Showing posts with label Auburn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Auburn. Show all posts

Monday, December 02, 2013

Videos of the year: The SEC edition


1) There was a 109-yard runback in a Big Ten game once. I think it involved a bad batch of bratwurst and a distant restroom at Camp Randall Stadium.

2) SEC, baby! SEC!

3) "Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, go to hell, Alabama!"

4) You have to begrudgingly hand it to Nick Saban for his professionalism and good sportsmanship. If that had been Nebraska's Bo Pelini instead of the Alabama coach on the wrong end of that wild finish, right now we'd be rearguing the whole deal about "Should crazy people be allowed to have automatic weapons . . . even if they make $3 million a year and we say 'passionate guy' instead of 'psychotic break'?"
 

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Editing out the cold, hard facts of history

I find it highly amusing that at a branch of Auburn University, we have an English professor so offended by the N-word that he has search-and-replaced it from the entirety of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

This when the parent institution, apparently, has plenty of room for an African-American quarterback whose own father sought to auction off to white athletic boosters.

Twain's 19th-century, culturally accurate (unfortunately) use of a racial slur is so bad that literature --
and history -- must be sanitized. All because, in the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, "You can't stand the truth!"

On the other hand, a black minister pimping out his own flesh and blood to the money men of some Southern college-football power . . .
that's a truth we can stand just fine. Don't forget, it's Auburn vs. Oregon for the BCS national championship, 7:30 p.m. Central on ESPN.

But that's not important now. What's important is to sanitize literature -- and history, too -- because it sometimes shows us ugly things.

Historical ugly things, of course, are the worst ugly things because we're less likely to be entangled in them at the moment, thus making self-righteousness much easier --
and less conspicuous.

THEREFORE, we find ourselves at the point described in today's New York Times:

A new edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is missing something.

Throughout the book — 219 times in all — the word “nigger” is replaced by “slave,” a substitution that was made by NewSouth Books, a publisher based in Alabama, which plans to release the edition in February.

Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, approached the publisher with the idea in July. Mr. Gribben said Tuesday that he had been teaching Mark Twain for decades and always hesitated before reading aloud the common racial epithet, which is used liberally in the book, a reflection of social attitudes in the mid-19th century.

“I found myself right out of graduate school at Berkeley not wanting to pronounce that word when I was teaching either ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or ‘Tom Sawyer,’ ” he said. “And I don’t think I’m alone.”

Mr. Gribben, who combined “Huckleberry Finn” with “Tom Sawyer” in a single volume and also supplied an introduction, said he worried that “Huckleberry Finn” had fallen off reading lists, and wanted to offer an edition that is not for scholars, but for younger people and general readers.

“I’m by no means sanitizing Mark Twain,” Mr. Gribben said. “The sharp social critiques are in there. The humor is intact. I just had the idea to get us away from obsessing about this one word, and just let the stories stand alone.” (The book also substitutes “Indian” for “injun.”)

Since the publisher discussed plans for the book this week with Publishers Weekly, it has been “assaulted” with negative e-mails and phone calls, said Suzanne La Rosa, the co-founder and publisher of NewSouth Books.

“We didn’t undertake this lightly,” Ms. La Rosa said. “If our publication fosters good discussion about how language affects learning and certainly the nature of censorship, then difficult as it is likely to be, it’s a good thing.”

I AM SO HAPPY that no one took it lightly when setting out to bring us one step closer to the information-management practices of an Orwellian dystopia. Maybe a long face is a moral disinfectant, after all.

Or maybe we're all just as squeamish as we are stupid and morally bankrupt. Or, perhaps, so open-minded that all our brains have fallen out.

I eagerly await Winston Smith's Wikipedia edits. "Nigger," you see, always has been "nigga," and it's just a term of endearment between African-Americans in the 'hood. White people aren't allowed to say it because it's, like, a fraternity rule or something.

And it's only a rumor (started by socialists or something, surely) that a society that can't look ugly in the face only grows all the more grotesque in due time.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

ESPN rolls out IneligibleCam for Auburn games?


Good evening, I'm Tank McNamara with tonight's norts spews.

ESPN reports the NCAA is investigating Auburn's Heisman contender, Cam Newton, amid reports that a representative of the hotshot quarterback was shopping his services to Southeastern Conference football programs for a six-figure fee out of junior college.

According to the cable network's incendiary report:

Former Mississippi State quarterback John Bond told ESPN.com a teammate of Bond's at Mississippi State in the early 1980s contacted him soon after Newton's official visit to Mississippi State during the Ole Miss game in December, and said he was representing Newton.

"He said it would take some cash to get Cam," Bond said. "I called our athletic director, Greg Byrne, and he took it from there. That was pretty much it."

Multiple sources told ESPN.com that Mississippi State called the SEC office with Bond's information shortly after he brought it to the attention of the school.

Sources told ESPN.com the former teammate is Kenny Rogers, who played at Mississippi State from 1982 to '85. Rogers operates a Chicago-based company called Elite Football Preparation, which holds camps in Chicago, Alabama and Mississippi. A Lexis search for that business lists Kenneth Rogers as the contact and his title as "agent." A Birmingham News story from 2008 said Elite Football Preparation "matches high school athletes with college programs."

Bond said the former teammate told him other schools had already offered $200,000, but since Newton really liked Mississippi State and had a relationship with head coach Dan Mullen dating to when both were at Florida, Mississippi State could get him for $180,000.

"I have no agenda other than protecting Mississippi State," Bond said. "We've done what we were supposed to do from the very beginning. Mississippi State has done nothing wrong, and I've done nothing wrong. It's been handed off to the NCAA, and it's in their hands now. I don't know what happened at Auburn. I don't know why he went to Auburn. That's not my concern. My concern is Mississippi State and making sure this doesn't cause us any trouble."

Bond said an NCAA investigator came to Mississippi to meet with him in early September, as well as with Mississippi State officials.

When interviewed by ESPN.com Thursday at the family's home in Atlanta, Cecil Newton, Cam's father, denied any wrongdoing.

"If Rogers tried to solicit money from Mississippi State, he did it on his own, without our knowledge," Cecil Newton said.

Cecil Newton said he first met Rogers two years ago, when Cam Newton left Florida. He said he talked to Rogers on several occasions to find out more about Mississippi State, but never met Rogers until Cam Newton's official visit to Starkville, Miss.

Cecil Newton said the family received a letter from the NCAA "about a month ago" asking for financial statements. He said he submitted bank statements and records for the church where he is pastor, Holy Zion Center of Deliverance in Newnan, Ga., along with other records.
REACTION IS coming fast and furious from SEC fans about the NCAA's "pay for play" investigation of Newton.

Now, sports fans, here's a brief sampling of the conference buzz:

*Mississippi State issued a press release today saying "We didn't do it. We just ratted 'em out."

*From Alabama came just this Twitter update: "ROFLMAO."

*Elsewhere across the state of Alabama, hundreds of thousands of single gunshots rang out today, followed by an equal number of soft thuds. Utter silence followed the last of the reports, lasting a few seconds. Then . . . hysterical laughter and cries of "ROLL, TIDE!"

Sketchy eyewitness reports from before the shooting began mentioned whimpering Auburn fans and threats to "end it all." Crews are on the scene across the land of red clay and black teeth, and we expect breaking-news updates momentarily on what exactly has happened there.

*
At Auburn University itself, meantime, just one brief Facebook status update on the official Tigers/Plainsmen/War Eagle fan page: "God is dead. Life is pointless. Goodbye."

Calls to the university's sports-information department have not been returned. Also, there has been no answer at any Auburn phone extension since the ESPN report hit the Internet this afternoon.

* At LSU, fans were apoplectic at the possibility the Tigers might yet play for the SEC championship. Tiger fan boards in cyberspace were swamped with the same message, posted thousands of times by thousands of LSU fans: "G**DAMN THAT LUCKY SOB LES MILES!"

This just in . . . Baton Rouge police are responding to reports of rioting outside Tiger Stadium by rope-toting mobs clad in purple and gold.

Film at 11.