Get rid of the weaklings and scoundrels

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

Well, all hell has broken loose in Alabama after Auburn skedaddled out of a football game with FSU that was to have kicked off this coming season on national television.

If there is an upside, it is that the time between the end of football recruiting and the beginning of spring practice is now filled with an infinitely entertaining parade of columns, news stories, rantings and denials. It's not nearly as good as actually playing the game, but it makes for absolutely boffo theatre.

Dropping the game, especially in the craven way it was done, was a no-class, low rent thing to do, perfectly in keeping with all the rest of the malignant, back-stabbing antics so richly detailed in Larry Guest's blockbuster investigative report for the Orlando Sentinel.

By the way, fellow 'Noles, you will be delighted to learn, according to the virulent chatroom ravings published daily in the Alabama press, that the Orlando Sentinel - and indeed all Florida newspapers - are wholly owned subsidiaries of and propaganda mills for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Best news I've heard in years.

Not much, really, has been seen in the Florida media so far, but in Alabama the radio talk shows and daily newspapers are wholly consumed with the subject, so much so that news of the Tigers No. 3-ranked basketball team, along with any other positive tidings, seems to be lost in the uproar.

After Terry Bowden resigned as Auburn football coach last fall, Larry Guest published a meticulously researched expose of the smarmy conspiracy that led to the most successful coach in Auburn history walking away from his team with five games left to play in the season.

As Guest would tell it, former coach Pat Dye, Trustee/banker Bobby Lowder of Montgomery, and Bowden's defensive coordinator Bill Oliver plotted a backstage coup to push Bowden out.

Let's be clear here: Terry Bowden's and Auburn's business is their own and none of ours.

It spilled over into Florida State's lap when Tiger Athletic Director David Housel, an amiable, recently elevated-up-from-the-mailroom sort of fellow, deliberately waited until after National Signing Day to announce that the big national TV date with Florida State was off and that he had already replaced the Seminoles with Appalachian State.

Casting his eyes skyward, Housel begged himself off the hook.

"It's not my decision," he told Hart. And to the Birmingham Post-Herald he said, "This was an institutional decision, not just an athletic one."

The Tiger Athletic Department is very much under the control of an institution. The problem, many have speculated, is that the institution in question is not Auburn University but the owner of a bank in Montgomery.

According to Housel, who says this with a straight face, they did it for the boys.

The tender psyches of the Auburn players would be traumatized by an aggressive media.

"If we played the game as scheduled, the controversy and turmoil of last season would be rehashed again and again over the next eight months...The controversy would become bigger than the game, and that would be unfair to the players..."

But nobody asked the boys. Trust me, the boys are fine. Auburn recruits tough kids who are there because they want to be Tigers. If you told them they had a chance to play against a championship contender on national television to start the season, my guess is they couldn't get their helmets on fast enough.

Florida State is absolutely the one most hurt by this, which makes it even more despicable the way the game was cancelled.

After the contract with Appalachian State was secretly signed, notice was faxed to Dave Hart's office at 6:30 pm. on Friday in mid-February with the game to be played September 2nd - plenty of time to pick up a Division II replacement, but no time or opportunity to replace a national TV game with an attractive Division 1 opponent.

Cowardly is a good word. There are better, more descriptive terms, but the most deliciously accurate ones are not appropriate for this column.

We have enjoyed a long and beneficial relationship with Auburn. Auburn, along with Miami, was one of the early big powers who were willing to schedule the fledgling Seminoles. Burt Reynolds had a 60-yard run against Auburn in 1954. He was tackled at the goal line by a fellow who was most recently Governor of Alabama, Fob James. They beat us more often than not in the early days; we've gotten the upper hand in recent years. Pat Dye abruptly dropped the series in 1991. His action was controversial then, and his fingerprints may be visible on this latest episode too.

For the last three years, Tallahassee has hosted The Bowden Cup Classic, initiated by the local Auburn Alumni Club to raise money for both schools. Bobby Bowden and Terry Bowden led their respective alumni groups in a golf tournament; half the field of 144 wearing garnet and gold, half in navy and burnt orange. There was always much camaraderie and laughter at the post-tournament luncheon. We share much, including a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude about being the little brother school in our respective states.

Auburn is an excellent and proud institution, supported by tens of thousands, many generations, of loyal alumni.

These are fine people. Auburn University would be better served by choosing at random several of the loyal Auburn Men and Auburn Women who revere the integrity of the school, and putting them in charge of the program that now exists, and replacing any weaklings and scoundrels who appear to be hiding behind someone else's money.