necessary.)
4. What essential wisdom would you like to impart to first-visitors to your fair school? (Where to set up, secret parking lots, etc.) And, more abstractly, for first-timers: What elements of the gameday experience are not to be missed?
5. What’s your poison? Does your school have a signature cocktail?
6. Is there an unspoken Tigers dress code? What will you and yours be wearing?

Also let me know how you’d like to be credited in the acknowledgments (real name, screen name, links to your blog, Twitter feed, whatever).

***

Hey Holly, hope you got my earlier e-mail… sorry this is so late… might be too late I guess, and I have nothing in the way of watering holes or dress codes or hangover help or secret parking, but for what it’s worth…

Auburn fans, at least of a certain stripe, have this thing that we’re nicer than everyone else. We are, of course, but in recent years it’s risen beyond the brochure – it’s a sense of self, but also of duty: to preserve the fleeting yearbook romance of the Loveliest Village, to align our team with God’s favor, and to make other fans feel as bad about themselves as they should. I flashed a very Proverbs 25:21-22 kind of smile — I thought they’d appreciate the coal reference — and said “Welcome to Auburn” to every jersey-to-the-knees Mountaineer I saw. None replied. They stared. Then they wrote about it on their message boards after their team lost. Mission accomplished. Welcome to Auburn.

When Bama comes to town, a lot of this is lost: Hate the sin, hate the sinner.

The Eagle: folks talk about getting to Tiger Walk in time, or getting in the stadium before the band comes out, or in time to see the team warm up. But when people tell you ‘you need to see the eagle fly,’ you need to see the eagle fly. Seriously. Seriously. Once you’ve seen 80,000 people summon a giant bird from the top of the stadium onto a piece of meat at the 50 yard line by screaming the word “War,” missing the eagle is basically like missing kickoff.

The thrill is two-fold:

1) HELL YES! We’re Auburn! We’re awesome! War Eagle! God, country, destiny, victory!

2) What the hell is that thing going to do? Sometimes it’s perfect—maybe one and a half laps around before swooping in for the kill. Sometimes it just hops straight down. Sometimes it kind of floats in the middle and then drops like a stone. But sometimes it circles, and circles, and people chuckle and keep shouting, and it keeps circling and keeps… keeps… keeps… and people are gettin’, you know… and suddenly, holy crap, did it actually just fly out of the stadium for a second?… is there an off switch?… what are we going to do if our beloved bird doesn’t come back, we’ll be a YouTube laughing stock………….. oh man, it’s back inside… it’s still circling, we’re going on two minutes here…aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr Eagle! Hey!

Toomer’s Corner: you hear about it a lot — and of course you probably wouldn’t want to be there if you’re an opposing fan — but despite how hyuck, hyuck simple it sounds (toilet  paper, trees, GO!), impartial observers would really probably dig watching the White Christmas aftermath of a huge win. It’s kind of surreal.*

Toomer’s Drugstore Lemonade: It’s expensive. It’s worth it. Esquire Magazine said that it, not Charlize Theron, was the #1 reason it’s great to be an American man.

Thanks for asking, and, again, sorry!

…

* Holly actually put it much, much better without me: “It’s a grandly goofy tradition and the finished product never fails to impress your inner freshman.”

…

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"You know, Tom, Harper Lee ain't smart enough to write a character like you."

Wall Street Journal columnist and friend of the site Allen Barra took the 50th anniversary of the publication of “To Kill a Mockingbird” to commit what plenty of Alabamians would consider an even greater sin then shooting an actual  mockingbird: he shot “To Kill a Mockingbird” all to pieces.

“It’s time to stop pretending that ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature,” Barra wrote last Friday in a WSJ column that also claims that – despite the PR blow to Alabams’ literary heritage – Harper Lee should not be included among the ranks of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor (whom he quotes in reducing the value of “Mockingbird” to that of a nice children’s book) and other great southern writers claimed by our neighbors.

Fans of “To Kill a Mockingbird” seem ready to lynch Barra – when The New York Times is reviewing your review, you know you’ve struck a nerve. Yet he refrains from the even greater sin of referencing the persistent rumor (not-so-irrefutably refuted by Auburn’s Wayne Flynt in a 2006 NPR interview) that Lee’s lifelong – and much more prolific – pal Truman Capote actually penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Pat Dye, in a recent interview, does not.

Not that he was aware of it.

Dye’s “friendship” with Harper Lee, arranged (via relatives in Monroeville) after he was re-smitten with “Mockingbird,” has recently supplanted the legend of The Pants as the angle of choice for blurbs on Coach in retirement community newsletters and small-town feature sections.

Even Southern Living decided to take advantage of it, wrapping up a July feature on Monroeville’s commemoration of its famous hermit with a story from Dye about his catfish supper with ‘Nelle’ in 2008. Dye took the opportunity to tell her in his folksy, roundabout way that it had to have taken heart and soul to write “To Kill a Mockingbird,” not just brains.

“I told her, I said, ‘you know, ma’am, you ain’t smart enough to write a book like that,’” Dye said. “She looked at me kinda funny a little bit, but not too bad. She was looking for the next sentence.”

We’ve all been looking for that next sentence.

…

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