It’s serious business at Auburn
AUBURN, Ala. – Legend here has it that a talent scout discovered Bo Jackson sitting on a stool at the soda fountain of Toomer’s Drug Store.
No, wait. That was Lana Turner. And it was Schwab’s Drug Store. Actually, it was the Top Hat Café, but that’s Hollywood – where, as we know, all real life is “based on a true story.”
Anyway, that story about Bo and Toomer’s may not be true, either.
But just about everything else is that you’ve heard about college football and the South. The game and its tzochkes are an inextricable part of the social fabric here, much like that cabernet stain on your peachpuff couch.
This is on the best authority of Candace Stoves, an extraordinarily agreeable young woman who dragged herself and Bailey, her Shih Tzu bodyguard, down to the corner of West Samford and Biggio at 5:45 a.m. Friday to stake out a tailgating spot for a party of 25 for the season opener between Auburn and Washington State on Saturday night.
Oh, the 5:45 business is nothing. Any number of Auburnians was calling dibs on square footage within a few blocks of Jordan-Hare Stadium at that hour.
No, the evidence was this story:
“My brother-in-law and sister-in-law just had a baby,” Stoves reported. “One of them is from Auburn and the other is from the University of Georgia. And that baby went home with one Auburn booty and one Georgia booty on.
“That’s just the way it is down here.”
Where every birth is a booty call.
This is what the Cougars face. Sure, Wazzu has made any number of ventures into the football museums of America – Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio State – and even five trips to Tennessee in the 1980s and early ‘90s. But while Tennessee may be in the Southeastern Conference, it is not in the state of Alabama and may as well be the Pluto of this little solar system, disenfranchised and forgotten.
The shame of it is, the Cougs really won’t experience anything but the 87,000-some thousand Auburn faithful dressed in orange and gin for kickoff.
The Cougs won’t be on campus to hear the bells of Samford Hall which, after tolling 12 every day at noon, chime out the “War Eagle” fight song. They won’t see the actual eagle buzz the stadium before kickoff, nor see the home team make the “Tiger Walk” down Donahue Drive to the stadium. They won’t see the newspaper column which suggested anything less than a national championship for Auburn would be an underachievement.
With any luck, they won’t hear the red-state radio personality who took his wit out for a walk Friday without a scoop and a bag.
Picking a winner in the Alabama-Hawaii game, he predicted that “Alabama will beat the Rainbow Warriors and next week they’ll beat the Gay Coalition, too.”
War Eagle is a battle cry. This guy is a hoot.
If nothing else, WSU coach Bill Doba could take his players to a Waffle House for breakfast just to give them a taste of the South, though it might be tough to get 11 guys off the throne for kickoff.
Where tradition and treacle crash head-on is the intersection of College and Magnolia, where sits Toomer’s. It actually still sells drugs – aspirin and Band-Aids, anyway – but mostly T-shirts and, of course, its famous lemonade. John Heisman, the trophy’s namesake who actually coached here from 1895-99, reportedly used to stop by regularly for some – though you wonder what old John would make of a thimble full of it going for $2.70 today.
You’d expect Toomer’s to be teeming with Tigers, so of course the first person spotted there Friday afternoon was Brad Derting, father of WSU’s graduated middle linebacker, Will Derting.
“Friendly people,” he said. “They wave and say hello and then see the color of the shirt and say, ‘You’re not Crimson Tide, are you?’ “
It’s always necessary to distinguish.
“In elementary school,” Stoves recalled, “when somebody would move in from out of town, the first thing you’d ask them is ‘Are you an Auburn fan or an Alabama fan?’ You have to pick sides and you stick with your side.”
It would be encouraging to the Cougs if Auburn were so preoccupied with all things Tide that today’s opponent is an afterthought, but not likely.
“Nah, it’s a Pac-10 opponent,” said Chris Stoffregen, a season-ticket holder for 10 years. “Besides, we’ve heard of Washington State because of Mike Price. He was the coach of Alabama for about 10 days.”
Ah, yes. That was after he took the Cougs to a couple of Rose Bowls and then took himself to a Pensacola strip club, where he was badly overserved – and not Toomer’s lemonade, either.
“That was great for us,” Stoffregen said. “Anything that makes Alabama look bad. Even though they messed up by firing him and hiring the guy they have now.
“But I have a Mike Price T-shirt from Arety’s Angels. I wear it to the Alabama game every year and it drives them absolutely crazy.”
Is he going to wear it today?
“Nah – but if you find me before the game, I’ll give it to you. I can always make a run to Pensacola for another one.”
Better hurry. Only 11 weeks to the Alabama game.
The Cougs, they get their taste today.