Win, because for my grandfather and so many other grandfathers who have been Auburn men for a lifetime, men who endured the heartbreak of the Bear years and came out the other side still clutching their orange-and-blue sweatshirts and Auburn caps with flat bills, watching Auburn defeat Alabama for a seventh consecutive year will seem like a movie reel come true--a movie from back when they made them like they used to.
Win, because even all things dream of being something more than they are, even toilet paper, dreaming its dreams of flight.
Win, because there are children six years old who have never watched Auburn lose the Iron Bowl, and their innocence is beautiful.
Win, because Tez Doolittle has fought for six years, fought like a Tiger against doubt and opponents bent on breaking him and bureaucracy and his own treacherous body to play Alabama as a senior, and because when I was little I thought the ending to Rocky wasn't good enough.
Win, because after you had torn Alabama to quivering pieces in 2005, the man with the crimson tie in my office told me with an utterly straight face that if the early second-half safety the officials could have called had been called, Alabama would have won the game; win because the Auburn fans still working in that office and in so many other offices should not be left to work alongside such willful, delirious ignorance given over to celebration.
Win, because while other mascots paw restless in cages and or lie fat on the ground or fail to exist, ours soars across the blue sky underneath the orange sun and reminds us all of what glory looks like, and that should be worth something, damn it.
Win, because their head coach is a villain, either a ticking machine built for wins and nothing else or a man who would like be thought of as a ticking machine built for wins and nothing else, and their worship of him belongs to other false idols.
Win, because when Brad Lester and Jason Bosley and Chris Evans and Merrill Johnson Robert Dunn and Tyronne Green and Robert Shiver and Rodgereqis freaking Smith leave the field in Auburn jerseys and Auburn helmets for the final time, they deserve to leave winners, leave without ever knowing the worst defeat, leave with a clean table in the restaurant's corner and a free cold beer on top of it waiting for them forever.
Win, because whatever Tommy Tuberville's failings, Tommy Tuberville will not deserve what will be said about him and written about him should he lose.
Win, because Kodi Burns will have to build a season next fall and he could have no more stable cornerstone.
Win, because our side has won 33 times; their side has won 38 times; and another victory means our side is five wins from telling their side all their trophies and all their rankings and all their bygone glories are mere pleasant consolation prizes to being the second-best college football team in their own great state.
Win, because when the game is finished my mother will hug me regardless, and at the end of this cold season a hug of sympathy rather than of victory seems like almost more than we can bear.
Win, because we are all so head-over-heels in love with this game we'll believe any fool thing, even that you're the Good Guys, even in the old stories where the Good Guys always win in the end no matter how much they suffer along the way.
Win, because we want to keep believing in those stories.
Win for those who have come to Tuscaloosa because they cannot bear to cheer you from afar.
Win for the countless elsewhere whose hearts go with you regardless.
In an unfortunate number of ways, the song for this week's game remains the same as the one we sang two weeks ago: there's precious little honest, rational reason to expect anything but a loss. Alabama has the better team. The better team wins this rivalry substantially more often than it loses it. That's about all there is to it. From that standpoint.
But there is another standpoint: the standpoint that Tommy Tuberville is too proud, too good a coach, too Tommy Tuberville to fail to win this sort of game once again. This is, again, the same standpoint we took two weeks ago. And Auburn did improve. Auburn did give Georgia a better game than Auburn on-paper was supposed to. But they didn't win.
What's changed? Why this Saturday instead of two Saturdays ago? Two reasons:
1. A loss tomorrow would mean an entire season without Auburn having played the complete game, an entire season without one of Tubby's trademark rabbits-out-of-the-hat.In his nine complete seasons with Auburn, Tubby has never failed to give us one of these. 9-for-9. He has only one chance left. He will take it.
2. The Story. The narrative of Auburn's disastrous early season, ho-hum midseason, and slow grind back to unexpected triumph in the late season can only have one climax. The plucky underdogs never win the sorta-big game against the mild-mannered, easygoing head coach. They win the biggest game of the year against the borderline-evil head coach. That's how these things work.
Of this I have little doubt: Auburn is going to go to Tuscaloosa and play their best game of the year. They have to. Otherwise their best game of the year will be one of two four- or five-point losses at home to the two biggest non-Alabama rivals on the schedule, and ... what? What kind of season is that?
No. Auburn will play well. They will play like men, like Tubby's men, like Tigers. Logic tells us it won't be enough, and if that's the case, there won't be any need for forgiveness because they'll be no injury.
But something beyond logic--let's go ahead and call it faith--tells us it may very well be enough. The presence of Tommy Tuberville--even now, at the end of the long and treacherous road this season has become--tells me it will be.
Until the final whistle blows tomorrow, I'll listen. I'll believe. It will happen. War Eagle.
You may remember the Looney Tunes cartoons* in which a sheep dog named Sam and a wolf named Ralph wake up, say hello, clock in, spend their day in vicious competition over the fate of a herd of sheep, and then clock back out and walk home together at the end of the day:
This is a good illustration of why I never get too exercised about Alabama fans--even the smart ones--claiming that they don't care about Auburn, that it's just another game, that Auburn fans are pathetically obsessed with Alabama to the point of not caring about anything else, that Auburn will always be the second-best football team in the state no matter what the actual, you know, on-field results have to say about it. This is why Auburn fans have been more than entitled to wag their six fingers in any and all 'Bama fans' faces for the last 12 months, why we get to lord our victories over them in a way we would for no one else, why we should always always always laugh at them for believing A) "little brother's" success is some sort of short-lived, doesn't-really-count fluke when we've had the better of things for most of the last 25 years B) they don't care about us when their endless denials are the classic example of doth protesting too much.
These are our jobs. They are Alabama fans. They are supposed to be arrogant, dismissive, hopelessly entitled, and oftentimes outright delusional. We are Auburn fans. We are supposed to be insufferable about the Streak, derisive about the Tide's mouldering claims of superiortiy, and yes, we are most certainly supposed to be obsessed with Alabama. When we sign up on one side or the other in this state, we clock in. And then we go to work.
I would say fans on both sides of the Iron Bowl should stop holding our jobs against each other and realize this is just how this business works--and there are times, certainly, when they should be held with much less stridency--but then again, holding them against each other is also part of the job.
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I say that as preface to this: I have no problem admitting I am more-or-less obsessed with Alabama and want Auburn to win tomorrow's game so badly it makes my teeth hurt.
I've never understood--other than the requirements of the job--why Tide fans would make fun of Auburn for their obsession. For a whole laundry list of reasons:
1. Doesn't the fact that we'd be obsessed with Alabama sort of imply that they're a program worth obsessing about? Isn't saying something along the lines of "Haha! You losers are losers for wanting to beat a team like us so bad!" an admittance that your team is also, well, a bunch of losers? Isn't "Well, they're obsessed with us, but that makes sense when you consider how awesome we are" a much more positive response? See, Tide fans can admit their team's failings, they just have to do it in a neurotic, roundabout fashion that makes sure they can bring us down with them.
3. I think I've written this before on this site, but it doesn't make sense to put your national cart before your in-state horse. You can't win a national title if you don't win the SEC, you don't win the SEC if you don't win the West, you don't win the West if you don't win your own damn state. If you're second-best at home, you can't be first-best anywhere else. Why wouldn't beating Alabama always be Auburn's No. 1 goal? Again: maybe trying to run to national glory before walking past Auburn is why the Tide has tripped and fallen on its face so often, hm?
4. This one is important.
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Hate and rivalry are not in the blood of college football. Hate and rivalry are the blood of college football. Its first game: in-state rivals in search of a gentlemanly way of tearing the limbs off of the representatives of the other school. Get past the ginormous television contracts and multimillion dollar bowl purses and crystal footballs and Tim Tebow discussing circumcision on ESPN College Gameday built by the Home Depot and this--the competition, the hate, the blood--are still what the game is about. Untether it from those things, and it's just minor-league NFL, Arenaball played outside.
To deny rivalry is to deny that your team is even playing college football. Of course, many Tide fans (though not all) will admit to having a rivalry with Tennessee, or that Auburn is a rivalry game--just not an especially important one. Again: this is their job. This is who they are.
This is, nonetheless, another reason they are wrong and hopeless and forever hated Alabama. Whether they like it or not--or rather, in part, because their obnoxious asses don't like it--this is the greatest rivalry in college football. It is**. And they willingly forsake it just to try and prove a point about their imagined superiority.
They must be punished for it. They are hypocrites, blithely claiming the current outcome of the Iron Bowl irrelevant until such time as they win it again, at which point the outcome will be, of course, of tremendous importance. In response to the same WBGV post by Todd I linked above, Grotus (in his own tour de force post) writes the following:
What's most interesting is the simultaneous embracing and rejection of Tide history that distinguishes the new Bama fan. On one hand, he's obviously denying more than a century of vicious, gladiatorial combat in the form of football. As I need not mention, this is a war fought long by our fathers and grandfathers - and in my case, great-great-grandfathers. To claim that the Iron Bowl holds no significance is to completely ignore the bitter feud that has shaped our two institutions. All while simultaneously proclaiming the resurrection of the Tide, return to the glories of the Alabama past, the days of a new Bear - this itself is an appeal to history, to trudishun, to legacy. Mmm, crimson cake to be eaten and to be had!
If they won't respect the Iron Bowl, they don't deserve to win it. And: for six years going on seven, they don't.
They are Alabama. We are Auburn. We are the obsessed, because we see things as they are. We are the disrespected, because we dare to respect the sport and its blood. We hate, because their screaming arrogance deserves hatred. We are Auburn: the underdogs, the Davids, the storybook heroes. This is why we clock in. This is why we take the job.
This is why War Eagle. War Damn Eagle, forever.
*I embed Looney Tunes as metaphors a lot, I know. But can you come up with anything more awesome in our shared cultural currency I could use instead? Of course not.
**Army and Navy aren't just two sides of the same coin, it's the same face on both sides, too similar to share a hate outside of the context of their 60 minutes of football. Michigan and Ohio St. hate each other, but they don't share a geography and college football just isn't the end-all-be-all of sporting passion in the Midwest the way it is in Alabama***. Texas-Oklahoma perhaps comes closest--certainly (as with UM-OSU) the national stakes are much higher than they are in the Iron Bowl. But the undercurrents of Tide arrogance vs. Tiger grievance aren't there and again, very few Longhorns have to go into the office and face the victorious Sooners on Monday. And what else is there? USC-Notre Dame? Florida-Georgia? Kansas-Missouri? No. Your mileage my vary, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
***Confidential to my friends in Ann Arbor: Sorry. But true.
Remember the LSU game? Remember how it was the game that would define the SEC West's collective season, between two top-10 teams that have more-or-less parted the division between them this decade (with only the accursed interlopers from Arkansas throwing spanners into the works)? Remember how Gameday showed up, how cautiously optimistic we all were despite the 3-2 quagmire in Starkville, how the Auburn defense was going to rise up and drag us to greatness like some hulking Icelander hauling a bus behind him on late-night ESPN2?
Football seasons always seem to last longer than they are, but I swear, that game must have taken place a decade ago, if it took place at all. The two teams we thought were coming out of the tunnel that night never showed up--not that week, not any week since. I was there, it was the only Auburn game I've been to in person in three seasons, and it still feels like a backlit mirage.
Which is why, after writing the first part of a planned two-part opus, I never got more than halfway through the second part despite sitting down to complete it more than once. Writing about the experience of the LSU game meant tapping into what the LSU game felt like it meant at the time--and as soon as the final seconds ticked off of Auburn's mindblowingly frustrating Tennessee escape, the LSU game's meaning-at-the-time was fraudulent. I'd planned on ending the post by sounding a note of optimism, but it's impossible to do that without it sounding hollow after, well, any result that Auburn's given us since then.
Until the Georgia game. That glimmer of hope would be excuse enough. But if there was ever any time to sound a note of optimism, however potentially deranged, the week a 5-6 Auburn team heads to Tuscaloosa to face a top-ranked and undefeated Alabama team is the time, right?
So I am, finally, looking back at that LSU game and the difficulties myself and three of my Michigan-rootin' buddies had in returning from it. Again, part 1 is here.
Game
1. We make our way up the our seats in the upper deck--dead on the 50, thank you Will--and if there's one feeling that will never, ever, ever get old no matter how times I experience it, it's clambering out of the tunnel after the long walk of concrete, steel, and lemonade carts and seeing a football field spread out beneath you in all its impossibly green glory. And if that field is in Jordan-Hare Stadium, well, forgive me if I think its green glory is even more impossible than most.
2. The student section erupts as the chorus to Livin' on a Prayer comes over the PA, and naturally my inner Rock Band frontman is rocking along, to the point that my outer Rock Band frontman might have whispered a few lyrics aloud. Oops. Will and I get to discussing the artistic merits of Bon Jovi; I'm essentially pro, he's firmly con. Without getting too deep into it, it's my opinion that if it's a good thing that there aren't too many areas of life where it's sensible (or even encouraged) to scream Take my hand, we'll make it I swear! Whoa-ohhh! Livin' on a prayer! out loud, it's also a good thing that there are a few areas where it is. College football is one of these. (That Auburn is now only a few days away from a game in which their chances will quite literally live on a prayer and nothing else hasn't exactly changed my mind. We'll give it a shot, at least.)
3. Over the course of planning our trip, I probably hadn't built any part of the Auburn experience up to my friends so much as the Waaaaaaaar Eagle! flight. With reason: whatever traditions and spectacle the rest of the country's football teams might be able to offer, only Auburn has this one, and as traditions and spectacles go we all know it's a hell of a show. And if they've never seen it, I haven't seen it in three seasons, so when it's eagle time I'm about as pumped as I've ever been for anything football-related that's not actual football. So, um, as ungrateful as it feels to admit, I'm a little let-down by the actual flight. Nova sort of half-circled once and then made an immediate swoop for midfield. It's the shortest flight I can remember seeing at Jordan-Hare and ... and ... I don't know, just not as spectacular as it ought to be. Worse, I'm in that mode by this point where every single thing from the volume of the crowd in "Two Bits" to the rate of the sun's setting to whether my shoes are tied with appropriate tightness is some kind of omen on Auburn's chances tonight. As freaking sweet as watching Nova devour a handful of mice at midfield on the Jumbotron was, I don't think her aborted flight was the good kind of omen.
4. Other assorted pregame reactions: Speaking of Two Bits, if you have two good legs and don't stand up and holler, what's wrong with you?; I didn't realize they even made hype videos for the band, much less hype videos that had me genuinely fired up for Auburn's marching band, at least until it stopped and I woke up out of the trance with the vague lingering feeling I should have learned to play the trumpet; and tonight we don't only get the Fog of Intimidation, we get the Fireworks of Your Impending Doom. Tremble before Auburn, ye mere smokeless mortals!
6. And now Auburn comes out of the tunnel, and there is a roar, and win or lose, the thousand miles we have driven to get here have been worth it, every single one. It always will be. War Eagle. War Eagle Forever.
7. Kickoff, finally. After a quick first down, LSU is tackled for loss. 2nd-and-long. Sack. 3rd-and-even-longer. Even in the upper deck, the noise is substantial. There is no chance they make this first down. None. And they don't.
8. The pregame consensus that the defenses would more-or-less own the offenses and that special teams would play a critical role plays out over the course of the first quarter, as both teams exchange a series of punts and the eventual swing in field position from LSU's superior punting nets them a long field goal try after only a couple of first downs. It's good. Damn.
9. Damn damn: Auburn punts from midfield, Holliday fumbles the punt onto his own freaking goal line almost, Auburn has to have it--they have to have it, they were right there!--but they don't. Holliday gets back on it. Auburn has gotten no bounces to this point of the season. You can look it up: opponents fumble, they recover, Auburn fumbles, the opponent recovers.
10. Tony Franklin's offense has, to put it politely, not won over the Auburn loyalists in the upper deck. There's a former frat guy standing in the tunnel and talking to someone a few rows above us, making clear that he feels Auburn needs to line up and "knock someone on their ass" Even more entertaining is an elderly gentleman a few rows down and to our left. Every time the offense sets and then unsets to get the new call from the sideline, he throws up his hands and gestures angrily at the field in the universal signal for "Consarn this crazy contraption! It's never going to work!" It's a gesture that works whether directed at Auburn's new offense or his new universal remote control. Long way to go in winning the PR battle, Tony.
11. Is this a drive? That will help. A long pass to Hawthorne, wide open downfield. A long run by Tate around the right end. A pass interference call on Trott in the end zone. Tate up the middle to the goal line! Tate, TOUCHDOWN! 7-3! Who knows, maybe that's all the scoring we'll need?
12. Todd throws the interception we all knew was coming at some point tonight. He just looks too much like Cox for the spirit of Evil Brandon to not inhabit him from time-to-time. Not to mention that seeing him live, it's obvious his arm really is wholly inadequate. I know Franklin's system doesn't require a lot of zip, but Todd has no zip at all. He has less than no zip. He has antizip. Someone should teach him how to throw a knuckleball, 'cause otherwise, he's never going to make it in the big leagues.
13. The defense forces a three-and-out after the pick. Truly, they are the unending chain of demons Grotus warned us about. A couple of punts later, LSU takes over for their final drive of the half. Auburn is unsettled--a player runs onto the field at the last second. LSU seems to notice this and take advantage, snapping quickly. A flag flies. But Auburn is in position anyway--Jarrett Lee pumps once on the screen, maybe he pumps again, floats it out in that direction anyway ... McKenzie's got it! McKenzie's going to score! My friend* has seen the flag and is convinced it's for a 12th man, an oasis of calm in a storm of celebration. He explains hurriedly to me it's not a touchdown. I explain hurriedly back I don't think LSU was set and it is. Here comes the signal ... TOUCHDOWN! 14-3 at the half! Maybe it's a good thing we stuck a tight end at defensive end! We're going to win the game!
14. I mean, we are, right? The offense, sad as it is, can put three points on the board. No way the D allows two TDs for the tie. No ... way. Not today. Not when we're here. Not in front of this crowd. Like that very first third-and-long: it's not happening.
15. Auburn takes the opening kickoff of the second half. Todd runs for a first. Lester is in and looks a substantial improvement on Tate, slashing through holes. They drive inside the 20. Maybe they're going to get that three points quickly, huh? No. Huge sack. Horrific punt. LSU begins their ensuing drive further upfield than Auburn's deepest penetration. Essentially a turnover.
16. Powers slobberknocks Andrew Hatch. He is out of the game. The guy who handed McKenzie six points is in. The turnover hurt, but perhaps now our teams are even even in this half?
17. Not far past midfield, Auburn blitzes. Lee is about to be crushed. Instead he floats a pass deep. I breath a sigh of relief. The pass is a duck. It will not come down near anyone. Except maybe that guy. That guy running underneath it. How could it float this long? Caught. Touchdown, LSU 14-10. What just happened?
18. Onsides kick. Successful. Ostensibly a second turnover. Auburn's D rises to a three-and-out. But I am shaken. I think the crowd is shaken.
19. Another seeing-eye deep ball from Todd somehow flutters past two sets of LSU arms into Dunn's hands for a big gain. It kickstarts another drive. Auburn moves across midfield. 4th-and-1. Play-action. There are sea urchins and earthworms and men in the luxury box who aren't even watching the game and most importantly LSU defenders who are not fooled. At all. Prayer to Trott, picked. Three third quarter turnovers, two precious Auburn drives wasted.
20. Only three plays from inside their 20 and LSU is deep into Auburn territory. They run the little counter flip. The flippee pulls up to throw. He throws towards the endzone. Touchdown. Meltdown. 17-14.
21. Auburn continues to try to run the ball. LSU continues to grind these runs into dust. Punt. Meanwhile, LSU rushes up the middle several consecutive plays and rushes through massive holes on all of the them. What is happening? What game is this?
23. Through what seems like sheer random luck at this point, LSU is stalled and kicks a field goal. Do we have a chance? Auburn takes over. Todd drops back. He throws downfield ... Hawthorne has it! Hawthorne is loose! Go! Go go go! 1st down inside the 20. There is a chance. Holy hell.
24. Well, maybe not. 3rd-and-long. Todd back. He throws--another duck. Like the one Lee threw in the third quarter ... a duck falling ... Dunn is there ... Touchdown. TOUCHDOWN! Touchdown! Byrum with the extra point ... good! 21-20, Auburn!
25. This was where we were last year. The exact same place. A late touchdown. A tiny lead. That loss began with a piss-poor kickoff. Auburn's defense this year begins with ... a decent kickoff. Then a rush that goes nowhere. Then ... incomplete. 3rd-and-long. They will not convert this. They cannot. And they don't. They punt.
26. Auburn needs only a first down to win the game, but I don't expect them to do it. For starters, they would have to run to pull it off, and they haven't been able to run all game. More importantly, the defense will be the ones to finish the game. They will have to be on the field ends as a competitive contest if Auburn's going to win. So it doesn't surprise me in the least when Auburn goes three-and-out.
27. Last year's kickoff has just been replaced by this year's 25-yard punt. LSU will start just on their side of midfield. Now is the time, defense. Now's the time, Auburn. Do this.
28. I stand up to cheer for our defense. My friend stands up. We scream. LSU begins by running up the middle for good yardage. We realize we are almost the only ones standing. What is going on? Stand up, Auburn fans. We stand up for 2nd-and-4. No one else does. We look around sheepishly. No one is standing with us. 2nd-4 on the final drive of the game and Auburn's defense is on the field. But we're not jerks. We sit back down. I can't believe it. One thing is for sure: I will never, ever be able to give my friends sh*t about Michigan's fans again. I am bewildered.
29. LSU drives down the field and scores a touchdown without having been held to so much as a third down. For the second straight year, Auburn's special teams and defense have been given a chance to win the game. For the second straight year, they have failed to do so. It hurts. I figure Tubby must have been as stunned as any of us--he forgot to use his remaining timeouts.
30. After the touchdown, Auburn fans begin leaving our section and, as I look across the stadium, many other sections. Not in droves. The majority of fans are staying. But LSU quite honestly scored too quickly--with Tubby standing around doing nothing they could have bled the clock completely dry. Auburn has time for a miracle, a miracle that Auburn's alleged fans will not see. Why the hell are you people leaving?
31. Auburn picks up a personal foul flag and moves to midfield. Then LSU's end torches Ziemba, sacks, and it's basically over. Todd will not be able to convert 2nd-and-25, or 3rd-and-25, or 4th-and-25. He does not. Auburn loses.
32. There are longer walks out there, for certain, but I have led a stunningly fortunate life and the longest one I know is the silent, miserable one out of the upper deck, down the ramps, and into the sweaty nausea of night after an Auburn loss. It doesn't matter how closely you park to the stadium. Your car is never close enough.
Epilogue
This is the week of the Iron Bowl. This week, there is no walking out. There is no sitting down. You are an Auburn fan, or you aren't.
I'm not going to pretend that exhorting the Auburn fanbase into "being positive and getting behind our guys!!!!" will make any difference. Maybe, maybe, getting behind the guys would matter if the game was on the Plains. In Tuscaloosa, not so much. I don't think Auburn fans should realize that Auburn will head west with a real--if slim--shot at winning this thing and stop, for one week at least, the incessant nattering about Tubby's job security and offensive incompetence and disappointing defense because it'll help Auburn. I think they should stop because that's what Auburn fans ought to do.
Yes, the LSU game hurt. Yes, this entire season has hurt like a wound. For this week, for God's sake, suffer in silence. This is the Iron Bowl. Stand up, damn it. Cheer yourself hoarse, even if it's in your living room. Watch until one team or the other is kneeling on the ball. This is your Auburn football team. They deserve nothing less.
The road back
The trip back to Ann Arbor is almost a much, much more eventful one than we planned on. It's Sunday, and so with no Chick-Fil-A (sigh) we stop by a barbecue joint in Nashville for lunch. Ribs are the other thing I had to eat while traveling back home, and the ones we get live up to expectations, so this appears to be a good decision. I even get a photo snapped out back beside the pile of ash with the "Free Hickory Ash" sign stuck in it to commemorate the occasion.
What we didn't was that we'd arrived in Nashville smack in the midst of its gasoline panic while in pretty substantial need of gas. The first three (maybe four?) stations we find: all out, nothing there but yellow plastic bags on the handles and the numbers stripped off the signs. Oh, and clerks who tell us they don't have any idea where there might be more gas. By the time we hit the third one we're in serious danger of having to get out and push.
Fortunately one of my buddies, unlike the JCCW, has a cell phone that was designed after the millennium. He Internets up the numbers for the stations in the area, starts dialing, and finds one that says they have gas--for the time being. We get there to find two stations on either side of a highway not far from the Interstate, every pump at either station backed up three, four cars deep. (Apparently this wasn't so bad as lines in the Nashville gas panic went, though by the time we'd gotten the tank filled we and everyone around us clearly felt like this about it.)
Any normal person on any normal weekend wouldn't draw parallels between a gasoline crisis and their football team's recent defeat. But I couldn't help it: when we arrived at my friend's place late that night, and I thought back on how pumping gas felt like victory and escaping the Nashville city limits felt like triumph, I realized that perhaps--perhaps--the LSU loss would lead to better things. The Florida win in 2007 felt as good as it did because of the Mississippi St. loss. Upending Georgia in 2001 felt as good as it did because we'd just gotten our tails handed to us by Arkansas. Hell, all of 2004 felt the way it did because of all of 2003.
Of course, I didn't think at the time there would be so much pain followed by so little balm. But the comparison still holds. After this Season of DEATH and the Tide's season of rebirth, Auburn now has the opportunity to win what would likely be the single sweetest victory of Tuberville's tenure. To win bowl eligibility would be one thing. To win bowl eligibility against Alabama in a seventh-straight Iron Bowl victory would be another. To win bowl eligibility against top-ranked, undefeated Alabama in Tuscaloosa for a seventh-straight Iron Bowl victory would be little short of mindblowing. When it's seemed like you might not get home, just pulling into your driveway can be a hell of a rush.
So on the final few miles from my buddy's to my place, I rewound the CD I'd listened to on the way over:
Whoa-a-ho-ho! Whoa-a-ho-ho! We gotta stay positive! Whoa-a-ho-ho! Whoa-a-ho-ho! We gotta stay positive!
We gotta stay positive, Auburn fans. We might be all right after all.
*Said friend has a blog. You can read his thoughts on his Auburn experience here.
I'd never heard of the band Covenant, much less the following song, until it popped up in my Pandora one day and well-nigh screamed Hey, I'm about Nick Saban! Dig the icy electronic bleeps and bloops, computer-cold visuals, lyrics about emotional isolation and the speaker's desperate insistence to self that he is, in fact, a "happy man" ... this is the soundtrack for a coachbot if I've ever heard one. Enjoy.
The last chapter of The Story will be televised to the widest audience possible. This is also how stories (the good ones, at least, the old crowd-pleasers) operate: the hard-scrabble underdog doesn't take on the unbeatable favorite in the backyard in front of friends and family. What made David David was that Goliath went down in front of everyone, forever.
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Usually it's best to leave the shredding of Stewart Mandel's latest intellectual gambit to Michael at B&B, but he seems busy and anyway, the following sentiment appeared in a dozen different places after the Iowa-Penn St. game. So I feeling entitled to point out that this ...
But why, you ask, is the regular season "more important" with the BCS in place? Let us count the ways -- just using last weekend as an example. If college football had a playoff ...
• Iowa's dramatic upset of Penn State wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. The Nittany Lions can and probably will still win the Big Ten. The loss would only hurt their playoff seeding.
... mindlessly equates "playoffs" with an eight- or 16-team version. 'Cause, see, in a four-team version both the Iowa game (which costs the Nits a guaranteed shot at a national title as opposed to one that depends on the kindness of Big 12 strangers) and PSU's upcoming Michigan St. tilt (in which the whole nation will wait with baited breath to see if the Nits or Trojans grab the fourth playoff berth) become vastly more important to the country-at-large.
But that's not really my point. My point is that it's stunning to see a national writer tell Iowa fans that their season-defining, possibly program-defining victory (should Ferentz dig the Hawkeyes back out of the last couple of years' worth of mediocrity) "wouldn't have mattered in the slightest" if Penn St. went on to take part in a playoff. That win and the story those that were there will tell their grandkids someday in the robot house are irrelevant. Now, I know, Mandel is intentionally discussing the BCS and BCS ramifications alone ... but isn't the entire "let's hone our focus on the BCS to microscopic levels at the exclusion of what's important about college football, like Iowa" viewpoint identical to the playoffs-ruin-everything viewpoint Mandel is arguing against? In trying to argue that playoffs would strip college football of its uniqueness, Mandel strips out exactly what about the Iowa-Penn St. game helps make college football unique.
Not that Mandel can even get his pro-BCS argument straight anyway ...
• Alabama's overtime win over LSU -- one of the most intense endings I've ever covered -- would have been largely irrelevant. While the game would still be a big deal because of Nick Saban's return to Baton Rouge, the palpable tension in that stadium after the Tigers blocked the Crimson Tide's field goal was due to the fact that Alabama's entire season was on the line.
Under a playoff, if the Tide had lost ... oh well. They could still clinch a spot in the SEC title game the following week.
Right, the same way Florida did two years ago after losing to Auburn ... the way LSU did last year after losing twice ... the way Florida will again after losing to Ole Miss this year. BCS or playoff, that game wasn't going to matter in terms of the national championship picture anyway.
And in those blind Mandelian terms, neither will the Iron Bowl.
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Those are, of course, the same blind Mandelian terms the overwhelming majority of Alabama fans are happy to accept. Over and over again over the past six years, they have told us their sights are always set higher than mere rivalry (Tennessee sometimes excluded), that games that aren't played with championships on the line aren't worth caring about, that Auburn supporters deserve derision and mockery for daring to invest so much in a single game rather than titles. In short: they have told us that Auburn's six wins don't really matter. They don't really count for anything.
I think the tune would be entirely different if they had won a few of those games and certainly will be when they finally do break the streak--at which point the measure of our two programs will magically be who wins the Iron Bowl again, not which one shamefully wants to win it more--but for now, this tune is theirs. It is the tune sung by the likes of Stewart Mandel, the tune danced by grade-fudgers to keep the budding professionals eligible, the tune written by the NFL and, it has to be said, played by no one at this level so beautifully as by the Tide's resident coachbot.
Let them keep it. I will keep college football, where before the draft rankings and the quarterback camps and luxury boxes and million-dollar contracts and polls and marching bands and even the damn sweat and blood, comes the hate. That's where this sport we love starts. Auburn gets that. Alabama claims they don't. This is the way things have to be. But it doesn't mean I envy them. Ever. At all.
Besides, should Auburn do the damn-near unthinkable and leave Tuscaloosa with a win a week from Saturday that the Tide follow with a loss to Florida the week after that, Auburn fans will look back on this season with a certain fondness laced with disappointment while Tide fans will do with a certain disappointment laced with fondness. The game will mean everything to Auburn regardless. Here's to hoping Alabama finds out after the fact exactly how much it means to them.
