A Simple Reminder Written...Not Simply
One day I'll learn how to write three paragraphs and hit send
Okay, two reminders, actually.
My Instagram algorithm fed me clip from a postgame press conference last week featuring the head coach of a D-I college basketball team, and for the life of me I can’t remember which coach it was, nor can I find his quote anywhere. Daylight Saving Time has rendered me useless to the point of wondering whether I dreamed this. Even if I did, it’s noteworthy.
His team lost at home, and the opposing players danced and celebrated on the home floor afterwards, and naturally this kind of thing was always going to piss off even the most rational fans. But this coach had a different mindset about it.
(I know you’re ready to read what he said, but I want to make clear how incredibly frustrated—nay, furious—I am that I can’t find the coach in question or what he said anywhere on the internet, and it’s probably a completely obvious one like Dan Hurley or Matt Painter. I’ve tried every variation of words based on what I barely remember from the clip. Maybe I really did dream this. If you know what I’m talking about, please tell me in the comments below.)
He said something to this effect: “If you don’t want the other team to celebrate on your floor, don’t let them beat you.”
Maybe you’re reading this as an Auburn fan and you’re already over Saturday’s overtime loss at home to Alabama, or better yet, you just don’t need to be reminded of the idea at the heart of that quote up there. You already have a filing cabinet somewhere in a dark room down in the basement of the sports part of your brain in which this idea has been stored…and now you can throw all these prepositions in there, too. If so, good for you. You can stop reading. Maybe you can save for later if, heaven forbid, something like what I’m about to discuss happens to Auburn again (or to your non-Auburn team, non-Auburn fan reading this) during the Big Dance in a few weeks.
But for those of us who are, yes, still being forced to defend against our screens feeding us highlights from Saturday, just bear with me:
Did Grant Nelson deserve a technical on Saturday after he, in my opinion, rather sheepishly pulled a “Crimson Crane,” the absolutely dumbest celebration in all of sports, underneath the basket after an and-one poster dunk over Dylan Cardwell in Neville Arena? Yeah, he probably did. Maybe if he’d held it for more than one second and with some genuine pride, he would’ve gotten the tech. Regardless, ask yourself if one of your players would get away with something like that in a rivalry game on the other team’s floor without at least a whistle to review it.
Did Auburn and Bruce Pearl and everyone inside Neville Arena deserve to be upset and call for a technical? Yeah, they probably did. Ask yourself how you’d react if an opposing player you hate on a team you hate did that on your home floor. In your house. More importantly, ask yourself why calls are assessed on one end of the floor against your team but not on the other against your opponent.
Is it utterly and lobotomy-level stupid that chronically online Bama fans who rarely watch hoops have once again rewritten history to imply that somehow, we started this whole thing? Yeah, it absolutely is, and it’s just as stupid that I even noticed them. We ought to be used to this by now. I can’t believe y’all classless Barners would change the words to “Rammer Jammer” like that. Look how much y’all care. Lil bro.
But I have long been a believer in equal-opportunity horrible. That, actually, everyone here is wrong, and because it’s offsetting, we can move on.
I hate Grant Nelson, and I hate Nate Oats. I hate Mark Sears and I hate Jalen Milroe and I hate Nick Saban (just go away, dude) and I hate anyone at ESPN who graduated from Alabama. Not because of who they are as people, but because of what they represent. They represent the most obnoxious, entitled, insufferable, backwards fan base I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. I wouldn’t be an Auburn fan otherwise. You can’t hurt me with this—I’ve already told you.
And I expect Bama fans, expert-level basketball appreciators who declared in unison this week that Auburn—number one, 2024-25 Regular Season SEC Champs Auburn—would “always be little brother” (despite splitting the regular season series with a win in Tuscaloosa), to feel the same way about me and about my university. We’re only lying to ourselves—on both sides—if we pretend otherwise.1 I care, you care, they care. That’s sports.
So yeah, in my biased, warped, Barner homer opinion, Grant Nelson shouldn’t have pulled the Crimson Crane (My gosh, even typing that makes me feel like a sixth grader—are we sure this is as hardcore as Bama wants us to think? I mean, even the commentators didn’t know what to call it, which is hilarious). Yeah, Auburn had a right to be upset. Yeah, the refs should’ve made at least a call. And yeah, it irks me that Bama fans made fun of us for getting upset about it. But Grant Nelson dunked on us, and he celebrated—whether we like it or not and whether it deserved a call or not.
If you don’t want Grant Nelson to pull a Crimson Crane underneath the basket in Neville Arena, don’t let him dunk on you. Period. It’s that simple.
The fact is, in my greatest and most obvious “this goes without saying” style that everyone here has come to know and love without having to pay for it, we got to celebrate2 in Tuscaloosa last month after we beat Alabama on their home floor comfortably in regulation. It felt good. It felt great. Do you remember what that felt like, especially after last season when their lights didn’t work, and they interviewed then-Heisman-frontrunner-for-inexplicable-reasons Jalen Milroe—a football player—for half an hour while they tried to fix it? The win in Coleman last month sustained me for most of the remainder of this regular season, especially after the amateur hour we had to endure there last season. That’s how rivalries work. You win, you get to brag. You lose, you don’t. To Nate Oats and everyone else over there on February 15th, I’m sure it felt awful, even if they pretended it didn’t matter that our freshman point guard was better than the one they swiped from us. I’m sure they preferred a sweep this season or even a split where the home team won. I’m sure they preferred to win that game to catapult them to the top of the league and possibly on the way to a regular season title. I’m sure they preferred a league banner with two games to spare in one of the deepest conferences in all of college basketball history. I’m sure their fans prefer whiter teeth and undergraduate degrees and a cheaper Ozempic and for Nick Saban to stop starring in all those commercials, too.
If we get to do all that and drink deeply of the sustaining wellspring of tears it produces, then sadly, yes—Grant Baby Face Nelson gets to do the Crimson Crane after an and-one dunk in our arena, and Bama fans everywhere, even the ones who took half an online course that one time, get to gloat about it. Period. That’s the first reminder—not that you asked for it.
The second reminder—not that you needed it—is that the 2024-25 Auburn Men’s Basketball Team, who already had the most Quad 1 wins of any other team this season, also already won arguably the toughest SEC regular season championship in the history of Auburn Basketball or the SEC. And they did it two weekends ago beating Kentucky inside Rupp Arena for the first time since I was born. And they did it with two games to spare that, despite the sting from losing both, just do not matter.
If you’re a Bama fan, congratulations. You get to enjoy the win, the poster dunk, Grant Nelson’s blank stare, Bruce and Auburn players and Auburn fans being upset on Saturday, and your Crimson Crane. We’ll enjoy the banner—not that you wanted it.
The only “little brother” aspect of any of this is trying to argue about anything rational like this with these people, particularly on the internet. Have you tried it? It’s exhausting. I recommend banging your head against a concrete wall. At least that argument will end quicker and more mercifully. You could also log off, which does wonders.
Even if it was pulling that stupid pose postgame that I wish we’d just stop doing altogether so Bama would look, you know, stupid doing it.