To the students of Auburn University: Auburn sucks. We don’t like your university or your city. In fact, we are against all cities whose only claims to fame are, “We’re home to a university that almost won a national championship two years ago,” and, “We’re close to Opelika, which is cool because they have a Wal-Mart!” In all fairness, we should be able to provide better reasons why we don’t like your city. It’s just hard for us to differentiate between all the one-stoplight interstate towns we have visited. We are also uniformly against all universities who have a schizophrenic mascot problem. Honestly, are you the War Eagles, the Plainsmen or the Tigers? We hope you’ll ultimately choose the Tigers. After all, we always wanted an inferior stepchild to kick around at our leisure. There has been much debate at LSU regarding our status as the state’s flagship university. You should be glad that the University of Alabama is in the same state, so there’s no debate regarding Alabama’s top state school. All kidding aside, we’d like to applaud your academic endeavors. As The New York Times outlined in detail July 13, you have solved the problem of athletes making grades high enough to stay eligible. Good thing you have people like professor Thomas Petee, who reportedly taught “directed-reading classes” and gave high grades to athletes for “sociology and criminology courses that required no attendance and little work.” It’s a wonder that we will even be able to field a team Saturday that can compete with yours. After all, our players have to worry about things like “studying” and “going to class” when they are not on the field. However, we do think our alumni are comparable. Take LSU alumnus Shaquille O’Neal and Auburn alumnus Charles Barkley as an example. Both are men of conviction who believe the things they say. O’Neal, for instance, has always stated his goal to work in law enforcement and was deputized as a reserve officer in the Miami Beach Police Department. Shortly thereafter, O’Neal witnessed a hate crime, tracked down the criminal and played an integral part in his arrest. Much in the same way, Barkley has also proven he is a man of his word, especially when he famously said, “I am not a role model.” He proved it when he spat on a 9-year-old girl during a game in Philadelphia during the 1991-1992 season. So here’s to our gridiron match-up Saturday. Just don’t forget, we’re better than you.
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