Posted by FRT on Nov 17, 2004 in
Uncategorized Here is another column I got from last year, and it tells of a similar story to Van Pelt’s. The difference is that I was present at the Tiger Walk Mr. Maisel is writing about. What a day. It was 15 years ago this Saturday…
I have never covered a riot. I have never covered the police beat. The mayhem I witness is contained between the white lines.
I have covered the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Finals and the Final Four. I have covered the Olympics, Summer and Winter; the Opens, U.S. and British; the Bowls, Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange, Gator, and GMAC.
I have covered nearly every major college football rivalry. And on nearly 90 campuses, from Hawaii to Boston College, Washington to Miami; in six different countries, from Russia to Texas (It’s Like a Whole Other Country), only once have I genuinely feared for my safety.
That was at Tiger Walk in 1989.
In the beginning, in the 1960s — before Tiger Walk became “the most copied tradition in all of college football,” Auburn athletic director David Housel said with pride, not pique — it was just a bunch of kids running up to Donahue Drive to see the Auburn Tigers walk from their dorm to the game.
There are older pre-game walks at Stanford and at Williams College. But they don’t generate the passion that builds as the Auburn team makes the turn from Donahue onto Roosevelt at the south end of Jordan-Hare Stadium.
Tiger Walk has become the signature event of Auburn’s pre-game ritual. It will be the highlight again on Saturday, when Alabama comes back to town. Those kids who lined Donahue Drive 40 years ago will be there again, and now they’ll have their children and grandchildren in tow.
Tiger Walk goes on the road. Tiger Walk is listed on the players’ weekend itinerary. Tiger Walk has spawned copycat walks at Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia Tech, and several other schools. Tiger Walk has spawned Tiger Walk Plaza, an enclosed courtyard paved with 6,000 bricks purchased by and inscribed for Auburn fans that serves as the entrance to the Tiger locker room.
Tiger Walk is also misnamed. It is no more a walk than a morning jog is the New York Marathon. A “walk” connotes peace, a stroll. But here, fans roll into Auburn on Friday night to park their cars on Donahue Drive for a prime viewing spot. They line up so deep that the street narrows to the width of a Venetian sidewalk. The Auburn faithful jam together so tightly that the university is concerned for public safety. They scream, they sing, they cheer, they fire up the Tigers and get fired up themselves.
Tiger Walk began to get legs a quarter-century ago, when coach Doug Barfield urged the fans to line the streets. Barfield, who now works at the Alabama High School Athletic Association, dismisses the notion that he has any ownership. But Tiger Walk didn’t become Tiger Walk until 1989, when Alabama came to Auburn for the first time in the history of the sport’s most fevered intrastate rivalry.
The rivalry between Auburn and Alabama is so passionate that the teams refused to play from 1907 until 1948. That year, the schools agreed to play every season … but only at Legion Field in Birmingham, a neutral site. At the time, Auburn was so remote and inaccessible, and its stadium so small, that the Tigers played only one game a season there. But as Auburn football grew stronger and the stadium got bigger, and as the university’s engineering graduates overtook the state highway department and built four-lane highways into the town, Auburn became a major university.
It was a major university, that is, everywhere but in Tuscaloosa. Coach Paul Bryant wouldn’t deign to bring his Crimson Tide to “that little cow college across the state,” as the Bear called it. After Bryant’s death in 1983, one of his protégés, Pat Dye, built Auburn into a national power. Dye, wanting the symbolism of equal footing with Alabama, promised an ugly judicial or legislative battle if Alabama didn’t agree to play home-and-home. The Alabama athletic director who agreed, former Tide All-American quarterback Steve Sloan, lost his job.
So on Dec. 2, 1989, No. 2 Alabama came to Auburn with a 10-0 record. The No. 11 Tigers were 8-2. Two hours before the game, an estimated 20,000 fans, nearly one-quarter of the 85,319 (a record that stood for 12 years), gathered on the east and west sides of Donahue Drive. A writer from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I stood on the west side, about two-thirds of the way down the hill.
The Auburn fans roared, their eyes glazed with a mixture of fervor, pride, passion, and perhaps a touch of the Jack Daniels. We were five or six deep and couldn’t get any closer to the street. We were also hemmed in, and didn’t have the zeal-fueled adrenaline to ward off the elbows and other parts of the bouncing, heaving, deafening masses. I no longer had any interest in taking notes, which was just as well, because the noise and the lack of space made it impossible. My own adrenaline kicked in, and I worked my way into open space.
Tiger Walk is no longer spontaneous. It is now almost a production. But the height of emotion it reached in 1989 will be a watermark for years to come.
“You never will see that commotion again,” Housel says. “The Children of Israel entered the Promised Land for the first time only once.”
Auburn took the lead in the opening minutes of that 1989 game and pulled away in the second half for a 30-20 victory. But the victory on the field, while important, paled beside the victory off the field.
Because when Alabama arrived on campus, Auburn had arrived, too.
Posted by FRT on Nov 17, 2004 in
Uncategorized That a Maryland fan was better able to put his Auburn – UGA experience into words than I was. Here is something I stumbled across at The Plainsman’s messageboard, courtesy of someone else. It was apparently written by Scott Van Pelt of ESPN. He went to Maryland and his wife went to Auburn.
I’d say that he found our “Lovelist village on the Plain” pretty nice indeed…
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A different world – Non-Terps & a lenghty rambling mess …
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Imagine you have been married to the same woman for more than 30 years, you love her more than anything – nothing could ever change that. You have shared many of your best memories with her and would never leave her under any circumstances. Then you spend a day with a woman who in
some ways is more beautiful than your wife … you may never see her again … But you won’t forget her for a while either.
Maryland is my wife … Auburn is “the other woman.” If you all love college sports – and I assume you do – you really need to see a game there (in Auburn). I have been lucky to see a lot of places, I have not seen a lot of places like that. It’s an amazing scene in every respect. Granted, I was there for # 3 vs. # 5 … Auburn was 9-0
so it was bound to be good.
Some highlights:
I arrived at night with the stadium lit up like a Christmas tree. It sits dead in the middle of campus. A shrine… literally their church – only services are held on Saturday. Made me say….hmmmm…this is promising.
Gameday scene – tailgating in every available space…and not like some field full of RV’s – though they had that too. But literally people grilling and drinking in every available spot for as far as the eye could see. I lost count of the number of bands and stages and this was at 9 AM.
The Fans – I knew I was in a “red state” from all the Suburbans with “W” stickers, but the truth of it is, this part of Alabama is an orange state. Every man woman and child is in the same shade of orange. Not unusual I know… but THIS was…they are nice, friendly , and polite – to Georgia FANS. Nobody called anyone in Black and Red [censored] or *sshole..nobody told them they sucked nobody told them *uck you. These people are your friends, you don’t know it yet because you haven’t met them – but when you do – you have met a friend. you want a beer? some BBQ? grab some. Let’s talk for a while….war eagle…let’s have a good game. I saw this at tailgate after tailgate. Stragglers who
wander by are offered anything that’s available – didn’t matter what color they were wearing. This is the oldest rivalry in the South – they call it Brother vs. Brother and they mean it. Now there are certainly cliche’s about downhome country sensibilities – but these folks embodied
the best part of the notion of southern hospitality. Though many did admit it’s a tad LESS civil for the Iron Bowl.
Tiger Walk :
Impossible to describe. Im – possible. A human welcome mat for the team. The team walks through several blocks to Jordan – Hare through a sea of people. I asked somebody how many folks were there and was told they could never come up with an accurate head count but that they were certain it was “well in excess of 25,000 people.” That looked a little
light to me…I would have bought 40 grand. 2 hours before kick the streets in all directions were completely – and I mean COMPLETELY jammed. It was like a religious experience. If you can be in the middle of this – and I was lucky enough
to get to walk through it – and not be overwhelmed , you are dead my friend. (I just went Larry King on your [censored]- sorry )I was honestly in awe.
Gametime : The eagle circles as 87,521 people (less the UGA fans) cheer Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar EAGLE, HEY!!! The eagle pounces on some meat product and the hair on the back of your neck stands up…then if you are still unimpressed you get an F-16 flyover and were off and
running. Auburn dominates, the band plays, the fans hoot and holler louder than anywhere I have ever been ( and go Spinal tap and take it to volume 11 when UGa tries to audible ) 24 – 6 and it’s time for more food
and drink…but before that…
Toomer’s Corner :
Everyone converges on the intersection of college st. and whatever the other road is and they toilet paper every tree in sight. By the time it’s over, it looks like a blizzard has rolled through Alabama. There are no riots, no police, no cars set on fire. There are families from grandparents to infants chcuking rolls of toilet paper all over the
place. Again, i just shake my head at a loss…and maybe a little jealous.
It’s a special place, the best scene I have ever seen for college football. I have ZERO doubt “our” TEAM could someday be as good. As fans though, perhaps we should aspire to be as classy as those I was hosted by. The type of hostile, vile garbage we are subjected to on the road and are certainly guilty of at home is just embarrassing when you see how they do it elsewhere. Not preaching here – just some thoughts of one VERY proud Terrapin after seeing the light … Auburn style.
Posted by FRT on Nov 17, 2004 in
Uncategorized For those of you not from around these parts, Linda Schrenko WAS the State of Georgia’s Superintendant of schools. It seems that in recent years, instead of doing the people’s business, good ole Linda has spent her time stealing over 600 grand in Federal Education funds. She used it for various things, but the favorite is the nine grand she spent on a facelift.
Here’s a link to the story:
link
One thing that made me laugh is that she showed up at her indictment in a fur coat.
Ummm, am I the only one that learned anything from the Michael Irvin drug trial of the mid 90′s? You never EVER show up at court, especially facing indictment for stealing large sums of money, wearing a fucking FUR COAT!! Fake or not, you look like you’re rubbing the common man’s nose in it.
Schrenko is a scumbag and, although she won’t get any actual jail time, I hope the fine she pleads to is at least as much as what she stole. Otherwise, she’s learned nothing.
Remember when Michael Milken got busted, he was not forced to give up his secret accounts, and when the fine of 600 million was levied…HE PAID IT!! Hell, at his zenith, that’s what he made in ONE YEAR!!
“Um…how much, your honor? 600 large? Yeah, lemme just get my checkbook out of my diamond encrusted briefcase.”
Schrenko stole 20 times what Martha Stewart did, and I bet she won’t see the wrong side of a jail cell door, and that’s sad. Because it’s people like Schrenko for which jails were specifically designed…
Posted by FRT on Nov 17, 2004 in
Uncategorized You know, for the past five days and really for about the past fifteen or twenty days, I’ve been angry about the BCS rankings and why Auburn isn’t ranked higher and all of that business. Can someone tell me why one of my friends or family members hasn’t smacked me because of it?
I mean, here we are, 10-0 and staring down the barrell of a road game AT Tuscaloosa against our hated rivals, the Alabama Crimson Tide, and I’m bitching about how we better get to play for a national title? Really?
You don’t have to think back too far to find a similar scenario, only with the shoe firmly on the other foot.
In 1989, Alabama was 10-0, number two in the nation and coming into Auburn for the first time ever to play at Jordan-Hare Stadium. All the talk for the weeks leading up to the game was about “if Bama’s undefeated, they’ll play for it all in the Sugar Bowl” and other crap like that.
Well, “if or when” never happened because Auburn won 30-20 in one of the greatest Iron Bowl games ever, putting an end to Bama’s national title hopes for the year.
15 years later, the situation’s reversed. It’s Auburn that’s undefeated and facing the road game at the end of the season.
Suddenly, I’m about nauseous about this game too. Despite being riddled with injuries, Alabama has a ridiculously stout defense, recently ranked as the number one defense in the country.
Egad. Has all of the bluster and talking shown up on The Plains as well? I only hope that Coach Tuberville has been successful at keeping his players focused, motivated and thinking about ONLY the Alabama game.