Sunshine Pumping is Lame but Being Boring is So Much Worse
It's going to be a long season made longer if you keep playing the same single note
If I had a dollar for every instance of “We are not a good basketball team” I’ve encountered so far this season, I bet I’d have enough money to correct the lingering effects of my third back surgery two summers ago and my left foot wouldn’t be numb or in pain anymore. As it turns out, my eyeballs are the body parts I’m now losing sleep over due to them rolling so far back into my head they’re about to pop out. And yes, I’ve checked Twitter, so I own at least 50% of this problem. Old habits die harder when you keep giving them CPR.
As I write this, Auburn has just lost to Georgia (in Athens) 76-64. Not a great night. 11-3 (1-1) in the first week of the new year just isn’t a great feeling. It certainly stings to lose to, in order, Georgia, Mike White, and an away crowd. Personally, I was happy that we finished off Florida at home last week—and I would be happier with an undefeated home record—but maybe I’m not the right kind of fan. As it turns out, I don’t know what the right kind of fan is. What I do know is that fan probably doesn’t live on the internet, where nuance is for nerds and overreaction and melodrama get the engagement.
Let me try to make this as simple (and believe it or not as painless) as possible, because this has been brewing in my brain ever since our struggles started in the non-conference run we had earlier in the season, and tonight feels like a good time to lay this out before the caffeine wears off.
Two things can be true at once. First, it’s okay to admit that we’re not playing our best basketball this season. In fact, we’re playing some pretty crappy basketball this season. Go ahead: try saying that out loud. It’s kind of freeing. Do that first.
It was always going to be difficult to bounce back (I hate myself) after last season, which saw us hang a league banner after an incredibly arduous run brought to you by two of the best players in school history who are also making waves in the NBA right now. If that hasn’t sunk in yet, then you will continue to have a long and nauseating experience watching this team for the remainder of the season. I mean, aren’t you still a little bit exhausted from last season? I know I am, but that also might be from Covid and the date I went on a few months back with a shameless Gonzaga fan.
Second, it is utterly boring if your only talking point is “We’re not a good basketball team.” Yeah, we’re aware of that. We were aware of that the first 50 times you tweeted it or texted it or posted it in Slack or on the message boards or talked about it at work or at a bar or at a holiday dinner with your family. Auburn is not great as a basketball team this year. We get it. But that seems to be the only talking point memo that went out about a month ago.
I’m not suggesting there’s anything super warm and fuzzy to look forward to the rest of the season. This might be as good as it gets for us and we’ll be lucky to go .500 in conference play and make a run in the SEC Tournament. Frankly, I would be fine with that. I don’t know what else you expect me to do as a fan of a program that, yes, should be better than this, and well, isn’t. There’s literally nothing I can say and no mentality or “vibe” I can “send up” that’s going to make Wendell Green a better point guard, Johni Broome a better ball handler, Chance Westry 100% healthy, or Bruce Pearl less stubborn as a coach when it comes to his offense sometimes.
But this sport is dynamic. Teams crash. Players get injured. Dark horses emerge. Teams go on weird runs. It’s January 4th. I will absolutely not predict that Auburn is going to turn things around in a few weeks and figure something out. But that could happen, because that’s just how this sport goes. And that’s not accounting for how the rest of the league might fare. It’s not looking promising for Auburn right now, yes, but it is still early. That’s the only certainty. You can acknowledge that and still be considered a serious fan. We literally cannot predict how this season went before it’s even ended—or hell, before it’s even a quarter of the way complete. We are incapable of that feat and no Marvel movie can change that.
Not to mention, as cliché and uninformed as this sounds, no two seasons are identical, even for the blue bloods, and in case you were wondering, March Madness remains the cruel, cruel, well…you know…equalizer. And in case I haven’t screamed it loudly enough from my balcony, we—that’s right, Auburn—lost two NBA first round draft pick players—one of which was possibly one of the best pure shooters I’ve ever seen, and at the freshman level, no less. I for one am grateful to be able to relax a bit without a giant target on our back, whether it’s because of a number one ranking or undefeated record or double-figure winning streak on the line. But again, maybe I’m not the right kind of fan.
Oh, and just as a fun additional note, let’s face it—if nothing else, we’re going to reap the other side of the “you just lost” memes this season. That was always going to happen eventually. We ought to be able to laugh at that, and I imagine most of us can and will. A spoon full of sugar, etc.
Just about the only thing you can do right now as a fan is pace yourself, because if you’ve decided that your only role is to call out “recent basketball fans” on your timeline, you are going to feel empty long before the end of the season. On the other hand, if you’ve decided that your only role is to show how shamelessly you can crap all over this team, you’re just as bad as any sunshine pumper on the internet or in your IRL social circles—I’ll let you decide whether or not, in your imagination, dear reader, they wear sunglasses in their profile pics and/or have more than three numbers behind their username.
I am not telling you how to be a fan and I’m certainly not going to assign how much I think you care or should care about any Auburn sport, not just basketball. You have every right to express your fandom however you’d like. And believe it or not, I’m trying not to sound preachy. I just get tired of hearing the same thing over and over and over and over again across multiple sports. The point is, move on. You’ve given your forecast, great. Now please offer us something else—what your expectations might be, what situations could and maybe should change within the season before we get to March, just anything else.
And before you ask me if I’m without sin, trust me—I’m not. I’m leaning more towards turning into Eeyore lately with every ball we carelessly turn over and every (seemingly) easy scoring opportunity we miss—especially as other teams in our league seem to not only look unstoppable, but appear poised for deep postseason runs in both our conference tournament and the big dance. That second part in particular makes me physically ill every time I think about it. And yeah, it hurts to come off a season where we did all the smack talking only to become the latest recipients of it, but that’s college basketball, baby. Granny Tiger sits courtside every home game and has endured over 40 years of this roller coaster (as multiple outlets have now pointed out in the last year). You can handle one bad Bruce Pearl season.
But you’re not brave or edgy or smart in some Moneyball way for only being an incessant curmudgeon and you’re not noble or rebellious for only being an orange and blue Pollyanna. You’re just boring, and the college basketball season is too long for that. Pace yourself and figure out how you can reconcile with whatever this season is going to be, because right now we’re two games into conference play and it seems like a lot of people have already picked one of those two roles as their primary personality. Neither of them are that captivating and they are certainly not original.