I apologize for not being around yesterday and Monday. It's Iron Bowl week and I am ashamed of my performance.
This came into my inbox earlier this week. Since last year a few people who were on Wilbur's forwarding list seemed to not handle the pregame talk very well, I decided to post it on here.
Here are the Top 10 reasons we love Aubarn
10. Sociology majors. Earlier this year, the New York Times did an investigation and uncovered that aubarn was giving football players 'reading assisted' courses, in an effort to keep them eligible. All schools offer 'independent courses', but to serve in the place of electives, and usually to students that have already met their core requirements. Where aubarn was different, was that they were allowing football players to substitute these 'crip' courses for CORE REQUIREMENTS! Under their system, a barner football player could literally get a free degree. And while the NYT just uncovered this scheme, you have to wonder how long this has been going on down on the plains, since both Brent Fullwood and James Brooks 'graduated' from aubarn in the 80s, then later revealed that they were both ILLITERATE!
9. After Tubby uses the 1999 FSU game as a recruiting tool in 1999 (one recruit told Rivals that Tubby sold him on the idea of returning the opening kickoff against FSU), aubarn announces (after signing day) that they will BUY-OUT the game rather than play FSU. Auburn substitutes Appalachian St on their schedule. Wingnut claimed he had no idea that Auburn would buy out the FSU game at the time. Then several weeks later, Tuberville admits that he not only knew about the buyout, but that it was HIS IDEA!
8. Trees N Walkin'. Aubarn's 2 biggest traditions, the ones that they will defend to their death, is throwing toilet paper in THEIR OWN TREES, and players walking past fans. I'm not sure what's funnier, the fact that the barners are so backwards that they willingly trash their own campus and call it 'tradition', or that they think they invented the incredibly common occurrence of players walking past fans, which almost every school does, and which the barners are thought to have copied from North Carolina. But for a school with so little tradition, I guess you have to invent what you don't have.
7. In 2004, aubarn finally got their sixth SEC title to move them ahead ofGa Tech in the all-time SEC standings. The punchline? Ga Tech hasn't been amember of the SEC for FOUR DECADES.
6. The meltdown in 2001. So many times, Tubby is his own worst enemy. Suchwas the case in 2001. After a strong 6-1 start and huge win over Florida to start the season, Tubby responded by falling apart. First, against Arkansas,the barners were literally run off the field, as the pigs beat them by 25.The loss was home to 2 classic barner moments, first the shot of Tubby shooting refs the bird, then of big-money booster Jimmy Rane coming down to the sidelines and cussing Tubby out. Both magic moments caught on TV for all to see. Tubby would rebound the next week for a big win over Georgia. But even in victory, Tubby makes a fool out of himself, in the post-game press conference, Tubby mocked Georgia's Mark Richt for letting the clock run out with Georgia inside aubarn's 5 yard line and about to score to tie the game, stating that Richt needed to 'learn how to coach in the SEC'. A statement that would later come back to haunt him. Then next week, 7-2 aubarn headed to Opelika for the Iron Bowl. During the week, there were rumors that BamaQB Tyler Watts might not be able to play, due to a groin injury. Tubby said this was all Iron-Bowl propaganda, and that Watts was ready to go, and thusly, the 'great coach' Tubby devised a gameplan built around stopping the running Watts. Tubby arrived at the stadium for the game, and got off the bus and uttered the immortal line to a reporter that 'We won't run up thescore on them, it wouldn't be good for the rivalry". Tubby was right, he wouldn't. When the coaching master took the field, he found out that his carefully devised gameplan to stop the running Tyler Watts, was totally useless, as the passing Andrew Zow took the field, and promptly torched aubarn's secondary all day long, leading Bama to roll over the barners 31-7,the most lopsided loss in the series in a quarter century. The game was so out of hand that the CBS announcers wondered on-air why the barner fans were already leaving the stadium just minutes into the second half. And yet, the embarrassment for the barners in 2001 was NOT over! The following week aubarn went to Baton Rogue to play the Whos. The barners had another classic barner moment, by running to midfield BEFORE the gamestarted and stomping on the Tiger's Eye logo. The result? Aubarn received the rarity of getting a personal foul penalty BEFORE THE GAME STARTED! So with aubarn clearly distracted, and with LSU being able to kickoff from midfield, Saban executed a perfect ONSIDES KICK to give LSU the ball! Tubby had been made a complete fool out of, and was FURIOUS on the sidelines.But…you guessed, the best(worst was yet to come). When the barners went to halftime, they were obviously still embarrassed over the first half. So the team decided to leave the field and show how tough they were, by running through the LSU band. The cameras caught this show of 'manhood', and particularly caught barner punter Damon Duval attempt to shove to the ground a FEMALE LSU band member. Duval shoved her repeatedly, which totally shocked the girl, who never saw him coming. But the FEMALE bandmember quicklyc =ollected herself and ran after Duval and started BEATING HIM UP WITH HERINSTRUMENT! The panicked Duval quickly RAN AWAY FROM HER, stopping at the entrance of the barner lockerroom to wave his arms as if he had 'won' thefight with the FEMALE bandmember. He hadn't, and neither did aubarn, losingA GAIN, to fall to 7-4. They would lose the next game as well, to finish astellar 7-5, after starting 6-1.
5. barners talk themselves out of Wesley Britt. In early 2000, All-AmericanWesley Britt was still a high school student, and considering several schools, including Alabama, and aubarn, which was thought to be his leader.Well the weekend of Britt's official visit to Opelika came, and by Sunday, anxious barner fans were awaiting word on how the visit had gone. Then, for a reason that still hasn't been explained, an aubarn poster on an AOL TeamClub aubarn board (private password-protected for barner fans), stated thatBritt hated his visit to aubarn, and said the school sucked. Well you can imagine what happened next, within hours, the barners were hurling all manner of insults at Britt, and his entire family.Which is what Britt's MOM saw when she logged onto the board to read the chatter. Now seeing the barners insult her son over his comments about his aubarn visit would have been bad enough, but there was one problem. Wesleydid NOT go to aubarn that weekend, and instead cancelled at the last minute.So the barners literally talked themselves out of Britt, and he instead went to Alabama.
4. Fear da dumb. Another classic barner moment. After beating Bama in the2005 Iron Bowl, aubarn's 4th straight victory, Tubby shows up in Orlando forthe barners bowl game against Wisconsin wearing a 'Fear the Thumb' teeshirt. Knowing he was appealing to the lowest common-denominator (ie, thebarner fanbase), the barners on the net went wild over the shirt, and adopted the slogan. Of course the barners then went out and promptly got runoff the field against Wisconsin in the Cap One Bowl, dropping their recordto 9-3 and out of the Top 10. The ultimate irony was that Bama won theCotton Bowl, then moving them to #8, and giving them a better record than aubarn. The barner collapse in the bowl, coupled with aubarn's embarrassing practice of giving football players 'reading assisted' courses to keep themeligible, caused Bama fans to change the slogan into the more appropriate'Fear the Dumb'.
3. Alot of schools have had brushes with the NCAA. However, Auburn is truly in a class by themselves, when it comes to breaking the rules. Auburn is currently tied with being the most penalized team in history, and even theirtennis and golf teams were put on probation...AT THE SAME TIME!!! Auburn cheated at TENNIS AND GOLF!!! Over the last 5 decades, at least one of aubarn's sports programs has been on probation. Fittingly, the first instance the NCAA records of barner cheating is in 1957 when the barners'won' their first and only NC by cheating. Completely appropriate. In 2004,the barners took cheating to an entirely new level, by seeing the NCAA put the school on probation for cheating in basketball, while SACS put the school on ACADEMIC probation! The reason? Because SACS felt that football boosters had too much influence over the program! Who turned them in? A group consisting of FACULTY, STUDENTS, and ALUMNI! That's right, the barner academic cheating was so bad that their own instructors, students and alumni turned them in! A last-minute flight to Atlanta by Gov. Bob Riley is credited with saving the barners, which were facing the loss of all federal funding, which would have effectively CLOSED THE SCHOOL DOWN. And yes, the barners are EASILY the most penalized football program in SEC history. Givet he barners credit, they have definitely found something they are the best at, cheating.
2. What do Camp Greenleaf, CENTRE HIGH SCHOOL, Davidson, George Washington,Georgia Navy Pre-Flight, Manhattan, Marquette, Maxwell Field, Memphis, Rice,Santa Clara, Southeastern Louisiana, Sewanee, and SMU have in common? aubarnhas an ALL-TIME LOSING record against each of these teams. I'm not sure which is worse, Centre High School or SMU? I guess that was before you could buy teams out of games.
1. The 'Peoples' Champions for 2004. If there was EVER a year that perfectly encapsulated what it truly means to be a barner, it was 2004. First, aubarn has a perfect season in 2004, their one and only 13-0 season. But by November, it was obvious that aubarn wouldn't be playing for the BCS championship. So a 'fan' started a website to award 'The People's National Championship'. Of course the barners instantly fell in love with this idea, and went all across the internet encouraging fans to vote on the 'real' NC, and then screamed with glee when aubarn did indeed pull out to the early lead in the poll. The barners offered this as 'proof' that aubarn was the'real' NC. Then, you guessed it, it was discovered that the kid behind the website to determine 'The People's National Champion' wasn't simply a 'concerned fan' , but instead was an OPELIKA HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT. Shocking. But votingc ontinued merrily along. The site clearly stated that voting would continue until Jan 6th, 2005. aubarn enjoyed a sizeable lead in this poll, but thenwhen they barely beat Va Tech in the Sugar Bowl, their lead began to shrink a bit over USC. Then on Jan. 4th, USC ran all over Oklahoma, to cruise to a win in the Orange Bowl.And the next day, all hell broke loose. After seeing USC cruise in theOrange Bowl, it was fairly obvious to all that USC was the best team in the country. So
fanspoll.com, which was hosting the PNC voting, receiving a groundswell of votes for the Trojans, and you guessed it, USC pulled AHEAD of aubarn to win the first-ever PNC! Not so fast…When fans went back to the site on the Jan. 6th deadline to see that USC was proclaimed the first ever People's National Champion, they INSTEAD found that aubarn had won the poll! Huh?!? Then came the answer, the site had been CHANGED to state that voting ended on JANUARY 5! That's right! When the voting came in after the Orange Bowl to put USC over the top, the barner simply rolled back the deadline by a day, claimed all the votes for USC on Jan. 5th were 'invalid', and gave the first ever PNC to aubarn! That's right! The barners not only literally INVENTED their own NC when they couldn't win a real one, they then CHEATED by RIGGING THE POLL SO THAT aubarn COULD WIN! Again, how totally appropriate. And yes, Tubby held a ceremony and PROUDLY accepted the first-ever Barner National Championship! If there's an episode that more perfectly encapsulates how embarrassinglysad the barner nation is, I haven't heard it.
Roll Tide Bitches
C Montgomery
