Sportswriter/author/ Bo Jackson-profiler /Penn State fan Michael Weinreb was kind enough to articulate his spiritual sympathies with Auburn fans, who he says are enduring in the Cam Newton saga just the latest manifestation of a deeply-flawed system. TWER takes full responsibility for the Onyx-referencing headline.
Let me begin with this: I grew up a fan of Penn State football, and so you may assume that everything I say is couched in a certain amount of stodgy Northeastern academic elitism. At Penn State, they like to think they treat football and compliance with equal dilligence, which is why my alma mater often finds itself marooned in the Outback Bowl on New Year’s Day, led by a seemingly indestructible octogenarian who resembles a professor emeritus at Hogwarts. You may think of us a declining power with prison-issue uniforms and a stunning inability to defeat Alabama, but at least we are self-righteous about it.
And so, while it is true that, in the midst of researching my latest book, I bore witness to the holy act of Bo Jackson firing a crossbow in his own driveway, I am not going to lie and say I understand exactly what you are feeling down there at Toomer’s Corner at this critical juncture. (The closest Penn State has come to a truly juicy recruiting scandal revolved around Joe Paterno’s insistence on converting several future Hall of Fame quarterbacks to linebacker.) But we do have one thing in common: We have both felt the sting of being worked over by the pollsters. If you examine the record, what happened to Auburn in 2004 is essentially what happened to Penn State in 1994. And in an odd way, I can’t help but feel that what is happening to Cam Newton at this very moment is also something I relate to, a distant spiritual cousin to those lost seasons. Because at heart, it’s exposing the same deep flaw in the system.
I will explain further, but allow me to get a couple of things out of the way first. Number One: I do not know if Cam Newton took money, and unless you work as a bagman in Starkville, neither do you. It was much easier to make these determinations in the 1980s, when governors were directly involved in the bribery (see: Southern Methodist). Number Two: “The media” is not biased against Auburn. “The media” is not a uniform monolith with a hidden agenda any more than Gary Danielson is somehow secretly influencing conference play through his color analysis.*
That said, I do understand that college football fandom is built on a foundation of irrationality. Nobody is more proudly biased than a college football fan, and nothing inspires irrationality in otherwise rational souls quite like this sport. This is what makes it great. But this also its fatal flaw. We have allowed the system itself to become grounded in impartiality. We rely on rigged elections to determine a victor. We acknowledge that we are taking financial advantage of student-athletes by profiting off their labors, but we don’t care enough to advocate for change. In the meantime, we know that some teams subsidize their players more than others, and some teams bend the rules and others break them completely, but we have little beyond our own biases and the occasional journalistic expose and the erratic and often hypocritical judgments of the NCAA to guide ourselves to those conclusions. There is no reason to trust anyone. The system is so broken at so many levels that there’s a part of us that almost feels like it’s a victory when our team benefits from a blatant transgression—even if we know our team is in the wrong–because somebody has to.
I’m sure Nebraska fans feel that way about their so-called national championship in 1994. And I’m sure USC fans couldn’t care less about Auburn’s claim to the 2004 title. We are selfish beings. As an Auburn fan, I cannot blame you if a part of you does not really care if Cam Newton took that money or didn’t take that money, or if a part of you hopes that Newton took that cash and got away with it. I cannot blame you if, say, this Auburn team wins the national championship, and six months later you find out that Newton’s entire family was offered $700,000, a live polar bear, and the services of a fleet of hyperintelligent robots, and you still consider this team a legitimate national champion. Because the system is based on completely unobjective truths. Because the system has screwed your school, just as it screwed my alma mater a decade earlier, just as it has been screwing athletes like Cam Newton for decades. Until it changes, why shouldn’t you screw the system in return? Amid this skewed landscape, your definition of legitimacy is as rational as anything else.
*Though I cannot vouch for Lundquist.
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Michael Weinreb’s most recent book is Bigger Than the Game: Bo, Boz, the Punky QB and How the ’80s Created the Modern Athlete. He has been a regular contributor to ESPN.com and The New York Times, and his profile of Bo Jackson was anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing collection.
Read our interview with Michael here and our review of Bigger Than the Game here.
I really think no truer words have ever been written than, “Nobody is more proudly biased than a college football fan, and nothing inspires irrationality in otherwise rational souls quite like this sport.”
this is a well-written piece, and i enjoyed it very much. having said that, i must take issue with the thesis. i obviously cannot speak for the entire auburn fan base, so my comments only reflect the couple dozen auburn fans with which i communicate with somewhat regularly. but all of these proud homers and i are fully in support of our man, and our team, precisely because we believe that we have not broken the rules, and further that all due diligence has been performed by the people in charge of such processes. in other words, we believe, or at least are sincerely hoping, that there has been no wrongdoing by auburn or our quarterback.
and coupled with that position, if some misdeed is ever proven (or even alleged to a competent degree, for the love of bo), i don’t think that one person in this group would be celebrating the fact that we got away with anything. and CERTAINLY none of us are actually hoping that cam took money and got away with it, as the writer suggests some of us might. rather, we would be calling for the heads of ALL involved, however tangentially, to be rolled all the way down college street and placed in a pile on I-85 for the truckers and buzzards to deal with.
WAR EAGLE!!
With you on that entirely Big Sexy. I didn’t get into an all too heated discussion with a mental-invalid/ bama fan in sunday school because I want to AU to win the MNC. I got into it because I fully believe in AU, that nobody attached to AU is at fault here, and because – dangit – I’m tired of hearing all the crap being parroted from one uninformed nobody to another in the name of journalism (I’m talking to you Pete Thamel, Thayer Evans, Mike Bianchi).
And I’ll even go with Weinreb on his point about media bias. I don’t think they’re biased specifically against Auburn – the aforementioned 3 man journalistic short bus included. I think they’re biased in favor of their own egos and the number of hits they get on their online stories/ tweets (oh, and raise your hand with mineif you believe that big boy reporters don’t
“tweet”). If a university team and its fan base are insulted, that’s OK. And if such a controversy requires the full fledged assassination of the character of 22 year old college student – well then that’s just the cost of doing business.
That doesn’t mean that those 3 aren’t full-fledged walking dingleberries, though.
@Big Sexy
@2XTiger
Agree with both of you.
With all respect to Mr. Weinreb, you sir no nothing of Auburn Men and Women.
To clump us in a generalization along with PSU, and any other university is a complete and total miscalculation on your part. You could join ESPN tonight!
WAR EAGLE!
NO= KNOW sorry
How am I supposed to say the title of this blog post?
“Cam! Duuh Duuh Duuuh”
Does it have a melody, or is it like the word “duh” repeated three times? Just wondering what it means, so I can give it some meaning and context.
But w-w-w-wait it gets worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ADgCeYJMN4
Soundtrack to the summer of ’93.
Again, we talk full responsibility.
Damn. As a product of the 90s teenager, I should’ve know that one. Haha. Yet again, straddling the line of making sense with the Cammentions. I say keep it up.
“As a product of the 90s,” that is. I’m not a product of a 90s teenager. That would make me pretty young.
Song is actually safe for work, amazingly…
Mr. Weinreb is simply pointing out and saying for us what us Auburn fans are too afraid, and perhaps too proud, to say.