Playing Dirty: Auburn

It’s LSU-Auburn week. Strap on your kevlar and board up your windows because who knows what kind of crazy shit will happen in Tiger Stadium this week. The 2023 Auburn squad looks very different from last year. We needed to find out why that is, so shoutout to Ryan Sterritt for playing along!

1. Last time LSU hosted Auburn the War Eagles got their first win in Baton Rouge in 22 years.. and you fired that guy?? Lol wtf, how is Auburn supposed to compete without the mountain-moving, curse-breaking, earth-shattering football mind that is/was Bryan Harsin?

It’s tough to replace someone who knows ball as well as Bryan Harsin does. I mean, look at what Boise was before he got there? It was clear Auburn needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, starting at quarterback. There’s just no way to make an offense work at a CFP-contending level with a kid who only got recruited because his daddy played at Auburn. I haven’t looked at where that Nix kid is now, but I’m sure he’s nationally irrelevant. Anyways, I’m sure Auburn is destined for new heights now that we have Uncle Baby Billy running the show!

2. Auburn is now under the command of Hugh Freeze, and for Year One of a rebuild the team looks pretty respectable, much like Hugh’s prior teams. Which current Auburn Tiger star do you foresee being exploited for a feel-good movie that, while initially beloved, ages poorly due to its factual inaccuracies and heavy reliance on the White savior trope?

I’m actually working on a script to pitch to Disney right now. It’s about a football coach from downtrodden high school on the rough streets of Memphis, who through his own hard work (and nobody else’s talent) worked his way up to the SEC. The twist comes when everything is taken away from him after he gets caught between the job of his dreams and a forbidden love of his life. Unable to have both, he sacrifices his career for love. In the epilogue, we see our hero rising back from the ashes, utterly redeemed and perfect, ultimately having learned and lost nothing for that mediocre handjob.

3. Saturday’s game will be six years to the day since Auburn blew a 20-0 lead to LSU. Which blown lead of the Gus Malzahn-Ed Orgeron Era was your favorite? Everyone talks about 20-0, but 21-10 in 2018 never gets enough love. 13-10 isn’t huge, but holding the best offense in college football history to 10 points through 2.5 quarters only to lose anyway has gotta sting.

I was really hoping for that 40 point margin of victory to cash in 2020, so I have to admit that Max Johnson touchdown to go from 48-3 to 48-11 broke my heart.

4. For the first time since 1991, LSU and Auburn will not play each other in 2024. What will you do to make up for the lack of LSU-Auburn chaos in your life? Cut the brakes on your car before your morning commute? Leave your gas stove on overnight? Criticize Taylor Swift on the internet?

*checks Bruce Pearl’s tweets*

Yeah I mean I think we have enough on our hands at the moment.

5. Every time college football news dries up in the offseason I see people resort to the same debate: Who was better, 2010 Cam Newton or 2019 Joe Burrow? This would be the perfect place to throw down numbers, highlights, metrics and advanced stats to fight over it… but we shouldn’t. These were two amazing players and it’s insulting to their legacies if we just spend all of our time arguing over which guy was better. We should just agree on one thing: they were both a million times better than Mac Jones.

There’s actually valid arguments to be had for both, and you’re right, there’s too much fighting in the world today. But do you know what I do take solace in? Knowing I haven’t had to spend the last 15 years defending Aaron “my mom sticks up for me on Facebook” Murray, elite white person Jake Fromm, or “the Trent Dilfer of college football” Stetson Bennett.