I was listening to the AU radio broadcast today and as part of the pregame they played a compilation of radio calls from AU games through the years. Gave me a lot to think about hearing some of that older stuff.
I've complained about how much joy Alabama sucks out of the game with their cheating, soft ass schedule and constant media fluffing they get. But as bad as it is, it doesn't reach the same level of misery Auburn fans endured in the 70s. That was a completely different time.
The current Alabama run is actually more dominant than anything that drunk cheater Bryant put together in his time. They're more consistent than they were under Bryant. The cheating is just as egregious.
One major difference, though, is that as dominant as they've been we haven't let them run away with it. We keep up in recruiting. We've beaten them on the field -- and flat out whipped their ass last season. That didn't happen in the 70s.
From the Punt Bama Punt game until I graduated from high school, I didn't have a single post-game Monday where I wasn't toting a loss -- and often a lopsided one. We went nine long years without beating them. I loved Shug Jordan. I thought he was as fine a man as we could ever have asked for. But when it came to competing with Bryant's dirty ways, he wasn't able to do it.
On top of that, there was the whole redneck racist thing going on then. Bammer was the great white hope of a the old guard who saw the Tide as validation of their Old South superiority. Yeah we had fire hoses and police dogs, murders and lunch counters. But we had the by damn Tide showin all those uppity Yankees! It was a cultural thing that went far beyond football.
That convergence let them see us as second class citizens, lesser than. That status was reinforced by that asshole Bryant who hated us and ridiculed us in public.
We lost pretty much a full generation of people who didn't have a natural, definable allegiance (family that went, etc.) to either school. They picked Bama by default.
That's changed. Even though the Bama program now is stronger than anything Bryant ever created, they aren't rebuilding that same wide base. We are competitive enough to hold serve and the societal conditions that allowed them to create that broad base appeal no longer exist.
It's not the same. As much as it sucks, it doesn't suck as bad.
Because they win, they'll still attract the assholes around the country who were big Hurricane fans in the 90s. But it won't last. Those bandwagon riders will jump on the next thing that comes along when Saban leaves and the cheating dynasty crumbles.
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