I like history, particularly the hypotheticals. Would America be America had the Japanese not bombed Pearl Harbor? Very different country before the war. What would the political landscape look like if Nixon hadn't been paranoid and there had been no Watergate?
Couple of Auburn-related ones I mull over occasionally.
In the 1950s Bahr Bryunt left Kentucky according to folklore because Adolph Rupp got a new cadillac and he got a cigarette lighter despite him leading the Wildcats to eight winning seasons and a BFHD win over top ranked Oklahoma. The fact is, however, that Bryant fled Kentucky ahead of an NCAA investigation into the football and basketball programs. Further speculation is that Bryant cooperated with the investigators in helping bring the hammer on basketball. His help did several things: 1) Established a rapport with the NCAA which later allowed him cheat without fear. Think a street snitch owned by a cop who lets him operate because he gives them dirt (real or imagined) on the rest of the criminal element. Whitey Bulger, as a prime example. 2) Focused attention on the basketball program which diverted from football and let him escape unscathed.
But what if? What if the NCAA had rejected his "help" and slammed the program with sanctions? What if his name was tarnished by that scandal? What if it had burned Rupp and he'd retired. Bryant often said he should have stayed.
Where would the college football world be if Bryant had been damaged goods and forced to remain at Kentucky or go somewhere else smaller? What if he'd been able to go to Arkansas or LSU as was his plan all along?
Had Bryant never been at Alabama I think it impacts Auburn in a couple of ways. First, it would change our internal perception. We wouldn't have that same opposite mirror against which we unconsciously compare ourselves. Second, the mass redneck conversion to Bama would not have occurred. Without that convergence of their on-field success combined with the white frustration of a world George Wallace couldn't stop from changing? Granpappy isn't a baccer-chawin Bammer. Third, I think Shug Jordan would get the sort of credit and admiration he deserves nationally.
Would we have won more games? Probably so. Would have been easier to recruit without having to deal with Bryant-imposed shackles and the rampant cheating he was allowed.
But the other side of that is that there likely is no Pat Dye to come along in 1981.
I hope that if I'm reincarnated and get to live this same life over again, that when I am born, Bryant will be tarnished due to a Kentucky scandal and never set foot in Alabama except as a visiting coach from a D2 school.
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The second historical scenario.
What if there had been no Pat Sullivan?
Shug installed the wishbone in 1969. It was his plan to bring that offense to the SEC. Then Sullivan came to Auburn and with him Beasley and Alvin Bressler. Shug looked at the talent and scrapped his plans. Went to an air-based attack, split backs etc.
What if Shug had brought that bone though? What if he'd done it two years before Bryant appropriated it and then dominated college football with it.
Would Bryant -- who was in trouble and hearing loud voices that the game had passed him by and it was time to go after back to back 6-5 seasons -- have taken the risk of copying Jordan and installing the same offense? Would he have been as successful with it? Would Auburn have been able to get say, a Steadman Shealy to run the show?
Would Bryant have been canned in 1971 when he posted a third-straight 6-5 wishbone-less season? Or would Sullivan have worn Crimson and won there? Would AU have run the bone to domination instead?
No Heisman winner perhaps. But what would have been the trade off?
Those are things that I puzzle over.
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