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November 9, 2006

Auburn We Salute Your AUFSD

By JeromeFromDecatur

While tensions do run deep in the South’s Oldest Rivalry, we aren’t above taking time out to give credit to the other guy. In this case, the other guy is Auburn University; specifically, Auburn University’s Football-Sociology Department.

It’s rare this day and age in major intercollegiate athletics to come across a University that not only cares about academics in athletics, but one that is willing to invent an entire department devoted to higher education.

Here with a tip of the hat, we present a few of the small ways The Auburn University Football Sociology Department (AUFSD) has taken an otherwise drab field and given it life.

Old Sociology Term
-- The Jungle: An 1895 novel by Upton Sinclair exposing abhorrent working conditions for immigrants in the stock yards of Chicago; Sinclair showed the utter hopelessness prevalent among America’s working class and the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of much of American Industry. The novel highlighted the nightmare conditions of America’s working class which was often populated with children working 16 hour days.


Attention: Auburn Grads: This is a book.

New AUFSD Term
-- Welcome to The Jungle: a mega hit by the greatest rock n’roll band ever, Guns N’ Roses. A song both warning and celebrating an existence on the streets; hard drugs, prostitutes; in short, this is a primer for incoming Auburn freshmen. Lyrics also contain the following which rest on a plaque in front of Bobby Lowder’s office at First Colonial Bank in Auburn:
    Welcome to the jungle
    We got fun 'n' games
    We got everything you want
    Honey we know the names
    We are the people that can find
    Whatever you may need
    If you got the money honey
    We got your grades
Song also serves as the introduction to your Auburn Tiger football team.


Axl Rose: Auburn University Alum Class of ‘87

Old Sociology Term
-- Napoleon Complex: Term used to describe a type of inferiority complex suffered by people who are short. The term is also used more generally to describe people who are driven by a perceived handicap to overcompensate in other aspects of their lives.

New AUFSD Term
-- Napoleon Complex...


War Egul

See also Auburn University’s rocky relationship with its older traditional more successful older brother to the north. Particularly the shadow the hounds-tooth hat casts:


Big Brother Bama

Old Sociological Term
-- Universal Education: Enlightenment construct for emerging Democratic countries emphasizing the right for every child to have access to a free education in the hopes that such an education will lay the bedrock for a civilization’s growth and an informed populace.

New AUFSD Term
-- Universal Education: Reading, schmeading. The Enlightenment and much of the 18th century is still trying to find its way to Lee County, Alabama.


Auburn Legend: James Brooks


There is more to the college football experience than just winning games. There’s the pagentary. There’s academic excellence. There’s Sociology.

There’s watching your team of sociology majors run out onto the field while a coked out a man in white spandex sings. There’s good old fashion fun in hoods. There’s always being little brother. And there’s the joy that comes from the gift of reading. Or not reading. For these and so many more remarkable moments, we salute you Auburn. You are truly in your own league.

JeromeFromDecatur
Georgia Sports Blog Contributor

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it not bad enough that the dawgs have relegated a 9-1 BCS contender to the LF network? I guess not. Next time, before you get all intellectual and start using complicated directions to ridicule the academic prowess of another school, pull out a map and read it. Tuscaloosa, more so than any direction is WEST of Auburn. That is, unless you are talking of polls and rankings, and then they are to the South, a place that Georgia conspicuously occupies as well. Good luck in the Music City Bowl!

Dan said...

Jerome, you've been lurking on the Hive more than I thought. Running down your opponents academics in a game where you're a 2 touchdown dog?

That's right out of our playbook.

 
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