Hello, folks! Are you all Mizzou fans? Of course you are! At least you should be this weekend, when the Missouri Tigers play for the SEC Championship against the Auburn Tigers. There are admittedly things to dislike about Mizzou--arrogant fans/alumni despite a lack of relative success, loud bandwagon fans who never even bothered to learn the last name of the first Heisman finalist the school had in half a century (Chase Daniels was beloved in spite of not really existing--there is a Te'o joke here to be had), and several more. But these factors are irrelevant because it is so much easier and more rewarding to hate Auburn. This may be difficult because Auburn beat college football's Evil Empire, the Alabama Crimson Tide, in an all-time classic game just a week ago, but it must be done. So here is your primer on way to hate Auburn.
1. Auburn destroyed their own goodwill regarding Toomer's Corner: Now, for anyone unfamiliar with the story, Alabama resident/Crimson Tide fan/honorary FLORIDA MAN Harvey Updyke became angry at the Auburn Tigers for loudly celebrating their 2010 Iron Bowl victory (the year that Cam Newton did not receive some Heisman votes, for some reason) and so rather than, I don't know, writing a sternly worded letter (Updyke couldn't have possibly had e-mail, at least since AOL stopped putting out free internet discs), he did the next best thing: He poisoned trees. As he first reported to Paul "PAWWWWWWWWL" Finebaum, Updyke used a herbicide called Spike 80DF and that, like, apparently meant the trees in Toomer's Corner, an area of the Auburn campus famous for being teepeed (there are multiple spellings acceptable for this action--if you take umbrage with the way I spelled it, consider what you're worrying about and cry yourself to sleep) after big Auburn wins.
Now, I'm not condoning Updyke's actions. Everything about the story is unabashed idiocy, and God knows I'm not one to root for Alabama. But a simple Google search about the Toomer's Corner poisoning and you will see page after page of moving eulogies, tributes, and other extremely earnest takes on the death of trees. The reality is that the Updyke story became a national fascination not because it was the single most egregious crime one could fathom but because it seemed so damn weird. It came across as a lunatic Alabama stereotype--as I mentioned before, he is an honorary FLORIDA MAN, which is a phrase for relatively petty criminals in Florida. A FLORIDA MAN isn't a mass murderer--it's a guy who gets arrested for public urination in his child's kiddie pool at 8 a.m. while guzzling a Busch Light. It's offbeat and weird and, in a way, harmless feeling. Yet Auburn has turned the death of trees into some sort of national crisis. Calm down.
2. Jay Jacobs is an insane person: First, he chased Tommy Tuberville out as coach, only to replace him with the awful, two-wins-the-previous-season Gene Chizik, who won a national championship in spite of the worst defense in recent memory to win the title because the Cam Newton-Gus Malzahn tandem was THAT lethal. But worst of all, his claim this week that a one-loss SEC team not making the title game would be un-American. Now, I don't care if you agree or disagree that a one-loss SEC team should make it to the title game, but depending on your overall conference loyalties, this guy is either a blowhard who is using absurd analogies that just so happen to side with his team, or he's making the SEC case seem like one of arrogance and bluster rather than reasoning and logic.
3. Alabama sucks: Alabama has too much of a strangehold on national titles, and if Auburn wins tomorrow, they will have a decent chance at winning another one for the state. I observed recently to a friend of mine that every single college football season that we have experienced since meeting has culminated with a team from Alabama winning it all, and this is a "since midway through my time in college" thing. Maybe Mizzou continues the obnoxious ESSEEESEE CONTROLS YOUR COLLEGE FOOTBALL ROLL DAMN TIDE attitude in some ways, but certainly less so than Auburn. Most of the SEC still hates Mizzou, just as their hate of Texas A&M required Johnny Manziel to have the college game of the century in order to win last year's Heisman. The SEC relished in watching Mizzou's struggles last season, disregarding a mammoth series of unfortunate breaks which mirrored the good breaks that Mizzou received in 2013, because they felt that it validated the conference's long-time reputation. And if Auburn beats Mizzou, it will only feed the egos of the hardcores and convince the state of Alabama that whoever wins the Iron Bowl every year should get an automatic berth in the upcoming playoff system. And the loser should get into the playoff if they're bowl eligible. And UAB and Troy should probably just round out of the field as well. *Plays song by band from Jacksonville, FL to reinforce local Alabama pride*
I would have liked a longer list, but frankly I'm tired and must rest up for tomorrow's FOOBAW. Hate on.
No comments:
Post a Comment