AUBURN, Ala. — “It’s not the end of the world.”
— Auburn Coach Gus Malzahn, Oct. 14, after a 20-0 lead became a 27-23 loss at LSU.
Technically, it’s not the end of the world, but in the Southeastern Conference, it’s always pretty damned close. In the Southeastern Conference, when your coach reminds you it’s not the end of the world, that is the definition of a lousy day for your mood and his employment status.
Somehow, 43 days after the horror of it not being the end of the world, Auburn lurks atop its world, and this should remind us of something big. It’s something well beyond Auburn, well beyond whether Alabama will miss the playoff in violation of College Football Playoff zoning ordinances, well beyond the dazzling on-field celebration Saturday evening at Jordan-Hare Stadium, well beyond even the staggering beauty of Auburn’s toilet-papered trees at Toomer’s Corner.
(For a first-time viewer, that scene actually gave off the tranquility often felt around fallen snow.)
[A tremor on the Plains: Auburn stops Alabama in Iron Bowl]
This should remind us that for all the analysis, the scrutiny, the parsing, the yammering, the amateur play-calling and the hot takes, sports remain a mystery. Nobody knows. Often, nobody knows even afterward. Nobody knew on Oct. 14 we would be talking Auburn this, Auburn that, Auburn to the Southeastern Conference Championship Game against Georgia, Auburn as potentially the first two-loss team in the short history of the College Football Playoff.
Even the players and coaches don’t know. How many of them through the years have reassured their fans after such games yet proved unable to uphold the reassurance? How many have blown 20-0 leads and fizzled accordingly and anonymously?
Some of us attended the Auburn-LSU game of Oct. 14. From the looks of the seats at the great Tiger Stadium, some of us stayed home. If any of us felt we witnessed anything relative to the playoff, that proved some of us might have been drinking. LSU improved to 5-2. Auburn fell to 5-2. Alabama hovered, still. Some of us felt happy to witness the athletic beauty of DJ Chark’s game-turning, 75-yard punt return for LSU. Some of us felt happy for LSU Coach Ed Orgeron, because if you don’t feel happy for a coach at LSU who just won twice after losing on Homecoming to Troy, then you’re satanic.
“We still control our own destiny,” Malzahn said, and even that wasn’t quite true. It became a publicly known fact that Auburn ran the ball on 17 consecutive first downs. Babies were born knowing how Auburn ran the ball on 17 consecutive first downs. Malzahn had gone 10-10 in his last 20 SEC games, a lukewarm 23-16 through 2014-16. He had just dismissed a player, which Alabama reporters noted as the third dismissal since the season opener. On the following Tuesday, he fielded an eternal American-Southeastern question:
Was he worried about his job security?
“No, I’m not,” he said.
In fluent coach-speak, he said he was worried only about beating Arkansas.
“People are frustrated and people have a voice,” he said. “They can voice their opinion. That’s just an opinion.”
It’s just an opinion, until it’s an abundance of opinions.
Some six weeks later, we’re sitting around seeing Nick Saban with a wrecked countenance saying, both glumly and admirably: “I’m sorry I could not do a better job as a coach and a leader to help them play better in this game.” Auburn (10-2) has throttled Arkansas, Texas A&M, then-No. 1 Georgia, Louisiana-Monroe and then-No. 1 Alabama in a 26-14 strafing, scoring fewer than 40 points only against Alabama, which was fine with everybody. It looks like the best football team in the country. It’s alluring to watch. It looks fearsome to play. Its energy compels. Its quarterback, Jarrett Stidham, has kept improving, so can that alone explain? It has a tremendous running back, Kerryon Johnson. Still, there’s this sense: How many football teams have been this capable, yet somehow never realized it?
[Two-loss Auburn is one step from a stellar playoff case]
Its players aim to help out, to explain.
Okay, there’s the old disrespect motif. Linebacker Deshaun Davis (seven tackles and a sack against Alabama): “We always say, ‘Man, no one’s gonna believe in Auburn but Auburn.’ And for us to come out here and do what we did (against Alabama). I know no one believed in us much. Even, like, the guys on the [ESPN] ‘College GameDay,’ they all picked Alabama except Charles Barkley. And that’s something that we knew and something that we notice. So a team like us, you can’t give us any more fuel, because we don’t need it.”
Okay, Auburn had the sense that the loss to LSU was not an accurate portrayal of Auburn. Fair enough. Defensive back Stephen Roberts: “I mean, it’s just our leadership that we had. It’s a lot of seniors that had put their heart and their time into it in the summer.”
Okay, the loss helped. Fair enough. Veteran linebacker Tre’ Williams: “That kind of hurt in the moment, but then again, I knew we still had a lot of football to play . . . It really showed us that we weren’t focused at the time, and we started to let people tell us what we are, who we are, instead of keeping doing our job and staying focused. But that really humbled us. . . . We just kept listening to people telling us how great we were and stuff like that, so that was just something we had to block out.”
Nobody picked us. We had worked so hard. We just needed focus.
A thousand seasons have rung with the same quotations and gone largely unnoticed in a morass of 8-4-ish-ness.
The loss helped us.
That can happen, except for all the times when it doesn’t, and how much different are the teams for which it doesn’t, from the teams for which it does?
What if Washington (10-2), which destroyed both Washington State and a promising Apple Cup by 41-14 on Saturday night, hadn’t lost that inexplicable thing at Arizona State, so had one loss instead of two? What if Stanford (9-3), which heads for the Pacific-12 Championship Game after plowing through Notre Dame on The Farm by 38-20, hadn’t lost that thing at San Diego State, had two losses instead of three? The mystery is always everywhere, with the possible exception of Clemson (11-1), which just destroyed both South Carolina and a promising rivalry game by 34-10. Clearly Clemson has a ton of big-game knowhow and another ton of character.
It turned out Auburn had character — a lot of character. Nobody knew that on Oct. 14. The head coach said it, but even he had no real way of knowing. Now on a Saturday evening 42 nights later, when the field had emptied and just a few souls stood near an end zone, Malzahn said to his wife, Kristi, “Hey babe, I’m gonna go to take a shower, okay?”
And in the mad, inexplicable life they have chosen, of mystery and job security, mystery and Gatorade showers, she laughed and said, “Just a little Gatorade!”
More college football: Chip Kelly will be remembered as a failed NFL coach. In truth, he was a decent coach and a failed GM. Dabo Swinney’s fury with fans is tempered by Clemson’s aim to be No. 1 Chip Kelly has landed at UCLA. We’ll find out if college football has caught up to him. Iron Bowl: Alabama state holiday has become the college football game of the year
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