football « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

football

Every team has a story

Update: This piece has been picked up and syndicated at The War Eagle Reader.

This Auburn team, like every successful team, was built on hard work. The media and fans, though, missed the real story.

This was a team of second chances.

Take a bunch of guys that run fast and hit hard and are strong enough to block out pain and give them the opportunity to play football and get an education. A lot of those guys would have been in school somewhere and doing just fine if they’d never put on pads. Some are in school because of what they can do to impress us on Saturdays and what they do to themselves the rest of the week. They’re able to, perhaps, capitalize on that in their own way. They have skills that allow them to earn an education and make the leap of improving one’s quality of life just a bit easier.

Some of them are probably working their way through school with ease. Others have to work through it more diligently. But, then, they’re used to grinding. This is a chance, after all. That’s what college football is.

Consider some of the players on this team.

You’ve heard Nick Marshall’s story every time Auburn has been on television this year. Second chances.

All of America got a little closer to Jay Prosch if they watched the excellent pregame package on ESPN. He wasn’t recruited locally and made his way to Illinois. The schemes at Auburn changed, he got a waiver from the NCAA and, most importantly of all, got to come home to spend more precious time with his mother. Second chances.

Think about what Quan Bray endured as a high school senior. Try and grasp that, if you can. Where could life have taken that young man? Second chances.

Trovon Reed declared for Auburn on his mother’s birthday, just eight months after she died of cancer. He talked about family. We talk about family. The university markets family. This high school senior had just lost a big chunk of his and, suddenly, he was an Auburn man. What might otherwise happen to an 18-year-old young man in a different circumstance? Second chances.

Think about Chris Davis, who graduated in December. Here’s a young man raised by his mother and grandmother in a tough part of town who never knew his father, killed when he was a baby. The tale of his recruitment is fairly well known; there wasn’t a lot of it. Where would life have taken him without the right phone calls in high school? Once again he was able to show a skillset that, somehow, so often, gets overlooked. Where would he sit without landing on the kick return unit? Second chances.

Remember Shon Coleman. All he did was stoically pancake leukemia. Prime of his athletic life, already a budding star, and a doctor gives him that cruel diagnosis. Did I say stoic? Read the Yahoo! piece. He kept it to himself, shielding even his parents from the hardest parts. Through it all he found, perhaps, a calling to help others. Shon Coleman is taking his own second chance.

Some players are working for their third position coach or coordinator. Three classes have gone through the 3-9 season, an empty stadium, blowouts and the move from Gene Chizik to Gus Malzahn, however those things impact a young football player is something most of us can only analogize.

Much of this team knew Ladarious Phillips and Ed Christian who were killed, and Eric Mack, who was wounded on that terrible night in 2012.

Every man on the team has some story, or has been the shoulder a teammate leaned on during something most of us have difficulty comprehending. Remember that when players and coaches use the word “adversity,” for this team knows it, individually and collectively.

Think about what these guys have endured. Think about what these guys have accomplished, given the chance. Football is easy. Going 12-2, breaking records and hearts and stirring the very center of the souls of Auburn fans and staring down top-ranked Florida State? Not a problem.

At the end of it all, this wasn’t a team of destiny. They aren’t a team of luck. They didn’t succeed on the strength of a gimmick offense. They didn’t get all the right calls. The ball didn’t always bounce their way. Superman wasn’t in the locker room. Chris Davis wasn’t out of bounds.

This was one of the most entertaining teams you’ve ever seen. These are young men who learned to never quit, learned to recognize the opportunities life gives and learned to seize control of those moments for their own. This is a team of second chances, a team of champions.

They’ve proven, time and again now, that they are young men we should never doubt. I am proud and grateful that they gave us the most amazing run we may ever see and some of the greatest sporting joy we will ever feel. I am more proud and most grateful for what they have learned at Auburn.

Thanks and War Eagle. War Eagle forever.

Auburn / football / memories — Comments Off
5
Jan 14

Too much football on the brain

Just in case you forgot, here’s Kick Bama Kick, at the Iron Bowl:

(I wrote some things about that.)

And the SEC Championship Game, which got this amazing team where they are now, preparing to play for another BCS Championship:

I wrote this about that. I took pictures at Toomer’s. I collected the state’s newspaper front pages.

I’ve pretty much avoided, thanks to the holidays, much of the championship game hype. Who needs that anyway? Florida State and Auburn, tomorrow, in the Rose Bowl for all the cookies.

War Eagle.

Auburn / football / memories / video — Comments Off
4
Jan 14

Too much football on the brain

Just in case you forgot, this is the Miracle in Jordan-Hare:

Auburn / family / football / Friday / friends / history / memories — Comments Off
3
Jan 14

Better than perfection

The thing about the football bowl system is that it gives you time to dream and fret and be exposed to endless amounts of hype. It also lets you reflect. I wrote most of the list below at about this time in 2011, the last time Auburn was set to play for a national championship. It was to be their first appearance since 1957. There are people in Jordan-Hare Stadium who waited all that time to watch their beloved team achieve that kind of success. And now we’re going to see them try again for the second time in four years, which is remarkable.

Football is an important part of the culture here, but Auburn is not a football team. Auburn is a community, a history, and sharing in a common experience. Auburn’s biggest dream is realizing her potential and Auburn’s greatest potential has always been her people.

And we’ve got a lot of people.

I want Auburn to win for:

A teacher – One of my favorite high school teachers, an Auburn grad.
A girl – She was a big part of the reason I chose to apply to Auburn.
Mr. Ethridge – Who gave me my scholarship. He died in 2009.
Dean William Alverson – He helped raise that scholarship money and was my academic adviser. He retired just a few years ago.
My roommate – He and his family, all Auburn people, and all nicer to me than they had to be during my first two years at Auburn. He’s going to Pasadena, and no, I’m not jealous.
Chadd – A friend of more than 15 years, he gave me my start on air, was always full of advice, helped me build an incredible professional foundation. He’s never asked for a thing in return.
For Jim and Rod and Andy and Bill and Paul – Auburn athletics wouldn’t sound the same without them.
For an old man – I sat next to him during the 2004 season. He said simply, “I went to school here when it was API.” He was impressed by that perfect season, and I’m sure he’s amazed by this season, too.
For my wife – She was undeclared until I brought her to her first game but she’s been an Auburn woman ever since. Now she teaches at Auburn and is the director of the public relations program.
For the family in Section 52 – They adopted us and let them sit in their section for years. They remember the Barfield years.
For the Browns – Another strong, proud, kind Auburn family that have been indescribably good to us over the years.
For Shug and Doug and Pat and Terry and Tommy and Gene and Gus – And for all of their coaches and players and staffers, the people fans really mean when saying “We won.”

New additions to the list:

For the Hallmarks – Adam sat through last year and celebrated through this year. He’ll watch this BCS game shivering in some pub in Alaska, on his way to his new duty station.
For the tailgating crew – War Drunj Eagle.
For The War Eagle Reader – which loves like no other. War Eagle forever.

Mostly, I want this team to win for this team. We’ve seen great years, and this has by far been one of the best and most entertaining in many respects.

I wrote this, one of the few good football things I’ve written, before the 2011 BCS game, when everything those guys played for seemed to be more about everyone else. Now, I’m eager to celebrate a great season — I’ve said for the last three games, that we were going into the stadium to congratulate a team for a great performance this season — for the guys actually in the blue and orange.

Much has been written about this team turning around last year’s 3-9 effort. Less has been said about what these guys have gone through. Some of them are national champions. Some have two SEC championships. They’ve also changed head coaches. Some are playing for their third position coach. Some of them have lost parents. Others have had children. They’ve lost teammates. They’ve battled cancer. They’ve stuck together and demanded so much of themselves.

And still Heisman finalist Tre Mason told reporters: “We owed them that. Putting them through last year, we owed them a season like this.”

But, no, this is about them. They’ve succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of everyone but themselves. They’ve always believed.

food / football / photo / running / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
31
Dec 13

New Year’s Eve

This is Maria. We had dinner at her restaurant, Tutti’s, tonight. Her husband is a master chef. They have a professional soccer playing son and a daughter who is in investment management. Also, the food is delicious. Order anything there.

Got an email this morning from the site where I monitor my exercise. It said I’ve pedaled 1,722.9 miles this year. A very low number. But there’s always next year!

This morning it was cold. Very cold. It was 26 degrees at midday. Before that we went out for a run. So there is the last of the Christmas snow on the ground, ice puddles in small holes and frozen mud, the stuff that doesn’t accept your footprint.

I ran a little over four miles. After we got started it didn’t feel cold. I passed an old couple who were out with their little dog. The guy told me I was doing great and looking good. I also looked like a fool in a windbreaker and shorts. (At least my ears and hands were covered.) As I finished my last big circuit around this park and pronounced it the right time to quit. The chill was starting to get in at the very end. Why not? It was in the twenties.

I’m starting to like running, then. You’d have to, to do something as crazy as that.

So we spent most of the afternoon warming up. Dinner at Tutti’s. We made it back home for football. Johnny Manziel had a New Year’s Eve party on the field:

We’re watching the ball drop in Times Square, relatively warm and in no crowd. The phrase of the night seemed to be “a million people, a million people.” Who needs that?

Anyway, enjoy your arbitrary demarcation of a new solar circuit. As you put the old one behind you — should you find you were fond of it, or simply find that you are fond it is over — I wish you health and abundance and twice the happiness in the next trip around the sun.