Auburn fans spit on me precisely twenty times while writing this alone at my desk.
I am the rare Georgia fan who hates Auburn as much as, if not more, than Florida and Georgia Tech.
I’ll take it easy because, remember, they’re just a humble fambly (family?) down there at Awbarn (Auburn?) where the Waw Eeguhs (War Eagles?) play their home games at Jurrden-Hurr (Jordan-Hare?) Stadium. I know none of them can read this, I just want to keep my own blood pressure down.
You could probably start and end this list of incidences with “Garrett was a freshman at UGA in 2013.”
Sure, it started way before that. You could just say Nick Fairley’s name and I’ll see more red than you’ll see at Sanford Stadium this afternoon.
You could mention fire hoses.
You could…alright, yes, there are a lot of reasons I could rifle off right now.
But let’s move past the Prurr at Jurrden-Hurr. Good lord, Tigers (Plainsmen?) fans sound like golden retrievers trying to speak English with peanut butter on the roof of their collective mouth. Boom, now y’all have a fiftieth mascot. Enjoy, Figthin’ Peanut Butter Golden Retrievers.
I’ll be honest, much like Dennis Reynolds, I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds. This will be very stream-of-consciousness.
FIRST: ANECDOTAL “EVIDENCE”
I am sure there are plenty of kids who grew up in Alabama, worked their butt off for a scholarship, and did great things while being reasonable sports fans at Auburn. BUT!
I grew up in Kennesaw. Everyone I knew in high school who attended Auburn University fit the following description:
- Spoiled rich kid, kind of a [insert expletive of your choice] who did not get into UGA or Georgia Tech.
- Mommy and Daddy clutched their pearls (not Bruce) and pocket watch, respectively, at the idea of their kid not attending a status symbol school with a major football team. Why go to Georgia State for free when mom and dad will pay $30,000 per year for a team who has the privilege of getting their skull dragged by the Georgia Bulldogs in any year that doesn’t involve a total miracle or buying Cam Newton’s services? Even when they beat us in 2017 we got big revenge in the SEC Championship Game. Losers.
- The Auburn fans I knew growing up aside from one (shoutout to a guy named Alex who ended up graduating from Auburn) were insanely annoying. Just the worst. The kids with Florida and Tech alum parents were more reasonable.
SECOND: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
So I have gotten into a fight with an opposing fan exactly one time in my life. It was with extremely good reason.
It’s 2014, I’m 19 years old and a sophomore at UGA. My oldest sister and her husband (both UGA alums) travel up for the Todd Gurley’s Revenge game.
I lived in an apartment on Peabody Street. As we’re walking uphill on Baxter, an Auburn fan in his shiny Ford F-350 (y’all like drivin’ in your trucks?) keeps inching out of his paid parking spot near Jimbo’s and Raising Cane’s. Confronted by a wave of foot traffic and clearly pissed off he just saw his team get humiliated, he continues to scoot his truck forward into pedestrian walking space. Like, dude, have you ever left a football game near a college campus before? People are walking.
This guy decides it’d be a good idea to bump his giant truck into my sister’s hip while yelling at us to move.
Reader, I am 6’7” and at one point weighed 270 pounds. At this point, I weighed 270 pounds actually.
I slammed my fist on the hood of his truck and the man decides to get out and start a fight…
…only to reveal he is a chubby little 5’3” man with an anger issue. It did not end well for him as another Dawg fan helped me out and shoved him into his truck after he tried to hit me.
Such is to say, I hope that man has a terrible weekend. Actually, I hope all of his weekends are as pleasant as he was.
THIRD: THE 2014 REVENGE ITSELF
Remember when that Auburn fan went on Reddit and wrote “An Open Letter To UGA Fans” about how he and his family were spat upon exactly 20 times, no more, no fewer than 20 times, when we beat that Tiger tail on a cold November night?
Yeah, that never happened, you weirdo. I’ve attended hundreds of games across college football, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS. I know weird fans exists and fights break out, but you were not assaulted via saliva 20 times in one day. That’s all I got.
PART NUMBER LAST: THE CHASER
I want to end this with one of my favorite memories from college.
I lived in Hill Hall across from Tate Student Center. After Auburn’s second miracle, this time against Alabama, my friends and I were like “HOW DO THEY KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS?”
It’s January 2014. We have a fire hazard level of people in one dorm room drinking totally non-alcoholic beverages and totally not drunkenly yelling. We totally did not get the campus fuzz called on us.
Anyway, going down to the end of the National Championship game between the War Eagles and Florida State, we’re all quiet because we have 20 people and open beer cans in a tiny room that just got “investigated.”
The greatest schadenfreude moment of my entire Georgia football fandom? Jameis Winston stealing that title from them last second like he was at a Publix and wanted some seafood.
The place erupted. We kept yelling the word “karma” as if we were a supercut of all four seasons of My Name Is Earl.
All seemed right in the world that evening. Auburn stopped getting away with dumb luck, since then they have beaten us exactly once (which we avenged in the same season), they’ve hired a bunch of detestable people to be head coaches and paid significant amount of money to pay them NOT to coach anymore, and have won zero national championships. Zero conference championships. They should be honored to be mentioned in the same breath as the Georgia Bulldogs.
I have a certain degree of respect for all but one of our traditional rivals.
Auburn is the one.
GOOD MORNING AND GO DAWGS!