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warrrreagl · 05-01-2003, 10:47 AM

Auburn-Alabama.

It's impossible to understand the tension unless you've had to live through it. This is something I found on a message board last year that comes close to explaining it, and the dates fit my age about right.

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Let me tell you something about hating Alabama. It has nothing to do with envying them. It has to do, for so many of us, with being treated like we're somehow lesser citizens of the state of Alabama or, worse, lesser human beings because of the accomplishments of their football team.

I grew up in the 1970s in an area of Alabama -- the upper half of Sand Mountain -- where very few people went to college. A lot of people there are farmers. If not themselves, then they have a farmer in their families. But my parents went to college. They went to Auburn. And they took my brother and me there for football games and basketball games. It was a special place to us, where we forged memories with our parents, their friends and our friends. My brother and I later went to school there, and my brother even played basketball there.

But my family was treated -- particularly by those who didn't even know UA was in Tuscaloosa, let alone have intentions of ever going there -- as if we were of a lower social status because we were connected to Auburn, "the farm school."

I could tell story after story after story, but I'll give you only a few. Like every year from about third grade to sixth grade, on the Monday after the Iron Bowl, when kids waited on me at the front door of our school with red-and-white shakers and then led me to our classroom, where everyone else stood and gave me a big "Roll Tide." Or when, after one of those years we lost yet again, and my brother "dared" to wear his Auburn coat to school, some of his classmates wrestled it off him and stomped it in a garbage can. And then there are the high-school idiots who weren't going to let me off a school bus when I was 8 or 9 years old unless I agreed to lead the bus in a "Roll Tide." I could go on for days.

So, as you can imagine, when I was younger, winning the Iron Bowl left me with a sense of relief more than it did a feeling of joy. It was knowing that, at least for a year, you didn't have to hear every redneck under the sun make a comment every time you dared to wear an Auburn shirt or an Auburn cap or watch an Auburn game.

That's why I can remember the '82 game (Bo Jackson) as if it were yesterday. Such a sense of relief followed that I had yet to experience. I had prepared myself for that day for years. Finally, I was going to get to go to church the next day and to school the following Monday and not hear a single word about the Iron Bowl. I never said one word to anyone about the game that year. I never said anything the next year, either. But, of course, after the '84 game, things were back to the usual -- phone call after phone call of "Roll Tide," people driving by the house and honking their horns and the usual onslaught at school.

It was precisely that '82 game, I believe, that took the rivalry to a new level, though. What did Auburn have the gall to do? We had the gall to take away from the one thing the masses of the state of Alabama could use to try to shake off the poor image the state had since the early 1960s, thanks to poverty and civil rights issues, and shake a collective fist at the rest of the country: Bear Bryant's football teams. We started winning, including wins over Alabama, and they couldn't stand it. It was as if we were betraying the state by daring to field a competitive football team again of our own. (How many times has my family heard "But it's your state!" when someone learned we are not Alabama fans but Auburn fans?)

I don't envy Alabama. Never have; never will. That's because Auburn is more to me than a football program. Our athletic teams' goal is to win national championships, but Auburn is ultimately about so many more things -- about shared experience with a group of people, of which athletic events are only a part. Is Alabama more than that to them?

And I think that's what frustrates Alabama so badly. No matter how many times they parade the seven, eight, nine or 12 national championships in front of us, it doesn't make us love Auburn less and secretly wish we were connected to Alabama. If anything, it makes us scratch our heads and wonder who it really is that has the insecurity problem. Is it Auburn -- or is the group that seems so desperately to want to have their alleged superiority, resulting from a game on a football field, validated?

If anyone should be called arrogant, it's Auburn people. That's because we know that the adversity we've faced and the experience and pride we share makes us better people. To quote the creed, I believe in Auburn and love it. And they'll never come close to having what I have, no matter how many football championships they collect.

05-01-2003, 10:47 AM	#30 (permalink)
warrrreagl pinche vato Location: backwater, Third World, land of cotton	Auburn-Alabama. It's impossible to understand the tension unless you've had to live through it. This is something I found on a message board last year that comes close to explaining it, and the dates fit my age about right. ---------------------------------- Let me tell you something about hating Alabama. It has nothing to do with envying them. It has to do, for so many of us, with being treated like we're somehow lesser citizens of the state of Alabama or, worse, lesser human beings because of the accomplishments of their football team. I grew up in the 1970s in an area of Alabama -- the upper half of Sand Mountain -- where very few people went to college. A lot of people there are farmers. If not themselves, then they have a farmer in their families. But my parents went to college. They went to Auburn. And they took my brother and me there for football games and basketball games. It was a special place to us, where we forged memories with our parents, their friends and our friends. My brother and I later went to school there, and my brother even played basketball there. But my family was treated -- particularly by those who didn't even know UA was in Tuscaloosa, let alone have intentions of ever going there -- as if we were of a lower social status because we were connected to Auburn, "the farm school." I could tell story after story after story, but I'll give you only a few. Like every year from about third grade to sixth grade, on the Monday after the Iron Bowl, when kids waited on me at the front door of our school with red-and-white shakers and then led me to our classroom, where everyone else stood and gave me a big "Roll Tide." Or when, after one of those years we lost yet again, and my brother "dared" to wear his Auburn coat to school, some of his classmates wrestled it off him and stomped it in a garbage can. And then there are the high-school idiots who weren't going to let me off a school bus when I was 8 or 9 years old unless I agreed to lead the bus in a "Roll Tide." I could go on for days. So, as you can imagine, when I was younger, winning the Iron Bowl left me with a sense of relief more than it did a feeling of joy. It was knowing that, at least for a year, you didn't have to hear every redneck under the sun make a comment every time you dared to wear an Auburn shirt or an Auburn cap or watch an Auburn game. That's why I can remember the '82 game (Bo Jackson) as if it were yesterday. Such a sense of relief followed that I had yet to experience. I had prepared myself for that day for years. Finally, I was going to get to go to church the next day and to school the following Monday and not hear a single word about the Iron Bowl. I never said one word to anyone about the game that year. I never said anything the next year, either. But, of course, after the '84 game, things were back to the usual -- phone call after phone call of "Roll Tide," people driving by the house and honking their horns and the usual onslaught at school. It was precisely that '82 game, I believe, that took the rivalry to a new level, though. What did Auburn have the gall to do? We had the gall to take away from the one thing the masses of the state of Alabama could use to try to shake off the poor image the state had since the early 1960s, thanks to poverty and civil rights issues, and shake a collective fist at the rest of the country: Bear Bryant's football teams. We started winning, including wins over Alabama, and they couldn't stand it. It was as if we were betraying the state by daring to field a competitive football team again of our own. (How many times has my family heard "But it's your state!" when someone learned we are not Alabama fans but Auburn fans?) I don't envy Alabama. Never have; never will. That's because Auburn is more to me than a football program. Our athletic teams' goal is to win national championships, but Auburn is ultimately about so many more things -- about shared experience with a group of people, of which athletic events are only a part. Is Alabama more than that to them? And I think that's what frustrates Alabama so badly. No matter how many times they parade the seven, eight, nine or 12 national championships in front of us, it doesn't make us love Auburn less and secretly wish we were connected to Alabama. If anything, it makes us scratch our heads and wonder who it really is that has the insecurity problem. Is it Auburn -- or is the group that seems so desperately to want to have their alleged superiority, resulting from a game on a football field, validated? If anyone should be called arrogant, it's Auburn people. That's because we know that the adversity we've faced and the experience and pride we share makes us better people. To quote the creed, I believe in Auburn and love it. And they'll never come close to having what I have, no matter how many football championships they collect. __________________ Living is easy with eyes closed.