Auburn: The Barn shatters the CRINGE meter

[BigAlinKnoxville]

I made this after they lost the NC game to FSU.

 

[arthurdawg]

I've never thought this was a good argument, either.

Oklahoma won back-to-back national championships on probation in 1974-75, the first year included a bowl ban. And while they didn't win any of the "recognized" national championships in 1984, Florida was deemed national champion that year by 21 of 47 selection bodies (more than BYU) and missed their bowl game because probation was imminent.

"Teams on probation get ranked" has always been the norm in the AP poll, to the point the voters (once it was formalized) had to do assent to doing it. The UPI (coaches) poll didn't allow teams with bowl bans to be ranked.

The only problem with that is that presumably you won the title because you are... Cheating to win the title?

I'm hard pressed to award a title when you didn't have to play a tough opponent in the SEC game or bowl game, like Auburn in 1993.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

The only problem with that is that presumably you won the title because you are... Cheating to win the title?

I doubt any Alabama fan would care at all about "that team was on probation" if it didn't involve Auburn.

When Oklahoma won the back-to-back titles 50 years ago, they were socked by the BIG EIGHT CONFERENCE for altering the transcripts of two high school players in Corpus Christi, Kerry Jackson and Mike Phillipps. Since neither of those guys played for Oklahoma in their title years, I'm not sure how this constitutes "cheating to win the title." And in "this could only happen in college football," the coach at the time (Chuck Fairbanks) got away scot-free and became the head coach of the Patriots, the two players were ruled ineligible, and the players who did nothing wrong missed two bowl games. Strangely, this case is what caused Barry Switzer to become the OU coach. The coach guilty of the misdeed (assistant Bill Michael) vanished from college ball for four years and then had a 24-year career in college football as a coach.

And get this: the rule that forbid the UPI from ranking teams on probation was EXPLICITLY CREATED FOR THIS ONE SITUATION. It was never the rule previously. OU was sanctioned in August 1973 and all of a sudden this became a new rule in January 1974, kinda like when baseball decided Pete Rose couldn't be on the ballot just four months before he was gonna, you know, be on the ballot - and then insisted with a straight face, "This has nothing to do with Pete Rose."

BTW - what do most folks know about Auburn in 1957 beyond "they were on probation?" Do they even know the details? Auburn was put on probation in May 1956 because (allegedly) Auburn assistant Hal Herring paid a pair of twins from Gadsden $500 to come to Auburn. The father - can you believe this? - a church minister returned the money the next week, and the SEC fined Auburn $2K for it. But of course this is just the instance for which they were caught red-handed. They were caught in another instance providing benefits to a superstar named Don Fuell, so their probation wound up lasting about five years.

Coach Bryant was head of Texas A/M when they got caught buying players in the same time frame as Auburn. And you have to remember, the NCAA only became the enforcement arm in 1952 and was making it up as they went, trying to "clean up the game." Of course, he was no doubt turned in by other schools who themselves were paying players, and it was a dirty free-for-all back then.

Probation in 1957 was hardly the same as probation in, say, 1988, when Kentucky got clobbered, at least not in most cases. Consider Fuell - he didn't even play at Auburn despite the alleged benefits, so what exactly did they gain?

Here's the funny part: nobody cares if a player was paid unless the team actually wins something. If you have a bought and paid for offensive line and go 3-9, nobody gives a damn. It's just a sour grapes after-the-fact whine if that team wins.

Put another way, if Auburn had gone 7-7 with Cam Newton, nobody would have cared one way or the other.

 

[TideEngineer08]

Selma, I actually had never heard the details of Auburn's 1957 probation. What a joke. More reason to hate the ncaa (even if it was against the barn).

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Selma, I actually had never heard the details of Auburn's 1957 probation. What a joke. More reason to hate the ncaa (even if it was against the barn).

Most probations in the early days were so far over the top they weren't even funny. I'll defend Auburn on THAT front.

On the other hand, they're were caught with their hands in the cookie jar with Eric Ramsey and went out and hired Gene Jelks to make up charges that got us in the line of sight for two decades, which I do not forgive.