AUBURN’S INSPIRATIONAL LOSS: FINDING THE GOOD

“I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me.”

  Noel Devine (the precocious youngster on the left with the mouth jewelry), torched the formerly formidable Auburn defense last night for 200 yards rushing.  Here is a summary of SNL’s reaction to the the game itself, which went something like “Auburn looks pretty good….wait….not so good ,but okay…..wow, Auburn sucks.” 

Seriously, there exists little need to painstakingly detail Auburn’s lack of offensive sophistry or interrupt the reverie of the West Virginia plaudits, what few there are anyway.  For SNL, the significance of last night’s game has nothing at all to do with polls, bowls, or the respective plights of Tuberville and Uncle Stew (shown below).  Nor does Florida play Auburn, so there’s no SOS component here, at least not directly.

  SNL was therefore challenged to spin Auburn’s debacle  into something postive, a daunting prospect when you consider that Auburn’s incompetence was witnessed by a national audience, and even worse, gave SEC detractors further reason to doubt the SEC’s supremacy over the other BCS conferences. 

Ultimately, SNL was able to harness Auburn’s woeful performance into something worthy of note.  The epiphany came in the 4th quarter when Auburn, trailing by a touchdown, was at midfield with the ball and SNL was praying (literally)  for an Auburn touchdown.  Yes, Auburn, the Lex Luther to Florida’s Superman, the nemesis from the west that has ruined so many of SNL’s Saturday’s in years past.

At this precise moment, SNL realized that Auburn’s likely loss was unintentionally illustrative of a something very unique to the SEC, we care for our kin folk. Yep, like a dysfunctional family who bands together against outsiders, such as the Department of Children & Families and law enforcement, the SEC is deeply concerned with the success of all of its siblings when not busy hating one another. 

Carpet Baggers and yankees of various (and circumspect) origins will scoff at this notion while they adjust their ascots; “Left Coast” blokes will roll their eyes while they puff their hippie lettuce; and midwesterners will threaten revenge for their annual beatdowns.   But the facts are what they are and the chants of “S-E-C…S-E-C” during the last two national championships (and back-to-back basketball championships by Florida) provide evidence of this phenomenon. 

So in a strange way, SNL mourns Auburn’s loss as if it were his own today, and in an even stranger way, appreciates on a sublime level how great SEC football is. Noe let’s go kick some UK a–!

-So Sayeth the Shepherd