Having graduated from Auburn 41 years ago, I have the vantage of seeing things from a fairly broad view. (Which is just another way of saying I'm old as hell.)
Today's news out of T-Town is the greatest compliment Auburn has ever been paid during all my years of watching and caring. Because of their own ineptness, Bama has managed to marginalize their place in the hirarchy of major college football. While they've beat their chest and screamed about how they have one of the top coaching jobs in the country and repeatedly yelled about their vaunted tradition, the rest of the country has ignored their rantings and looked at what they've done on the football field.
And of course, he's dead-on. After all the blown smoke clears, all the UAT "brain trust" has done today is overpay by about double for a football coach. At long last, it's a tacit admission that all the blather about "tradishun" and "class" and every other tired cliche spouted out of Turdistan hasn't added up to a hill of beans on the football field over the last quarter century.
As Ivan Maisel notes this evening, going out and bribing a coach out of the NFL is a classic desperation ploy. It's an admission that the Alabama job just isn't attractive to anybody who values his job security or sanity. In the end, they had to go for this crazy Hail Mary because it's all they've got left. They've tried everything else. And they've done it because being cemented in the wake of a successful Auburn is driving them completely crazy.
The Saban contract is a monstrosity that will do a lot of damage to college football (there's already been talk of revoking the tax exemption for college athletics, and these ridiculous numbers will fuel that particular fire), but it is also at its most basic level a sincere and fundamental compliment to Auburn University.
This is the crimson polyester set's weird and wacky last effort to get out from under the Thumb. No more. No less.
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