I honestly wasn't talking specifically about Auburn in my complaint. I was really referring to the sport as a whole.
The "rent-a-player" success at Kentucky, the one-and-done rule, the free transfer allowances, has (in my old ass opinion) reduced all of college basketball to little more than the AAU circuit albeit with so-called college ties.
We cheer for the uni. So do Kentucky fans and all the rest.
I'm not complaining that we're going to start playing by the same rules that make other programs competitive, I just don't like the direction the game has gone over the years. It's really no longer a collegiate sport -- and football isn't far behind.
We're losing what made it great in the unhealthy pursuit of wins and dollars.
Bama fans love to talk about how great Bahr Bryunt wuz and how he's the all tahm greaterest coarch ever in history. But if the rules of today existed when that grizzled bastard was coaching? They would have fired his ass in 1970. He went two straight years with losing SEC records, finished last in the league in 69 and 70 and had barely been .500 in '68. Mizzou blew them out in the Gator in 68. Lost three of the last four (including giving up 49 to Auburn) in 69. Destroyed by USC, shut out by the Vols and lost a second straight to Auburn in 1970. He was 15 years into his tenure there, had "three" national titles but all were disputed. Finished first in the SEC just twice in 15 years. Hadn't been in the top 25 in two years. Fuck you, drunk old houndstooth, you got to go!
Hell, he might have never made it to 1970. His first three teams finished no better than third in the SEC. They might have made the change then.
But things were different. They didn't. And the motherfucker cheated his ass on back to the top. The next ten years were the worst decade of my life. They won 8 SEC titles. They opened a nine-year string on us. They claimed some national titles (none really legit besides 1979, but they don't accept that). Never would have happened in today's climate.
Anyway, I'm on medicine and rambling. So there.