Black Friday Gameday and fAU Open Thread

Happy Black Friday, which sounds a lot more metal than it is! We have a full slate of games today, many of the rivalry variety. So, use this to chime in on those.

Now on to what I assume will be salty language. That’s fine. Go nuts (within reason,) kids:

We’re also going to use this space to sound out why we hate Auburn. I know for people in the state, and certainly younger fans, Auburn is the rivalry that defines the season. For the older, more historical bent, or certainly those in surrounding states, it’s largely been Tennessee. Now that Alabama doesn’t get the chance to wallop the Vols twice, we just have to settle for a drubbing of the West Georgia Tigers.

I’m not going to tell you the myriad reasons why I personally, or why you, should disdain the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. For me, however, it is not hate, rather it is disdain: It is the dog poop on your new shoes and dragged in on freshly cleaned carpets; it is the last girl scout cookie that you drop on the floor; it’s your elderly mom’s bed-stealing three-legged cat that’s mean as Satan but she coddles it and calls it Missus Butterrumps; it’s your roommate that steals your last cigarette, tries to sleep with your girlfriend, and leaves floaters in the Family Reading Room; it’s the scriptural-based weight loss supplement huckster on late night television with one hand in the till and another hand trying to reach up your aunt’s skirt.

Disdain. Beneath contempt. No, Auburn is not a hated sister institution of the SEC; it is a penny ante, small-town, small-minded, corrupt petit fief — a Human Centipede of manifest graft, kickbacks, and tree farming hicks, sniffing small-time timber money and regional banking cash from one end, and shitting out platitudes, half-baked theology, and county administrators from the other.

It is every something we put up with when we have no need or meaningful reason to do so.

Besides spite, the only thing drawing breath into this decaying flesh is that day when the SEC adds two more members. On that day, I - and everyone of decent standards - will demand that Auburn be moved to the East, to crop up on the schedule once every six years. The East is where their natural rivals lie, and where their culture (conveniently thimble-sized) is a natural fit. It is a place where some people can sell out out Auburn’s biannual season tickets, but that place will not be the University of Alabama. It is a land where one game can be circled on the calendar and commemorated for decades, but that land shall not include Alabama. And Auburn can go back to being what Auburn was for 40+ years: a queasy smear of land grant ineptitude, in a bygone corner of the state not claimed by Georgia and not wanted by Alabama, best left ignored until absolutely necessary.

fAU.