Friday preview: UT-Martin, sort of

The second half of the Ole Miss recap has been temporarily postponed. Swear to you it will be up at the beginning of next week. Sorry.



After putting together this morning's post, I drove Mrs. JCCW's ailing car to the shop--something's wrong with the fuel injectors, I think, but I know more about African politics than I do the inner workings of automobiles--and took the bus back home.

At one stop, an elderly woman boarded the bus in her motorized wheelchair. Unfortunately, either she's new to the chair or past the point of being able to capably steer it; she bumped first one and then the other side of the bus's entranceway while making her way on board and then spent the next several minutes trying and failing miserably to maneuver into the allotted wheelchair space. Back, forth. Forward, reverse. Crunch. Bonk. Remember that Austin Powers clip where he gets the little service cart stuck while trying to turn around in a narrow tunnel? It was like that, only Magnolia-level depressing instead of funny.

What really caught my attention during this sequence, though, was this 16- or 17-year old Asian kid a few seats back. He seemed to be caught between the impulse to help her and the mandate to not interfere in the business of strangers unless they ask for said interference; again and again he would lean forward or even raise himself up just a bit, then think better of it and sit back down again. Crunch, stand, sit. Bonk, lean forward, lean back. Even as the driver came over to coach her her into the right spot and went through the process of strapping and securing the chair into place, every few seconds he'd seem to be overcome by the drive to do something and he'd lift himself up for a half-second. But he never got himself any further, and eventually the driver took the wheel and drove us all home.

And so it is with we Auburn fans this year. We see our team try and try and try to get things right. They head in one direction. It doesn't seem right. They head in another. That's also not right, but they seem like they're almost there. Then they try to adjust and it somehow ends up worse than before. Crunch. Bonk. And all the while we want to help. We want to take action. We want to make this whole thing stop. But we can't figure out how, because, honestly, there is no way how. It's up to the team itself and the guy in the driver's seat. There's nothing we can do but watch and squirm and feel like it shouldn't be like this, it just shouldn't be like this at all.

So Kid, I don't blame you for that itch to go get yourself involved. But let's face it, a new message board account or withholding your applause as the coach is announced pregame at Jordan-Hare is as involved as you ought to be. We're all just riding the bus together, seeing where it takes us, praying the team can get to to the end of the line without those straps snapping and everything coming apart.

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Perhaps the greatest testament we can offer to the soul-destroying power of the Season of DEATH is this: I'm genuinely apprehensive about Auburn's game against I-AA Tennessee-Martin tomorrow.

If events unfold as they logically should, Auburn won't have any second-half problems. Auburn is vastly more talented at virtually every position, will be playing on Homecoming, and might not even have the "just a scrimmage" mentality that would plague them otherwise thanks to it having been so many long weeks since they tasted victory of any kind. Even now, even in 2008 making any sort of detailed analysis or breakdown is to give this opponent more respect than they probably deserve. It's the college football equivalent of a trip to Burger King: Auburn gets something cheap and fast to fill their aching stomachs with, UT-Martin hands that something over with as quickly and sloppily as possible, gets their check, and goes home.

Except that logic and talent so rarely hold sway in college football, and there's some evidence that down-to-down logic could hold less sway tomorrow than it might even usually hold. For starters, that Auburn's offense is so totally moribund means that the outcome could hinge on a single logic-shattering play. When you're ahead 35-7 at halftime, a fumble returned for a touchdown means nothing; when you're ahead 14-3 (as Auburn is more likely to be), a fumble returned for a touchdown means you are less than one score ahead and now you must deal with the insane pressure of potentially losing to a I-AA team for the first time in school history and putting your head coach's neck squarely on the chopping block. With the exception of that singular terrific late-game drive against LSU, Auburn's offense response to any kind of pressure, much less that brand of END IS NIGH-pressure, has not been encouraging. Should that situation occur, talent may not mean a heck of a lot.

Secondly: UTM may be more likely to make that logic-shattering play than most. Back in mid-October they had already set a new I-AA record for fumble returns for touchdown in a season. They won their previous game in part thanks to an ESPN-approved 85-yard touchdown run. The only way UTM will win is by making huge plays. But apparently, they have a tendency to make them. That they're not a bad team by I-AA standards (7-2, No. 20) is just gravy.

So, yes. Apprehensive. I am reminding myself that I was apprehensive before last year's New Mexico St. game, too, a game which looked like world-ending disaster after 20 minutes only to finish with Brandon Cox slingshotting back into competence and eventually into an upset of Florida the following week. I am reminding myself that despite their record, UTM is 160th in Sagarin's predictor ratings, between run-of-the-mill I-AA teams like Missouri St. and Eastern Illinois. I am reminding myself that Auburn will not let their world end Saturday, as it most assuredly would if they lost.

But the very fact that I have to remind myself of those things to maintain the appropriate level of confidence regarding a I-AA team suggests how very badly Auburn's world has already crumbled thus far this season.

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Speaking as someone both irredeemably obsessed with Auburn football and trained over the course of six years' worth of secondary education learning to spot symbols, analogies, Deep Hidden Meanings, etc. in just about every damn thing, the Season of DEATH has been more than just disappointing or frustrating. It's been weird.

I presented you with the bus experience-as-metaphor because it's one the saner, better ones. (I think.) But those neurons end up firing all the time these days. For example: the Mrs. JCCW and I have been eating these Stouffer's skillet dinner-thingies for, uh, dinner lately. Most of these have been pleasantly tasty, but a few nights ago we tried the Chicken Teriyaki and came away underwhelmed by the overly sweet sauce and mealy water chestnuts. As I rinsed my plate off, I thought "Hmmm ... solid track record, familiar ingredients, straightforward recipe ... this should have been a better dinner. Just like Auburn should have been a better football team. We'll never buy Chicken Teriyaki again; is the Auburn administration willing to give this coaching staff a second chance, or just scrape them away into the garbage disposal?" And it was shortly thereafter that I realized that I don't need Auburn to win Saturday just to keep Tubby employed or to give the team at least a modicum of confidence; from a personal standpoint, I may need the win to make sure I retain some level of sanity.

It's been a strange, strange year already. I'd really rather not have to deal with it getting any stranger.

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Here's the thing about the uniforms: sure, it's a stunning coincidence, but the similarities run even deeper. As mentioned, the Skyhawks aren't going to be able to score reliably or move the ball consistently against Auburn. They'll have to get some big, big plays to pull off the shocker.

So not only will Auburn's visitors on homecoming look like Auburn, but they'll play like Auburn, too. Or at least the way Auburn has to play against D-I teams; after a fashion, for this one game Auburn's opponent will be more Auburn than Auburn will be. Auburn will be more like Alabama playing Auburn, in fact. If Auburn wins, it'll be like a preview of watching Auburn lose the following weeks; if Auburn loses, heaven forbid, it'll be like watching a blueprint of how Auburn could win the following weeks.

Whoever wins, it's safe to say, the winner is irony.

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If the effect of watching Auburn this year has indeed been one of confusion and helplessness, this Saturday for yours truly promises more of the same. For the first time all season even Game Plan doesn't have my expatriate back, and I'm not shilling for a single game of radio. So instead it'll be three-and-a-half hours of CSTV's Gametracker, in which tiny computer-generated cone-men representing Kodi Burns and Josh Bynes vie on a Flash-animated playing field for the future of Tommy Tuberville and the Auburn football program.

The chance that they will fail is very, very small, so maybe it's a good thing that I won't be visually connected with my football team. Maybe this will make the stakes seem smaller and the game more routine. But maybe, especially if the roof does begin to cave in, maybe it'll just make me feel even more removed, even more helpless and antsy, even more like the kid on the bus who wants to scream and twitch at how horribly awry everything's gotten. I feel like I can't take anything for granted.

That's 2008, unfortunately. Nothing taken for granted. Not even Tennessee-Martin, not even Homecoming. Straighten things out for me, Auburn. Calm me down, Auburn. Just for a Saturday. Make things make sense again, if only for a little while.