The War Eagle Reader

Happy Father's Day!

Enjoy!

Seven thoughts on Auburn men’s basketball 2023-2024 1. I'm not sure when I realized the 2023-2024 Tigers were my favorite Auburn men's basketball team ever. Maybe about the time Johni Broome -- with his team clinging to a 3-point lead on the road and less than 7 minutes to play in a must-win game -- threw a laser-guided one-handed dime out of the pos...

It wasn’t a joke. It was a promise. And his friends believed him.

“If Marine Corps Major Clifton C. Williams Jr. had been the first astronaut to land on the moon, the first human words ever spoken there would have been ‘War Eagle.’”

The War Eagle Almost Landed » Auburn Engineer It wasn’t a joke. It was a promise.

Former Auburn football star got acting start as world’s premiere Burt Reynolds lookalike "There's, like, 15 girls there and I'm thinking that I've walked into something here that I might not be able to back away from."

50 YEARS AGO TODAY.

HE NEEDED THE MONEY. AUBURN NEEDED THE THRILL.

Streaking at Auburn, 1974 He needed the money. Auburn needed the thrill.

Happy Valentine's Day from the 1980 Aubie Calendar.

Folks are raising funds to feed the camp-out kids getting in line early for Kentucky game on Sat 2/17. Remaining proceeds will be donated to the Bruce Pearl Family Foundation's AUTLIVE cancer prevention and detection initiative.

FEED THE JUNGLE & BEAT CANCER, organized by A M We are raising money to help feed Auburn students who are getting in line early for the basketball… A M needs your support for FEED THE JUNGLE & BEAT CANCER

I took this at the 2017 Georgia game. I remember the look. Rest In Peace, Terry Terrific. War Eagle.

Learn the story of football's original houndstooth hero here:

https://www.thewareaglereader.com/2013/03/shug-jordans-houndstooth-hat-prized-posession-of-former-auburn-coed-who-caught-it-after-69-iron-bowl-claims-it-predates-bears/

1973 Sigma Chi Derby Day.

Here's my Girl Scout hitting up the Athletics Dept. eight years ago. THE MINT-ACLE IN JORDAN-HARE. Hope we have Samoa moments like that.

Those mid-70s Auburn Cheerleaders got after it...

11-TIME NATIONAL CHAMP

Pat Sullivan. Morganna the Kissing Bandit, or at least a Morganna the Kissing Bandit impersonator, and her over-sized shakers… what a fun, perfectly mid-80s night it must have been for members of the Northwest Georgia Auburn Club.

I was down here. Not at the game, but Grandmama's, Lee Drive. I'd been to '87 and '88. In '88, Mom got some tickets from one of her friends, a bigwig at CBS. Someone called and offered her $300 a piece. She probably would have sold them had they called back.

What I'm trying to say is — there no way a 5th grader was going to get into '89. Not that one. I was 10. I knew the significance: FIRST TIME IN AUBURN. Huge... huge. It took a little to understand the significance of the significance. But you felt it.

Dad and I drove down from Birmingham the night before. I journal'ed about it that day in school and later included it in a story I wrote that ended with me having powers like Jeff Bridges in Star Man.

We came 65 / 85. We rolled into downtown around 7 at night. There's the clock tower glow, the huge hair, the jackets... it was bangin'. I sat outside on the window of the Lincoln Town Car, we were going so slow, blaring The New Kids on the Block's "Hangin' Tough."

"We ain't gonna give anybody any SLACK!" — Slack. Like Reggie Slack.

God, it was awesome...

Dad and Russ, my uncle, got the tickets. There is a picture of us I just found, right before they left: Russ, Cousins Josh (making this awesome face) and Jenny, Dad and me. I'm decked out in face paint, Braveheart-style, and one of the two Auburn hats that I would occasionally sleep and even shower in, and wearing Auburn boxer shorts outside of my sweatpants, with a paper shaker, and we've got some sort of giant "Beat Bama" sign on a picket — all to watch it on T.V.! The way Dad looks in that picture is the way he still looks to me, the way he will always look to me.

Dad and Russ take off. Hours go by.

It came on. It... IT.

I remember being down at half time, going outside, my soul gasping, throwing the football, throwing it, throwing it, throwing it, throwing it to Josh... touchdown, touchdown... it was like, my body was praying. Dye hard. Slack attack. Slack, Wright, Slack, Wright, Slack, Wasden. Believe! No doubt! Believe! I was trying to become one with the air and the trees and the grass and sound and light and put myself there, the spiritual Flubber gas for an Auburn miracle. The New Kids helped.

"... and if you try to keep us down we're gonna come right back."

We come back. Of course we come back. We hold on. Of course we hold on. Slack, Danley, Joseph, Wasden, Riggins, Ogletree, all of them.

There's something, like, a minute left. We're going to win. Grandaddy gets up from the recliner. I remember watching him walk down the hall.

He comes back with an arm full of toilet paper and a smile on his face, like he's watching us open Christmas presents.

"Let's go..."

We hit Toomer's. It's a ball pit. It's Disney World. Emotional apocalypse.

Where are Dad and Russ? War Eagle! We've got to find them! War Eagle! Haaaa!! Oh God... War Eagle!

No one else remembers this, but I swear... I heard, "War Eagle! Hey, War Eagle!', and there are Dad and Russ up on a light pole, on Magnolia, right at the corner, and that's how we found them.

God cares about football.

'Bout that time...