I don't know if I would say that, as the (full version of the) song above goes, that under my feet, baby, the grass is growing, not when I'm still enjoying living in Ann Arbor and writing under the banner above.
But nonetheless: it's time for your humble Auburn Blogger to move on. As in "this week," and in two separate and distinct fashions:
One. Our time in Michigan is up, the Mrs. JCCW's and mine. We're moving. Over the past two days virtually all of our worldly possessions have been packed away and loaded into a large truck, and are now being driven across the country to meet us in a couple days' time. So I hope you can forgive the absence of regular posts this week, but there's been a lot of vacuuming and tub-scrubbing and such.
The destination is one I'm sure you're all familiar with: Chinle, Arizona, in the northeast corner of the state and the heart of the federal Navajo reservation. There's a few different words to describe Chinle, but "remote" might be the most apt. To answer your question: yes, I realize we're moving even further away from the Plains and my football team than we already are, and yes, this is a drawback that's been a matter of discussion in the JCCW household. (Appointments for Internet and satellite television services have long since been arranged.)
But, to cut to the quick of it: you only get so many adventures. We wanted to take another.
Two. To any of you worried about such a thing by the post title and those opening paragraphs: no, I'm not quitting. You'll be able to read the same the two or three posts a day from me this fall you got last fall, I'll still crank out the usual recaps (or something like them), there'll still be jokes at the expense of Tommy Trott's ability to block.
They just won't be in this space, exactly. Jeremy Henderson, who I hope you know as the driving force of the War Eagle Reader, is currently driving forward a new Auburn website, the kind of project that's going to bring to the Auburn community something new, something important, something fun. And the JCCW is going to be part of it.
Except that it won't be "the JCCW." It's going to be named ... wait for it ... War Blog Eagle. You'll be able to type in www.warblogeagle.com and you'll get the exact same things you've been getting for the last year-plus at that URL. It just won't be on Blogger. The only thing that's changing is the host, the look of the thing (no more white-on-black text, good news for those of you who hate it and have told me so in no uncertain terms), and the name. Oh, and that my mid-major ramblings will be moving somewhere else I haven't determined yet. Everything else: the same.
So yes, beginning next week you'll have to say good-bye to the JCCW ... but saying hello to WBE will be like saying hello to an old friend anyway. (I hope.) Tentative launch is set for Monday or Tuesday, and if you think I'm not going to take my few precious remaining days before the La. Tech previewing the hell out of things .. well, you're wrong. I'll leave it at that.
I have one more post left for this space, a kind of eulogy for the Joe Cribbs Car Wash banner I've written under for the past 3 1/2 years. It'll be done sometime early next week. See you then--here, and there.
All right, so, yeah, sorry about that little disappearing act over the past couple of days. As I mentioned the other day, the Mrs. JCCW and I are gettin' our tourism on, and both Internet access and time to blog are, uh, erratic. The plan is to use whatever downtime we get to type up what I can and then toss it up whenever I get the chance to connect to the 'Nets ... but it hasn't worked out great so far. Sorry. Hopefully it will work out better in the future--we're not actually going to be back home until the first day of August, so please bear with this blog in the meantime. It's not going to go dark, but it might have some slow stretches.
As for what part of the world we're in, I was just going to tell you, dear readers, but then I thought "Hey! Wouldn't it be cool if I just posted a selection of our pictures and let them guess at it?" And then I thought, "Uh, that's only a good idea if the idea is to let on to everyone how secretly lame I am," and then I thought "Look, you once wrote an open letter to a new recruit comparing him to a Star Wars X-wing pilot and Nick Saban to Lord Voldemort. I think they know."
So here's a selection of pics. Guess go in the comments. (And you can sing the post title to the theme song if you put an accent on "The".)
(And oh, as for Auburn, I haven't missed too much, have I? Chaz Ramsey is suing Nall and Gamber and this is your last big recruiting weekend until next spring. Commitment watch in full effect ... which reminds me, glad to see Bonomolo make it official. More on all that sometime soon.)
Whoops, that's not from our trip, it's from General Hospital (which the Mrs. enjoys during her days off), but I figured the extra bit of WTF? Auburn content--the characters are in a sports bar far, far away from Alabama, leading me to believe there was an Auburn fan on set--couldn't hurt.
Last Friday, coincidentally--or maybe NOT coincidentally?!?--as Orson was writing this deathly-accurate paean to the humble perfection that is the Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich, I got a call from a friend here in Ann Arbor. He was driving to Bowling Green (yes, that Bowling Green), about 70 minutes away, and wanted to know if I wanted to ride along and make a stopover at the Toledo mall, home of the only Chick-Fil-A within a 100-mile radius of where we live.
I said yes many times and whipped on my souvenir Chick-Fil-A Bowl shirt. Around an hour later, this happened:
However: if you think I look excited--and I was, since Chick-Fil-A has been a twice-a-year-or-so experience ever since I moved here in the summer of '06--you should know that the cow was there as part of a promotion in which anyone who visited the Chick-Fil-A dressed as a cow would get a free combo. Midway through my second (deliriously good) sandwich, a couple in their 70s approached the counter. They were wearing matching pastel Chick-Fil-A shirts--his baby blue, hers light pink--and taped-on cow spots cut out of black construction paper. Oh, and Chick-Fil-A caps with attached cow ears. They picked up their free combos, chatted with the cow, and walked over to their tables looking as happy as, well, people who love Chick-Fil-A that have just received a big free bag of Chick-Fil-A usually look.
God bless them. We'd all agree it's a better life you lead for yourself if you can find things to love unabashedly, wholeheartedly, as long as those things are worthy, right? It's such a relief to know there are other people out there, like Orson, like that couple, that also believe there is so much out there less deserving than these sandwiches.
When I was in high school, there weren't many times I envied the kids in younger classes. I mean, why would I? It's against the rules, almost. You're older, bigger (well, bigger than the other dweebs, in cases like mine), cooler (again, more in a general sense than my specific experience), and best of all, closer to the acceptable goofing-off of senior year and then, finally, escape. Envying those younger than you = lame.
But I was always on good terms with "lame," and so part of me always wished I'd been born three years later and been part of the Class of 2000. The Class ... of 2000! It seemed like it'd earn you points with your grandkids, you know? The first class of the Millennium. It would just make you sound that tiny bit cooler than you were, and not to overemphasize the point or anything, but I needed all the help I could get.
I'm not sure why I'm telling you all of this, other than that I got a very similar rush of envy reading this:
Vincent Edward "Bo" Jackson, Auburn University's second Heisman Trophy winner and 1995 Auburn graduate, will deliver the commencement address to this year's Auburn graduates at spring ceremonies May 9 ...
Jackson is the university's second commencement speaker following a resolution passed by Auburn's Student Government Association in fall 2007 as well as an initiative of Auburn University President Jay Gogue to bring nationally recognized and distinguished speakers to present the keynote address to Auburn graduates.
Attention, Auburn classes of 2009: I just hope you realize how fortunate you are, OK? Some of us just don't get these kinds of breaks.
First things first: That whole "Jeff Lebo to VCU?!?!?!" thing did not, in fact, have legs. Not surprising in the least, and the consensus now seems to be that the old friend of Lebo's in the VCU director's chair was just throwing him a bone by bringing his name up, but any time another school "You know who'd we'd like to interview? Your school's coach," you're kind of obligated to pay attention, right?
Elsewhere on the SEC coaching carousel. Good news, bad news, ugly news. The good: Mike Anderson is either staying put or theoretically going to Memphis ... but he ain't going to either Alabama or Georgia. The bad: the guy who is going to Alabama is Anthony Grant, thanks to Billy Donovan's totally selfish decision to not pursue the Kentucky job. Thanks for nothing, Billy. And then, of course, the ugly: John Calipari decided he'd sleaze up Lexington for a while after sleazing up Amherst and Memphis.
From the perspective of virtually every fan of an SEC team that's not 'Bama or Kentucky: this sucks. Two poor and underachieving coaches have been replaced by two guys that it's very, very hard to see underachieve at their new respective positions. Grant had a major hand in putting together the back-to-back Gator national champions and won the regular-season Colonial title--the top-to-bottom best mid-major league in America outside the Valley--all three years he coached at the school. Stan Heath he is not. As for Calipari, I hope the good people of Kentucky are wearing their hazardous waste suits before dealing directly with a guy that oozes as much scum as Calipari does, but the sleazebag has won way too many games at too many places not to win at Kentucky. (Certainly, the Alabama football/Kentucky hoops parallels are there, but Rapaport conveniently leaves out the part where both Calipari and the coachbot have similar reputations for win-at-all-costs approaches that streeeeeeeetch the limits of what's justifiable in the name of victory ... as well as the rank desperation of both programs that led to those concerns being ignored in favor of the hire.)
So: Jeff Lebo and the Auburn men's basketball program already had their work cut out for them by virtue of being Auburn. The job did not get any easier this past week.
As for that Tournament thing ... the beat has simply gone on where the chalk and mid-majors have been concerned. It didn't get any clearer than the end of the Xavier-Pitt game: underdog is up two in the final minute; underdog player blocks opponent's shot; second player has easy chance to save ball from going out-of-bounds by saving to two open teammates, albeit teammates under the basket, and instead hurls ball the length of the court; just before ball goes out of bounds as expected by opponent's player, third underdog player tracks the ball down, only to take an unnecessary step on the baseline; opponent comes downcourt and throws up a prayer of a three from 30 feet; it falls, and opponent goes on to win by two possessions. As they did against Ohio St. two years ago, Xavier had the game as in the bag as games get, and let it get away from them.
So between that result, Gonzaga's meek capitulation to North Carolina, Missouri (the one genuinely likable power-conference team remaining after the first two rounds) falling to UConn, and my bracket's implosion ... no, I can't say I'm all that excited about the Final Four. But then again, I almost never am.
Bracket Challenge update. After Gonzaga's dismissal made it clear I would not be covering myself in any kind of glory in the first annual JCCW Bracket Challenge, the bracket I was rooting hardest for over Saturday and Sunday wasn't even my own: it's the one belonging to the Mrs. JCCW. Sure, a massive NCAA Tournament fan publicly losing to (OK, not just "losing to," "getting one's ass kicked by") one's wife in a bracket-picking contest isn't especially good for one's self-esteem, but I figured the more people the Mrs. JCCW vaulted in the group standings the less embarrassing it gets, right? Misery does love company, after all, and for a little while there it looked like I might have a lot of company, what with the Mrs. having all four of her FF teams in the Elite 8 and her chosen champ Louisville looking well-nigh unstoppable against Arizona. Alas and alack, things didn't go as well as hoped and now she's going to wind up somewhere in the middle of the JCCW Bracket Challenge pack. (Your current leader: a Mr. James Jones, whose bracket pegged six of the Elite 8 and may wind up triumphant if North Carolina ascends to the title, as I expect they will. Kudos, good sir.)
The one saving grace for this year's Million Dollar Bracket is this: it called for two 1's, one 2, and a sleeper to make the Final Four. And hey, whaddya know, that was the right approach--I just picked the wrong teams. (Completely wrong, actually. Next year, I'm going to figure out who I actually expect to get there and then go the opposite way.) One of these years, though, one of these years ...
I am a person who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and until last August had spent the previous several years as a full-time employee of various newspapers.
So it has been more than a little shocking to receive the news today that as of this summer there will be no such thing as "The Ann Arbor News." This hyper-literate city of 110,000 people will have no dedicated print newspaper as of July. This July.
What?
Sure, there's already an online newspaper that's doing much of the municipal grunt work. Sure, the future online-first incarnation of what's now the A2 News will run a print edition a couple times a week. And sure, on the national level, the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer and bunches more major metropolitan newspapers are already gone--it's frankly stunning the Detroit News is still standing.
But but but: readers in Denver still have the Denver Post, Seattle readers the Seattle News, and when the Detroit News finally kicks the bucket the Free Press will still be there. Ann Arbor will have nothing, or at least nothing in the way of what we think of as a "newspaper" for a city of its size. It's over.
I wouldn't say I wouldn't have predicted something like this eventually ... I mean, c'mon, it's newspapers. And if you'd asked me which newspapers would going to go down first, it would be the ones in the nation's most economically depressed state. But already? It's stunning, and sad, and more than a little scary for someone who believes it's important for writers to get paid to write. I would like very much, please, if the current generation of high schoolers who like writing but aren't the next Hemingway have another option besides churning out toaster oven operations manuals. (Or teaching, for those of us like yours truly who gave it a shot but just aren't that responsible, thanks.)
There's a blog post here that sums up why this has hit so close to home:
One thing you hear all the time is that the mainstream media does a terrible job in this country, and I feel that way quite often. But there are so many passionate people in media too, people who give their hearts to the job, people who want only to break news, and tell stories, and shine a light on injustice, and make people laugh, and document the times we live in.
So apologies for the bout of navel-gazing, but the idea of these passionate people--and I've met many of them myself--doing something besides telling stories for a living, and the countless, countless stories that ought to be told going untold has me a bit shaken. It's starting here in Ann Arbor, but it feels like it's only going to get worse.
That photo was taken at Birmingham-Southern's 70-69 home win over Winthrop on Jan. 24, 2004. I'm one of the guys standing up in the back row, probably the dude in the cap wearing a gray t-shirt over a white longsleeve.
That was a hell of an afternoon. My Panthers, in the final stages of their transition to D-I, were taking on the Big South's reigning bully in the program's first quasi-nationally televised home game. (Thanks, Fox Sports Net!) Bill Battle Coliseum sold out--all 2, 076 seats--and James Collins hit two free throws at the end of the game to give BSC what was pretty well inarguably the program's biggest win since taking the NAIA national title in 1995. It didn't matter that Winthrop was in the middle of a single-season lull or that the foul that sent Collins to the line was a terrible ticky-tack call that drove Gregg Marshall nearly clear out of his skin. We'd beaten Winthrop--twice that year, in fact. We all walked out into the sunshine that afternoon not just thinking but knowing that our little school's basketball team would one day play in the NCAA Tournament. Maybe it wouldn't be right away, but it would happen. The Big South wasn't too big for us. Two years later, with BSC again looking like a legitimate threat to battle for the bid, I started this blog to chronicle their march to the tournament and give other Big South fans a voice out there in the wide world of the Interwebs.
Most of me understands that the financial realities of Division I athletics made the move inevitable. Part of me will never recover, or forgive.
------------------
It's not an exaggeration to say I've loved the NCAA Tournament and the underdogs that play in it for as long as I can remember. I cried when Chuck Person's Auburn team were eliminated by Louisville in the 1986 final eight, which makes sense--I was seven, and they were Auburn. But I cried when Syracuse lost to Indiana in the 1987 final, too, for no other reason than that I felt like the Orange weren't supposed to win.
The next year I remember giddily penciling in 13th-seeded Richmond past Indiana in the first round and then Georgia Tech in the second on my precious, precious bracket ripped from the inside of the Sports Illustrated. By 1989 I was already head-over-heels for the mid-majors of the world, staying up late to watch highlights of No. 14 Siena beating No. 3 Stanford on SportsCenter and reading the AP story that popped up in the Opelika-Auburn News under the headline "Measle Men"--there had been a measles outbreak on Siena's campus that had forced the team to spend a month on the road, or something--a dozen times. That same week, Curry Kirkpatrick wrote a snippet for his back-page Sports Illustrated column about how Middle Tennessee State's Mike Buck had outscored fourth-seeded Florida St. all by "his own scrawny self" for some extended period. So I watched MTSU's second-round game against Virginia with wild hope--too bad it was one of those games where every time MTSU would draw within three or four in the second half, the bad guys would drain a 3.
Come next March, at age 11, I was watching all the small conference championship games ESPN could give me--though I don't remember the details, I know the first one was Monmouth falling to Robert Morris in the NEC final, because, seriously, How cool of a name is "Monmouth"? The same goes for "Coppin State"--I know I watched the Eagles win the MEAC, because I remember how disappointed I was when John Saunders told us at halftime of another game that their "valiant effort" against second-seeded Syracuse was going to come up short.
No point in sugarcoating it: this is aberrant behavior for an 11-year-old child. No boy growing up in rural Alabama, no matter how sports-obsessed, should be transfixed by the likes of Monmouth and Coppin State. I understand that*. Hell, it's not even particularly normal behavior now.
The point is this: I didn't fall in love with mid-majors and underdogs because of Birmingham-Southern's basketball team. I fell in love with Birmingham-Southern's basketball team because they were a mid-major and underdog.
----------------------
The last three college basketball seasons have been ... weird.
I've kept up with the Panthers, but after not fielding a team in 2006-2007--not surprisingly, the roster full of scholarship players did not stick around to be non-scholarship players--it's going to take some time to ramp back up to speed even in D-III, and really knowing a D-III team from a thousand miles away is almost impossible anyway.
Auburn could have filled the void, I guess, but towards the end of that infuriating 2000 season I let myself stop caring and really, until this past two months, what reason has there been to start caring again?
So during these regular seasons I've been rooting for ... no one, really. Mid-majors over majors in November and December? Of course. Auburn? Always against Alabama, at least, even if the stakes have been so depressingly low otherwise. Any mid-major in position to sew up an at-large bid is an automatic favorite.
But those motivations only go so far. For the most part, the regular season has been a kind of extended information-gathering session, a convoluted and prolonged set of preliminaries before the real games being during Championship Week. What once felt like, well, sports now feels a bit like research. It's research I enjoy, research that on certain days--BracketBusters, those occasional Saturdays when ESPN airs a critical Valley game, that first glorious day of Championship Week--I outright cherish. But research.
This is, of course, how millions of Tournament-only college basketball fans already see the sport. But for someone for whom the hoops season became something much, much bigger than research, this is deeply disorienting, wildly frustrating. There have many times during the past couple of Januaries and Februaries where I've felt like I haven't known what to do with either myself or this blog.
I don't think that feeling will be as bad in the future. But I don't expect it to ever go completely away, either.
Prior to the selections, I said to everyone who would listen–-and to some who would not–-that this was the ultimate policy year for the committee. I was careful to use those two specific words together because you could see it coming from a mile away. There was enough bubble malleability and enough sameness to get a true understanding of the NCAA tournament worldview despite the mid-numbing rhetoric thrown around by the various “ologists.”
Resumes and bodies of work and RPI and SOS and top 50 wins aren’t the point. We all see now.
What you need to know is that no BCS-affiliated school with a top 50 RPI was omitted this season, but six non-BCS-affiliated schools with top 50 RPIs were -- specifically San Diego State (34), Creighton (40), UAB (46), Illinois State (47), Saint Mary's (48) and Niagara (49). What that means is that for the fifth consecutive season, the three best RPIs omitted from the field belonged to non-BCS affiliated schools.
When we're little kids on the playground, the first rule we're taught is Play fair. This is one of the best things about sports: unfairness can be tough to spot in real life and even harder to do something about, but in sports it's usually pretty clearcut. Using drugs to hit a baseball farther than your opponent can is unfair. Hitting a player after the whistle has blown on the football field so he can't play any more is unfair. Lying about your age so you can compete in a gymnastics competition is unfair. And though it's certainly not a new development, the selection process for the NCAA Tournament is unfair. In some ways, it's more unfair than any of these other examples, because there's no immediate punishment: in baseball, a steroid user can be suspended and have their records taken away. A football player can be penalized. An Olympic athlete in gymnastics or any other sport can be stripped of their medals. There is nothing like this for the Committee or the teams that benefit.
That does not mean there is no punishment. Today and tomorrow, 24 different teams from the non-power conferences will take on power-conference teams in the first round of the Tournament. The job of punishment is theirs. I am a fanatic, and I realize this--as I tried to make clear, I don't have a choice, always been this way--but mid-majors beating high-majors in the NCAAs isn't just fun, exciting, cool, etc. It's justice.
-----------------------------
A handful of friends from BSC and I made a pact. Whenever the Panthers advanced the Big South tourney final--not if ever, whenever--we would be there, no matter our jobs or obligations or travel distance. Whenever they won, we would storm the court, even if we were in our mid-50s and bald. And then we would follow them to their first-round game, and scream our lungs out for them, and watch Birmingham-Southern pull the upset.
I'm telling you: that was a dream. Giving it up hurt like hell three years ago, and it hurts today. But I'm so, so glad I had it, because it gave me an idea of what it'll be like for the kids at North Dakota St. when they beat Kansas, or at VCU if they knock off Notre Dame, or at Morgan St. when they write their names into the history books against Oklahoma. Without exaggeration, without a trace of hyperbole, I can tell you it will be a dream come true.
And this is why today and tomorrow are my favorite two days on the American sports calendar. That dream is going to come true, somewhere on this bracket, sometime in this first round. Justice will be served. Mad celebrations will take place. There have been a couple close calls, but it's never not happened at least once. It'll happen.
Today and tomorrow, then, are not research. There's no neutrality, no cold detachment. It's the sharing of that dream, the collective hope of all those who follow this sport from the underside of Kyle's Red Line. So Go Butler. Go Radford. Go VCU and Go American and Go Morgan St. and Go Akron and Go Western Kentucky and Go Northern Iowa and Go Cal St. Northridge. I don't have a mid-major team any more, but this is the NCAA Tournament: I have all these teams.
Make it happen, guys.
A quick p.s.: I'm going to try and check in during the day today and definitely will tomorrow a.m., but it's possible this will be the last post today. And just in case it is, congrats to Auburn on their first postseason victory in five years last night, though this post probably makes clear why I'll enjoy any future ones a little more than that one.
*As for an explanation ... I don't have one. Maybe some secluded part of my brain had already taken a hard look at my genetic profile, determined how badly I would always, always suck at sports, and drove my sympathies towards teams with similar handicaps. Maybe it was a weird offshoot of my professional teams at the time being the utterly hapless Braves and Falcons. Maybe I was just a big softie from the start. I don't know.
Anyways, this post is just to say that, yes, I'm back, and regular service at the JCCW will resume today. Thank you for your patience over the past week-or-so.
*i.e. the beard I'm wearing until college football institutes a playoff, or it gets too hot and scratchy over the summer and I shave it off, whichever comes first.
OK, so, this may seem a bit early, but ... the Mrs. JCCW and yours truly are taking off tomorrow for a Christmas holiday with family on the East coast, and I have no idea how much blogging there's going to be between now and our return on the 26th. My guess is: maybe some, especially if/when the coaching staff fills out. But not a lot.
This will be your country mouse Auburn Blogger's first trip to New York, so wish me luck I don't get myself hit by a bus or anything. Actually, don't do that: we're getting there by driving through Canada and down past Niagara Falls. In December. Canada. So skip the wish-lucking, and pray we don't freeze to death in a ditch somewhere. That would be better.
OK, three things I need you to do for me while I'm gone:
1. Don't you dare fall for that big-media line about there being "too many bowls." These are the last crumbs, the final few morsels of college football we get until going without for eight freaking months, and you should love all of them unconditionally. OK, so even I wouldn't carve out any plans to watch Louisiana Tech-Northern Illinois, but no one's strapping you down Clockwork-Orange-style and forcing you to watch, are they? I say if a bunch of nutso civic-minded businessmen want to blow a wad of cash on a game no will watch but that will feel like a reward to two bunches of kids who have worked their tails off all season and deserve some kind of thanks for it, by all means, be my guest.
2. Understand, dearest readers, how much your support means to me and this weblog. As you might imagine, the last couple of weeks have been very good for the JCCW's traffic numbers, but even better has been the seasonlong flow of unnecessarily kind comments and e-mails and even, for a little while there, ticket offers. (Speaking of e-mails, I have a metric ton of them in my inbox I swear I'll get to over the next few weeks. If you're expecting to hear from me: Sorry. It'll happen.) The goal here is just to give you one more place to read something worthwhile, or maybe sometimes better than worthwhile, about this cra-hay-hayzy Auburn football team we all love so much for reasons none of us can really explain--that so many of you seem to think I'm doing something sorta right in regards to that goal is humbling. Every last one of you is awesome. Even the Tide fans. Some of them.
3. If you're not watching the entire 30-minute version at some point this holiday season, spend 10 minutes--or at the very least five minutes picking it up at the 4:00 mark--watching this:
Three summers ago now, the Mrs. JCCW and I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Most days, I couldn't be happier with that decision. Certain Saturdays during the fall, when the closest I get to my football team is pay-per-view Underwater-o-Vision as called by Andy Burcham and Cole Cubelic, I'm more ambivalent. And then there's the long winter, when I don't just wonder why the hell we moved to this godforsaken icebox of a state, I wonder why anyone would have ever voluntarily chosen to live in a place that gets this damn cold.
But this past weekend, even with the thermometer hunkered down in the 20s and the wind chill driving the "feels like" reading into the teens, it felt right. This weekend, as an Auburn fan, it felt right to be surrounded by ice, and snow, and the filthy gray slush that accumulates in the gutters. It felt right to put on as many layers of clothing as possible and tromp out into the cold and wind knowing it wasn't going to be pleasant, but that you'd get where you were going eventually.
---------------------------------
Part of me wonders if it's just Auburn's time. After all, it's everyone's time eventually.
Before Pete Carroll, USC went six seasons without winning more than eight games in a year, went to only two low-level bowls, and lost them both. In the mid-90s, Ray Goff and Jim Donnan conspired to coach Georgia to four straight 5- or 6-win seasons. Between the Fred Akers, David McWilliams, and John Mackovic eras, Texas--Texas!--lost four or more games 12 times in 14 seasons between '84 and '97. I don't have to tell you what Alabama went through between Gene Stallings and Nick Saban. LSU, Oklahoma, the list goes on. And even Michigan--inviolable, invincible Michigan--spent the last two seasons watching first its best collection of offensive talent in a decade lose to Appalachian St. before its bajillion-year bowl-streak went down the tubes in a 3-9 debacle. Football death comes for us all, eventually.
But for the most part, even though Auburn has neither the recruiting base nor the grand tradition nor many other things that these programs have, our Tigers have been mostly immune to this kind of decay since the moment Pat Dye arrived on the Plains in 1981. Since then, Auburn has never had a three-year span in which they failed to win eight games in at least one season. The back-to-back five-win seasons to close out the Dye era were followed immediately by a perfect 11-0 campaign in 1993. The 3-8 and 5-6 seasons in '98 and '99 were bracketed by trips to Atlanta in '97 and 2000. For all the griping from certain corners of the Auburn fanbase about a general lack of championships (and sniping from Tide fans about the same, as if they wouldn't have traded any coach they had between Bryant and Saban, save Stallings, for Dye or Tubby in a heartbeat), we've had it very good for a very, very long time. For those of us born in the late '70s or early '80s who never knew the Barfield years or the nine-game streak, we've been so lucky as to never know Auburn as anything but a proven winner.
My expectation is that I'm going to remind myself of this many, many times over the next few seasons.
----------------------------------
Saturday night, my Michigan friends were trying to console me. "I'm sure weirder hires have worked out," one of them said.
I've spent at least part of every hour since trying to think of one, racking my brain for a coaching hire that made you say Huh? What on earth are they thinking? the way the announcement of Gene Chizik did, and then turned out all right.
I've failed. The two candidates from last year were Bill Stewart and Mike Sherman. Fail. The last two I can think of in the SEC were Ed Orgeron and Ron Zook. Fail. Remember when Nebraska fired Frank Solich and replaced him with Bill Callahan and we all thought they were dumb? They were. Remember when you found out, earlier this decade, that Army had hired some guy who was going to bring in a crazy West Coast passing scheme, and you thought "That'll never work?" It didn't. The closest I can come to new head coaches who were greeted with something less than wild enthusiasm and then went on to success are guys like Jim Tressel, Rich Brooks, and Les Miles, but all three of them had definitively successful head coaching stints already on their resume. Our guy, as you are aware, does not.
Tons of programs have been led astray by false optimism. If you know of one who's endured a bout of false pessimism, I'd love to be reminded of it.
----------------------------
vs.
And so a hire that should have united Auburn fans in a way we haven't been since, oh, before the 2006 Arkansas loss only divides us again.
I don't support booing coaches or players; we're there for them, not the other way 'round. Gene Chizik deserved to be greeted with the second reaction, not the first. That he is Auburn's new coach won't change the fact that I'm going to live and die with the 2009 Tigers as much as I did with Tubby's teams, won't change my desire to return to Jordan-Hare in 2009, won't change how often I wear my Auburn t-shirts around Ann Arbor.
But I can't bring myself not to speak my mind, and I can't bring myself to believe that Gene Chizik will be a good head coach at Auburn. I'm trying. I would like to, since I think the many, many Auburn fans that are claiming we need to put aside our disappointment, get behind him, show him our support, etc., have their heart in the right place. Unity sounds a lot better than division right now.
But I haven't been able to believe. I can't. Not yet.
---------------------------------
My favorite book as a kid--and one my favorite books ever, period, still--is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And so there's come a point around each of the last two Februaries, when we haven't seen the sun for months and the plowed slushpiles in the parking lots rise higher than my head and I can't even remember the last time I went outside without coat-scarf-gloves-hat, that the fantastical part of my brain worries that we've been plunged into the White Witch's endless winter, that it's just going to stay icy and miserable forever and never even be Christmas. That's the same part of my brain I tried to drown Saturday night, the part that was worrying that Auburn was about to re-enter the Barfield days and that this time, in this new SEC of Meyerses and Sabans and Richts, we'd never come out, trapped in our horrible Shreveport winters forever.
The good news is that there's a reason that part of the brain is only a small part, and that the rest knows better, knows that eventually the sun is going to come out again, that eventually we'll be able to go to the park again, spread a blanket out on the grass, and spend all afternoon only reading about make-believe witches and eternal snowfall. Eventually, I know, Auburn will hire another Pat Dye or Tommy Tuberville and we'll all ride back to New Orleans together.
---------------------------------
No, I don't believe that's where Gene Chizik will take us. What I believe is that Auburn football is in for some cold and difficult seasons, and that there will be times this fall and maybe in subsequent falls when it will seem like Auburn football will never warm us again. I hope like hell I'm wrong about that. But right now, that's what I think.
But here's what I know: that if 2008--now, without question, the worst season of Auburn football of my lifetime--and the Chizik era represent an Auburn winter, spring's going to come some day. And in the meantime, winter isn't always the way it is in Michigan--when it snows back home, it's a reason for celebration, for snowballs hidden in the freezer and days away from school and homemade ice cream. If this is Auburn's winter, it won't be quite that fun, but we will have some laughs and some little victories along the way.
And so, finally, I would say to Auburn fans: Bundle up. Prepare for the worst. But know that we'll have our day in the sun again someday, and that--who knows?--it might come sooner than any of us dare to hope.
War Eagle: today, tomorrow, winter, spring, summer, forever. War Eagle.
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.
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.
-----------------------------------
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.
------------------------------------
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.
---------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------
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.
1. It's last Friday morning, about an hour before our little motley crew is due to depart Ann Arbor for the 700-plus-mile trip to my brother's place in Birmingham, and I'm carrying my backpack, camping chairs, and a couple grocery bags' worth of chips and other assorted tailgating supplies out to my car.
Man, I think to myself. If after all this, we show up and Todd throws two first-quarter picks and Auburn loses 35-3 and we only don't walk out of J-Hare in the fourth quarter because we've gone to this kind of effort to be there, it's going to seriously suck. It could happen. We looked like 99.4 percent pure crap last weekend. This whole trip is a kind of gamble, a roll of the dice, the best shot we've got but still just a shot in the dark. Maybe not the dark. A shot in the twilight.
So it's with a low-level ripple of butterflies in the stomach that I crank my car and pull out on my way to my buddy's place, where we're meeting up. The radio automatically picks back up where I'd left it off, on track 8 of the Hold Steady's CD Stay Positive, a track also titled "Stay Positive." A few seconds go by, and the chorus blasts in:
Whoa-a-ho-ho! Who-a-ho-ho! We gotta stay positive! Whoa-a-ho-ho! Who-a-ho-ho! We gotta stay positive!
I turn it up, roll down the window, notice there is quite literally not a cloud in the sky, and remember that the alternative to this weekend is not going to watch the Auburn-LSU game at my favorite sporting venue in one of my favorite cities on Earth. And that Tommy Tuberville will be coaching my team as an underdog against the No. 6 team in the country.
Hell yeah, I'm gonna stay positive.
2. Every single summer as a kid and well into my teens, my family would make at least one trip down AL-highway 59 to Gulf Shores, where we'd spend a week or possibly just a long weekend hunting intact sand dollars and making housechore-centric wagers over games of putt-putt. But the best part of those trips was always, always spotting the little signs that you were getting close, that the beach was just a few short miles away and waiting: the Bay Minette water tower; palm or palm-like trees growing beside roadside seafood shacks; and my favorite, the driveways paved with bleached seashells instead of gravel.
So it's the little things that get the weird nostalgia/anticipation mix going as we head south, past Dayton, past Cincinnati, past Louisville and Nashville and on into the Heart of Dixie: the Chick-Fil-A logo and the still-disappointing "Closed Sunday" warning on the blue exit signs; the cardboard cut-out of Dolly Parton alongside the Dollywood display in the Tennessee Welcome Center, which prompts a few seconds of failed brainstorming in the men's room on how we might successfully steal her away with us; and of course the giant roadside rocket just after crossing over the Alabama border, so any visitors to our fair state immediately know better than to question the manhood of the residents therein.
We find our collective favorite mile marker in Louisville, though, at a bar called the Grandville Inn just off the U-of-L campus (where, the Interwebs tell us, we can find good burgers). We're waiting for a plate of jalapeno poppers when out of the kitchen pops a young woman with copious tattoos along her arms, wearing a wife-beater, black jeans, and--in the capper--a Tennessee Vols hat. (EDIT: I cannot, cannot believe I forgot to mention this the first go-round, but she was also stunningly pregnant. Like, eight months' worth. I swear.) She would be an Internet legend already if my friend--who I'll call "Dave"--had succeeded in snapping a cell-phone pic rather than fumbling around as she wrapped up her conversation with the bartender and walked out.
And even as we mocked Dave for the lost opportunity and have our cruel chuckle at Anonymous Female Vol Fan living up every inch to the nation's preconceived notions of Anonymous Female Vol Fans, the Southern SEC fan in me can't help but think: Yeaaaaaaaah, these are my people.
3. We get into Birmingham just early enough to head out with my brother to the Hoover On Tap, where it's Sweetwater 420 all around ... except for me, because I got hooked on the On Tap's "Snakebites" (1/2 Guinness, 1/2 Woodchuck) back in the day and need my nostalgia fix. (I'm lame. I know this already.) Eventually we have a round of Alabama Slammers and upon finding out three of us are from just a bit out of town, the bartender tells us a joke.
"How do you know they invented the toothbrush in Mississippi?" he says. "Because if it had been invented anywhere else, it would be the teethbrush."
I'd wager I've heard it before, but still: jokes about Mississippi, a cloud of cigarette smoke in the On Tap, a round of Southern Comfort mixed with something sweet, and of course a brother who's ready and willing to help breakdown what we can expect from Auburn the next day. It's damn good to be back.
4. Tempting as it is to tote a WAR BLOG EAGLE.com sign down to Gameday and elbow my way into the camera angle (just think of the hits! oh, the glorious traffic!), no one including me is interested in waking up that abominably early. We leave around 9:30ish, taking Highway 280 down because, well, we wouldn't be able to stop at the Chelsea Winn-Dixie for our beer and tailgating food otherwise. And seeing as how the first thing that comes to one of my friend's minds when I mention Winn-Dixie is the dog movie, this is obviously a necessary move.
We buy our burgers and sausage and Miller Lite and plastic cups and plates and Winn-Dixie-brand buns and we're set, though as a group three of us make a collective mistake when we overdo the joshing of friend No. 4 when he grabs a four-pack of the fascinatingly horrific-looking Bud Chelada. He puts it back. Nuts. That would have been entertaining, almost as much as the Tide fan in crimson Crocs and camouflage pants.
Don't think that's not to say I'm not happy to see him, though. I missed the Tide fans in crimson Crocs and camo pants, just as I missed the cashier's far-side-of-Shelby County drawl, so thick I almost hug her.
5. Unless I'm mistaken, I've never mentioned my hometown by name before on the blog. It won't matter for anyone not already familiar with East Alabama/Lake Martin geography, but it's Dadeville. I'm from Dadeville, DHS class of 1997.
So naturally we turn off the highway. We drive past the house I grew up in, past the county courthouse where I failed my first driving test, past the Piggly Wiggly and the old Hardee's (long since having suffered the same fate as the empty KFC out on 280, soon to be a Mexican joint according to the sign) and the high school, where I see they've named the band room for an old family friend who taught both my brothers and whose daughter I graduated with. Good for him.
A lot of little things like that have changed, and maybe it doesn't appear quite as vibrant, shall we say, as during the proverbial good old days. But at a glance the city still looks more-or-less the same as when I left it--not that in rural Alabama this is the least bit surprising. It's reassuring. I've come back to enjoy the same game day, the same Auburn, the same 10-9 sort of victory I enjoyed the last time I watched these two teams play in person. Change would be a bad omen.
6. As Paul Simon once sang, truly "these are the days of miracle and wonder." He was sort of being ironic, but I'm not, not with the set up we've got going at our tailgate (at the lot on Donahue next to the railroad tracks). True, it's not nearly as sweet as one of the 42-inch HDs we see scattered across the tailgating landscape on our walkabout later, but as I mentioned Friday, we do have a fancypants portable WiFi router and a buddy with a Slingbox--so we wind up watching Troy battle Ohio State over the Internet as we grill, drink, etc. Miracle and wonder indeed. (Here's some irony for you: because the Slingbox is connected to a cable box back in Ann Arbor, we're sitting smack in the heart of JP/Lincoln Financial/Raycom country and can't get the Alabama game. Not that after the halftime score we'd want to.)
As the game goes to commercial, a voice intones that "This ... is the Big Ten Network." We feel 99.9999 percent certain this is the first time those words have ever reached human ears within the city limits of Auburn, and very likely the first time in the entire history of the state of Alabama.
7. Appropriately full of beer and grease and assorted other food-like substances (Mmmmm ... Ranch Wavy Lay's), we head off for the obligatory tour of Auburn, and the tour--if you are me and you haven't stomped around the ol' stomping grounds for a couple of years--is wonderful. Toomer's. Samford Hall. Haley Center. The mandatory photo op alongside the Auburn University sign on College. There's also a quick peek at the Gameday set, where the cordoned-off area for sign-carriers that looks an acre wide on TV turns out to be no more than about 25 yards square. Huh. Squeezing in there would probably feel like going to a sold-out show at the Variety Playhouse, but with the band weirdly facing away from you the whole time.
Although outfitted with shakers so as to prevent any confusion about where their allegiances for the weekend lie, my buddies are each wearing Michigan shirts. This results in a handful of "Go Blue!-War Eagle!" cross-conference exchanges and welcomes, some (mostly) good-natured ribbing along "Hey, you guys at the wrong game!" lines, and unfortunately a couple of chants of "O-H!" in their direction, which is understandable because of the longstanding beef between Auburn fans and Michigan fans. Oh, wait. Scratch that. It's understandable because tools are going to be tools whether you're in Auburn, Ann Arbor, or anywhere else.
The majority of Auburn folks we meet are friendly, though (of course). And it could certainly be worse: as we sit down to plow through a couple of combos at the Chick-Fil-A (because they are closed on Sundays, after all, and this our Last Chance) there's a couple of LSU fans calmly eating their own meal in the restaurant. "If you're a Michigan fan in Columbus," one my friends says, "you can't do that. You just wouldn't want to." O-H!
On our way out of the Chick-Fil-A a conversation strikes up with an Auburn fan who asks why my friends would wear Michigan gear to an Auburn game. It's a fair question, but: wouldn't you wear your Auburn gear to a Michigan game? (I would. And have.)
8. On our way over to Tiger Walk we find the ESPN Radio stage, complete with Scouts, Inc.'s Todd McShay and Chris Fowler his own self:
who's definitely rocking the dressed-for-radio look. Which I can totally dig--who wants to spend their entire college football Saturday in a starched shirt and tie?
9. I've been to Tiger Walks that resembled a mob scene before, but Saturday's proves to be the mobbiest one of them all, so mobby the most I can see of the players as they go by is the very tops of their heads. I miss Tubby completely.
I couldn't care less. There's a guy in a tree with a hanged stuffed tiger (an LSU tiger, as it clearly states in marker on its side) leading cheers. There's the band. There's a thousand other screaming fans in orange t-shirts and Bo jerseys and gameday buttons. I've got my shaker going and I'm yelling Give 'em hell! and Kick 'em in the butt Big Blue! and A-U-B-U-R-N! at the tops of my lungs, and it's not an exaggeration to say that after three years away, it feels like some small puzzle piece of my soul has been pressed back into place. War Damn Eagle.
Seriously: War. Damn. Eagle. As we chant our way through "War Eagle" one more time (GO GO GO!), I'm still not ready to guarantee an Auburn victory. But I know it's not going to be an LSU blowout. It can't be. Impossible. Not today. Not after this. Glory, glory.
10. As Tiger Walk breaks up, we pass a guy wearing a t-shirt that reads "LSUCKS." That's OK. Maybe even cool if I'd had more to drink. What's not OK is that this t-shirt is purple and printed in gold letters. Dude. No one cares what the t-shirt says if it's printed in the enemy's colors. Come on.
11. After Tiger Walk breaks up we meet up with none other than the esteemed Will Collier, who's been kind enough to provide a couple of our tickets to the game. Even if I'm stuffed already, I have to help myself to a quick helping of the Colliers' bucket of Guthrie's. Outside of the likes of Applebee's and such, there's no such thing as chicken fingers in Ann Arbor, so I feel a bit like a bear readying for hibernation: I've got to stock up before the long, cold, harsh chicken-finglerless Michigan winter.
12. The sun is fading and finally, finally, it's time to start heading towards Jordan-Hare Stadium, that giant looming Christmas present I've had to wait all day to unwrap. We're probably about 50 yards from the west entrance when we fall in behind some dude in his 50s wearing an orange collared shirt and screaming weirdly at what appear to be random Auburn passersby.
"Get fired up! Fire up!" he yells at some guy who gives him an odd look and keeps moving. "We need you! We need you!"
Part of me goes: Whoa. Dude. But as I hand over my ticket, and start walking up the ramp to our seats, and feel that old anxious thump of the heart that only comes in the last few minutes before kickoff of a big Auburn game in the Loveliest Village, and walk out of the little tunnel and take in the sea of orange and the green of Pat Dye Field stretched below us, echoing with the saber-rattling noises of warm-ups and half-overrun with my heroes in navy blue, I think: This is it. He's right. Fire up, Auburn. Fire up. We're here. We've made it. Let's do this. Come on, Auburn. Come on, Tigers.
