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Ignatius J. Reilly
(68.217.65.201) on 11/28/2003 - 11:06 a.m. says: ( 9 views
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"Rants, Schemes, and Ploys re: recent events"
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(EDITED BY AUTHOR: 11/28/2003 - 12:47 p.m.) I guess the Auburn football program has really arrived. I walk out into my rain-soaked driveway in Atlanta to retrieve the AJC, whose sports page on the eve of the Tech v. UGa. game has as much ink devoted to the Auburn travesty as to the big game on the Flats. Mark Bradley, as linked below, takes on David Housel, and Tony Barnhart whips up on William Walker. Both articles are routs on the level of any of the last six games coached by King Jackie Sherrill.
David Housel evokes a difficult question: is it appropriate to be fundamentally pissed off at a living, breathing perfection of the Peter Principle. To put it in terms David might use himself, is it surprising when failure results from the long-time royal scribe and court jester's promotion to commander of one of the King's armies? I think not.
David's indulgence in flowery and melodramatic prose may have cast him into some bizarre, alternate reality, but his sense of irony remains intact. His Alabama pre-game comments, which were aired in 2002 and re-broadcast last week, contain a reference to Ozymandias. David knows his literature, and this allusion is to a Shelly poem:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
David was making an analogy to the former glory of the Bama football program, but he accidentally, no doubt, engaged in self-critical analysis. I don't know about you, but I am despairing when I look upon David's recent works. On the bright side, his ill-fated November 20 voyage to the outskirts of Louisville could be the platform for a new book: Thursdays to Forget. I still think he stole the Ozymandias reference from Tiger Jack's 2000 Bama Roundtable.
Walker is equally inept, but lacks the overblown and bombastic tone of the former SID. Housel is farce; Walker is just plain sad.
When human drama flops like this fiasco has flopped, it is always tempting to blame the actors. As miserable as Walker, Housel, McWhorter, and Franklin have been in this piece, we all know the real problem is at the directorial level. Unfortunately, his production company is well funded and even better connected. Can the audience, then, really influence the quality of the production?
Perhaps this is the sort of event that can produce a sea change at the governing and operational levels of the University. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
Meanwhile, it appears that Thomas Hawley Tuberville is the greatest escape artist since Houdini. Let's hope that he is also a magician in 04. In a perfect world, Tuberville would not be the head coach of my beloved Auburn Tigers, but, as we have seen, this world is far from perfect. Given these flawed circumstances, I agree with the Louisville AD: Auburn is damned lucky to have Tuberville, particularly when one considers some possible alternatives that the ship of fools that is the Auburn administration could produce.
War Eagle and Happy Thanksgiving.
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