Why can't they accept it?

[Kaos]

Pretty good take from another board...

Yesterday, August 17th, something happened.

Alabama fans, not all Alabama fans but a very specific and select group of them, threw their last glob of mud at Jordan Hare.

There will probably be more, yes, but this after this week, and due to the proximity of the start of football season, it seems the faithful have lost faith.

They have beat their chest and screamed until hoarse that AU was damn damn damn damn damned, that the sky was falling.

Cam, Bingo, Imagine. All because they couldn't accept we did well.

In their desperation they had even recently turned to saying that Michael Dyer, victim of an injury at practice, would not play this year. They hinted that this was related to the robbery committed by four former Auburn players.

Interestingly, most of these 'scandals' was given airtime by some media outlet. Someone.

Sports By Brooks has made a pretty good name for himself by promoting himself to a recognizable degree and running with message board gossip. Brooks had made his name much bigger with the Newton stuff, so he went back to Auburn for more hits. He insinuated the hostesses at Auburn were prostitutes.

I like to think Lewis Grizzard, a fellow UGA grad and an actual journalist, would disagree with him. I'd also like to think he would write an article on him that was even less flattering than the one Melchior wrote about the Tigerettes.

I had always known that Alabama fans hated us, and honestly I wasn't too thrilled when they won the national championship in 2009, I had some choice words after Colt McCoy got knocked out in the first quarter, but then I remembered the saying I saw on an old piece of Alabama memorabilia, at an antique store my mother dragged me to sometime in my childhood,

"Grin and Bear It"

It was detailing one of Bryant's victories over Shug. A TV tray, I believe, I can't remember exactly but that stuck in my head my whole life.

I grinned and bore that 2009 championship, having stood in Jordan Hare a month earlier with joy in my heart, only to walk back to my apartment from that stadium completely heartbroken. I met with my Alabama friends the next day at a Waffle House, and, again, I did just that, I grinned and bore it.

Personally, I think that's part of being a grown up who likes football, or any sport really.

But that leads me to the most angering part of the year long slinging of mud that we endured....

That I, my dad, me, my brother and uncle, every Auburn man I ever knew, that we had all taken their garbage for so long, their gloating, their religious touting of their program, but when we, finally, officially, and against all odds, bring one home, they do everything in the world to trash it, deny it, and trash Auburn fans, the University, and the football program, all because they couldn't do something we had done for years.

Grin and bear it.

They couldn't follow their own advice.

There were grown men, adults, men in suits desperately trying to bring down a football team, using their careers to gain access to anything they could regarding us that they could use to make the success of the 2010 Auburn Tigers go away.

Every little thing was examined under a microscope. No stone was unturned, no drawer unopened.

A black football coach wears his hat backwards, and all that's talked about is his obvious gang affiliation because of it. I guess Joe Mauer is in the Crips now, too.

A journalist turned Vince McMahon also-ran, Paul Finebaum, embellishes this, nurtures this thought, while shooing off any negativity, imagined or real, towards beloved Alabama.

A shoe-in for college football's greatest and most prestigious individual award has the audacity to wear a suit to said event, so a bunch of message board posters go and make claims that his suit was an illegal benefit, that he had signed stuff for a man in Montgomery, et al.

This actually blew up in their faces, glass houses and all. But all this because they couldn't do one thing. They couldn't act like adults and they, in their heart of hearts, could not stand the success Auburn had.

They couldn't grin and bear it.

Unlike a lot of people, I actually don't want to see Alabama in NCAA trouble. I don't want their 2009 title stripped away, because I know that would hurt a lot of people. There are a lot of good people who are Alabama fans, but in my eyes, over the last 9 months, a lot of them focused on the Alabama fan part, and forgot about the good people part.

When they won in 2009, I reminded my same friends at that Waffle House that when Auburn was winning 6 consecutive games against them, from 2002-2008, that those same people swore that Auburn wasn't a big deal to them, and Tennessee was their main rival.

Trash talking is a part of the game, it's a part of life. Competitive nature is what put us in the position we're in. A position so comfortable that concern over what men do on a football field is a legitimate concern. But for some, it's too much of one.

I am guilty of that. When the Cam stuff first came out I worried and worried, I'll admit. But it's pretty clear to me where all this came from, where it originated from.

In some conferences, even in some in-state gridiron battles, they have to force rivalries. In Alabama, people make it their life. Some even name their children after aspects of their preferred teams.

Yesterday, I had to drive down Magnolia to cut across town. I hate going down that way these days, and I try to look to my right. Towards the Bodega and the Skybar, popular hangouts for students for sure, I don't really want to look that way that much but I really hate looking to the left.

Because a grown man, a grandfather, poisoned those harmless old oak trees, that had been there so long. A man's bitterness towards a fanbase turned to entitlement to destroying a landmark. A man who counted Paul Bear Bryant as his idol throughout his whole life. It brings me back to that old piece of junk baring (no pun intended) his likeness at the antique store.

Why can't we all just grin and bear it?

[Saniflush]

Well done.

[Kaos]

It's been a pretty awful week for the Plains Burning crowd. 

Bingo went bust.
"10" was about Miami (and the investigators were there and in Louisiana researching THAT story, not AU)
Sheridan lays a turd. 

All the dreams are gone.  All they have left is the "Colonial Bank collapse, Lowder subpoenas, gonna find something there...." fantasy. 

Fun week.  Fuck all those assholes. 

Never might be a mighty long time, but it's critical that we all NEVER forget how this was handled.  Lessons to be learned. 

[The Six]

I can say with confidence that it will be a long time from now before there is a "gracious winner" of the Iron Bowl. I fully expect a building to be burned at Auburn this year win or lose. 

[No Huddle]

You have one Alabama fan that is not a dummy. I be rat her.