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.

 

[81usaf92]

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

I think that is a core problem with many things involving Auburn from an Alabama perspective. I mean let’s be real… in 2005 the same exact scenario that Auburn faced in 2004 was happening to us in 2005. Let’s just pretend that Alabama beats LSU, Auburn, and Georgia. Do you think Alabama fans would not raise absolute hell for nearly two decades about being left out of the NC game because of USC. I mean good god we still have people raising hell about 22 and 24 when we were left out of a playoff.

My point is this was Ohio St doing this then no one would care. But simply because it is Auburn everyone wants to make a big deal about it.

Personally I go by how many NCs i have seen… which is 7. That’s more than most other fans of other teams could say that they have. So honestly I really don’t care who wants to retroactively count poll era and pre poll era championships as long as there is some semblance of defense to them. But then again it’s really odd that most of the guys that played on these championship teams died not ever knowing that they were national champions.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

I think that is a core problem with many things involving Auburn from an Alabama perspective. I mean let’s be real… in 2005 the same exact scenario that Auburn faced in 2004 was happening to us in 2005. Let’s just pretend that Alabama beats LSU, Auburn, and Georgia. Do you think Alabama fans would not raise absolute hell for nearly two decades about being left out of the NC game because of USC. I mean good god we still have people raising hell about 22 and 24 when we were left out of a playoff.

Of course.

And yet I had a very well-known member of this board insist with a straight face on posts that Alabama fans would have been accepting of that fact....but only when dissing Auburn the previous year. (Don't anyone ask, I'm not giving names).

My point is this was Ohio St doing this then no one would care. But simply because it is Auburn everyone wants to make a big deal about it.

But again, what makes it stupid isn't the RETROACTIVE aspect of it - although you're correct that would still be criticized. It's the fact they're claiming titles they spent decades whining about losing. It's like saying when a 25-year marriage breaks up, "well, technically, I was never married so I'm not divorced, either."

Personally I go by how many NCs i have seen… which is 7. That’s more than most other fans of other teams could say that they have. So honestly I really don’t care who wants to retroactively count poll era and pre poll era championships as long as there is some semblance of defense to them. But then again it’s really odd that most of the guys that played on these championship teams died not ever knowing that they were national champions.

I'm fine with this. Alabama won national championships my first two years as a college football fan, but that isn't why I became a Tide fan (it - literally - started with an insult on the school bus in fourth grade). Alabama basically won their first 28 games I was a fan, so you can probably imagine the jolt to my 11-year-old psyche when MSU of all teams beat us in 1980, but I digress.

I talk on here all the time about my Oregon bud, but he's REALLY from northern Washington and been a Huskies fan since his childhood in the 60s as well a Notre Dame fan. That's one of the things that's kinda hard to comprehend NOW: many of the Notre Dame fans "became" fans because they were Irish people and in many cases Catholic (his family was, he's not religious at all), the people who adored both JFK and Reagan because of their ancestry.

He's just so happy "with our one title" (in 1991) that it makes it easy. As he pointed out, most fans don't ever get to experience a national championship, so he'll be happy with his one. He does recall vividly the Irish winning in 1973, 1977, and 1988, the last by far the most satisfying after the downhill slide of the Gerry Faust years.

I know I've said this but IN MY OPINION judging "number of national titles won" has to start with some agreed upon rules before the discussion can even occur.

Any national title prior to 1936 is immediately suspect and most likely retroactive
Titles prior to 1951 showed the propensity of the AP poll to bias the outcome towards the Midwest
Titles prior to 1968 (except 1965) were prior to bowl games (and still UPI through 1973)
Titles prior to 1976 were slanted in favor the lack of scholarship restrictions
Titles prior to 1998 rarely involved a head-to-head championship game (1986, 1988, 1992, 1995)
Titles prior to 2014 might be questionable because the right team might have been left out

Thing is.....except for the first criterion listed above, Alabama beats every team every which way regardless. YES, Yale and Princeton have "national titles" back when there were 5 teams playing in local geographical areas and the game was more like rugby than modern football. It's like those .400 hitters in baseball prior to 1900. Sure, back when it took 8 balls for a walk, the pitches were underhand, the mound was 45 feet away AND THE BATTER COULD REQUEST THE PITCH. That's hardly the same as Tony Gwynn.

Same - in my opinion - with the MNC discussion.

 

[arthurdawg]

Sadly it disappeared in the weave of the web rot, but there used to be a site called the College Football Data Warehouse that had every single selector catalogued. They had a logical method to distinguish minor and major selectors and a pretty rational approach to assigning championships.

1941 was definitely a minor one. They also described each selector and in this case how the Houlgate award was started and who was responsible for it.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Sadly it disappeared in the weave of the web rot, but there used to be a site called the College Football Data Warehouse that had every single selector catalogued. They had a logical method to distinguish minor and major selectors and a pretty rational approach to assigning championships.

1941 was definitely a minor one. They also described each selector and in this case how the Houlgate award was started and who was responsible for it.

Boy are we going back to the early days of the "internet" with that one!

It used to be in my bookmarks.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

It is not so far fetched to look back and say, hey we are going to recognize those teams from the pre-AP era that clearly would have gotten serious consideration had such a poll existed.

It's sort of the same, but I understand the nuance, too.

Auburn wants to act like, "well, we didn't do anything that Alabama didn't do," but the problem is that they absolutely did.

We didn't spend years whining about getting screwed in 1966 and 1977 AND THEN suddenly decide to "recognize" them as champions. It's embarrassing. If they had one ounce of shame, it would be even more embarrassing than "let's recognize 1941." But at least we actually DID win the Houlgate in 1941, we didn't bombard the press with "we got hosed!"

 

[TideEngineer08]

It's sort of the same, but I understand the nuance, too.

Auburn wants to act like, "well, we didn't do anything that Alabama didn't do," but the problem is that they absolutely did.

We didn't spend years whining about getting screwed in 1966 and 1977 AND THEN suddenly decide to "recognize" them as champions. It's embarrassing. If they had one ounce of shame, it would be even more embarrassing than "let's recognize 1941." But at least we actually DID win the Houlgate in 1941, we didn't bombard the press with "we got hosed!"

I agree with you that what we did in the 1980s is completely different than what AU has done today. I realize no AU fan would agree with that.

I do regret the University ever recognized 1941. I don't know why they couldn't have been satisfied with 1925, 1926, 1930, and 1934. Those carried the weight of Rose Bowl wins over heavily favored western teams, which established the south as a legit college football region, and Alabama as a respected power in the sport. (I realize 1926 was actually a tie, just saying).

Auburn cannot point to their "recognized titles" and give them the same level of merit.

 

[DzynKingRTR]

I agree with you that what we did in the 1980s is completely different than what AU has done today. I realize no AU fan would agree with that.

I do regret the University ever recognized 1941. I don't know why they couldn't have been satisfied with 1925, 1926, 1930, and 1934. Those carried the weight of Rose Bowl wins over heavily favored western teams, which established the south as a legit college football region, and Alabama as a respected power in the sport. (I realize 1926 was actually a tie, just saying).

Auburn cannot point to their "recognized titles" and give them the same level of merit.

1941 is just weird. I don't understand it at all. If you are going to claim one in the 40's at least claim 1945. I guess since Army won it in 45 we can't and it would be unpatriotic. Frankly I always thought it was rigged that Army won it in 1945. Like the Patriots winning the Super Bowl after 911 and The Aints winning it after Katrina. Too coincidental for my taste.

 

[TideEngineer08]

1941 is just weird. I don't understand it at all. If you are going to claim one in the 40's at least claim 1945. I guess since Army won it in 45 we can't and it would be unpatriotic. Frankly I always thought it was rigged that Army won it in 1945. Like the Patriots winning the Super Bowl after 911 and The Aints winning it after Katrina. Too coincidental for my taste.

Well Army had a massive talent advantage because America's best had been drafted or enlisted. So that was part of it. They were truly great in those days. And yes, it's true that claiming 1945 would have been bad form, despite how good that 45 team was. That was probably Frank Thomas's best team. The led the nation in total defense and were second to Army in total offense.

So perhaps the AP was rigged in the sense they were going to give it to Army regardless if they went undefeated, but they did outscore their opponents 412-46 (Alabama outscored theirs 430-80 while playing one extra game). Alabama vs. Army would have probably been a great game that year.