It’s not lost on me that after 13 years, Alabama finally has their Cam Newton in Brandon Miller, who did nothing wrong! Whether he’s legally responsible for anything that happened is for the proper authorities to figure out. Frankly, I don’t care about that aspect of this situation because it’s above my paygrade.
And I don’t mean that I don’t care that someone was murdered. Who would be so heartless as to not care about that? Well now that you mention it, you might have been told exactly that—that only Alabama fans have the heart to care about a murder victim—and this is definitely not about the rivalry or keeping a coach whose contract was just extended or about having the best team in the country at all. So, I don’t know, I suppose by those rules we are pretty heartless. Shame on us. You’re also going to be told for the next eight days that you can’t simultaneously care about a tragedy where a young woman was murdered and ask questions about how much a program knew about the situation in regards to any of its student athletes being present or involved.
“Did you even read the article, you stupid f****** Barner?”
Yes, you mean the article accessible to anyone with a pulse? The details that Nate Oats shoulder shrugged thoughts and prayers about? That article? Did you want me to read that? Was there more? Was there a paywall or something? Was it supposed to take longer than five minutes? Did you want a book report on it?
Not that I even need to “read the article” because Alabama fans have already told me what I care about: that I simply “don’t want to see a freshman play any more basketball games,” that I “want to ruin a freshman’s life when he did nothing wrong,” and that I “care more about how a gun was delivered to its rightful owner by a freshman who was just being a good friend and knew absolutely nothing about what situation might be evolving than the actual murder that was committed.”
Please. None of that is true. I don’t want to see any Alabama players play any more basketball games this season simply by virtue of them being Alabama players. Did you want me to wish they played more SEC Tournament or March Madness games than we do? That whole “It just means more” thing? My hate of my SEC rival transcends any box you try to fit me in. I’m equal-opportunity-hater. I would be delighted if it was discovered that half of Alabama’s scholarship players this season were bag-manned by Nate Oats himself, not that anyone else would care about that in 2023. Hell, extend that to the entire conference. But that’s silly. To think that any fan base would be giddy about player suspensions involving shady dealings with college athletes. Pfft.
No, the only thing I care about is consistency. And as a fan of a basketball program whose coach has been slandered every which way for years—sometimes regarding student athletes who were in the “wrong spot at the wrong time”—my heavens, I’m astonished that the fan base who engineered the “Scam Newton” campaign over a decade ago and have kept the gears turning on the “Bruce is a fat cheater” machine aren’t taking a few minutes today to reflect. To reflect upon how they now find themselves in an almost identical situation as we once did in another sport and have in recent years in the same sport. To reflect upon how they have more in common with us than they ever wished to be true. To reflect most of all upon the fact that their coach has been riding the wave of the best player in the nation—lightning in a bottle—and has recently had to stumble through multiple press conferences to defend keeping him eligible. He now faces navigating this legendary storm without crashing the ship that would bring his university the ultimate glory.
Maybe instead of calling Ray Lewis, Nate Oats should’ve called Gene Chizik.
“Imagine comparing Brandon Miller (who did nothing wrong!) to Cam Newton you f****** idiot Barner.”
Imagine, I will, because according to your own chronically online fan base, Bama Basketball Fan, and every legal expert in the country, Brandon Miller (louder this time!) “did nothing wrong.” I tend to agree with them on that score, in case you haven’t actually been reading any of this so far. So I’m not comparing murder (because Brandon Miller, who did nothing wrong, didn’t commit murder, wasn’t an accessory to murder, and also did nothing wrong) to whatever it is that Cam Newton himself did back in 2009-2010. That’s all it boils down to. I’m simply comparing the best basketball player in the nation on the best basketball team in the nation who was at the “wrong spot at the wrong time” with the best football player in the nation on the best football team in the nation who was, well, remind me again what he was accused of doing while he was at Auburn? Not his dad, not his friends, not his coaches, not any agents, not Urban Meyer or Dan Mullen, and not at Blinn and not at Florida: Him. He. His. Auburn student athlete Cam Newton, who was only about a year older at the time than Brandon Miller—who did nothing wrong—is now.
But those details don’t matter anyway, right? We’re talking about the audacity anyone would have to wonder if certain events would affect a student athlete’s tenure on a college sports team. That’s what’s wrong with today’s rivalry. That’s it. Shame on everyone, but especially us Barners with no dignity and with “zero self-awareness.”
While we’re at it, throw “a freshman” Sharife Cooper in there since we’re talking about basketball, after all. It would be totally wrong for an opposing fan base to take pleasure in seeing a freshman not be able to play any more basketball games, or to “ruin a freshman’s life when he did nothing wrong.” Right? Aren’t those the new rules we’re playing by as of five minutes ago?
If those rules include, “You will defend your star student athlete, regardless of what he or she did, no matter the cost, whenever controversy strikes,” and “You will do this tenfold during a national title run,” and “You will strike hard at the online heart of anyone who lobs questions and criticisms and opinions at you, regardless of their merit” then sign me up. I don’t speak for the entire fan base, but I accept your terms. In the words of our Jell-O Jiggler-in-Chief, “Not a joke!”
What’s certainly not a joke is what we actually have to reconcile with today: a coach who garners less outrage over what he did or didn’t know or fully disclose regarding the details of a murder where one of his players was absolutely involved and possibly several others were witnesses or bystanders—and the manner in which he talked about these things—than a coach who took his players to Israel where some of them came forward and were dunked in the Jordan River. And if that run-on sentence bothers you, I apologize for not wearing an ugly plaid jacket while typing it. That appears to be the get-out-of-jail-free card. College basketball coaches, take note! If you “knew about that” and you wear ugly plaid jackets, you’re in the clear.
You will be told that you cannot criticize Nate Oats because he’s “already talked about this before,” and “knew about that,” therefore his callous, uninterested, or misinformed tone or attitude at a press conference is simply because…“C’mon guys, this is old news.” This coach, who claims you “[c]an’t control everything everybody does outside of practice” and acknowledges that sometimes, “[c]ollege kids are out.” Why didn’t any Auburn coaches ever think of that? Let’s stop and heap due praise on how those answers suffice for a fan base, a fan base who’s gone all-in, if you will, on making sure their program is allowed to continue its campaign of “joyless murderball.” It’s not bad taste—they wrote that before the murder! I wonder if Nick Saban could get away with dusting off his hands and saying, “I don’t have any power over these guys in their non-practice lives during football season. I don’t tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing. I don’t encourage them to avoid certain situations outside of football. Their lives outside of practice have nothing to do with the results I want—nay, expect—on the field.” That ensuing chill you’d feel would be coming from the bowels of the underworld as the devil polished his skates.
But hypotheticals don’t really matter, and neither does speculation, because I am not a lawyer, and I missed the train on getting that coveted online law degree everyone over at Gump Twitter, Inc. keeps talking about. No, at the end of the day, what we end up with is, finally, some peace, which is much better. We can finally come together across rivalry lines and admire how fervently Bama fans are defending their star player as he leads his team to an SEC Championship and a National Championship. The imitation game should be flattering to all of us. Twitter back in the 2010s wasn’t nearly what it is today, but kudos to those diligent Crimson-clad fans for being online at the time and taking notes on how this kind of thing is handled…then just biding their time. We can come together and acknowledge that Brandon Miller did nothing wrong during his one-and-done season at Alabama just like Cam Newton did nothing wrong during his one-and-done season at Auburn—we can’t control everything everybody does outside of practice! We as Auburn fans must repent for our crime of trying to “ruin a college athlete’s life” or, for some of us, wondering if a college athlete “ever plays another college game.” This college athlete—this freshman—did nothing wrong. He was already cleared of any illegal activity. Nate Oats and Alabama “knew about that.” “College kids are out.” Nate Oats did nothing wrong, either. Why would a university extend a coach’s contract if he had done anything wrong? Plus, the plaid jacket! The white helmets! The blue collar nature of it all! These are working-class problems, you elite, self-righteous Barner scum.
There’s nothing to see here anymore, so let’s put this matter to bed. Like Cam Newton before the Georgia game, Brandon Miller, who did not one thing wrong and in fact is just a better person than Cam Newton, you f******* dumb idiot, will get his decibel-breaking ovation at Coleman when his name is announced in the lineup, and you’ll just have to sit there and take it, you stupid, jealous, hatin’, bitter Barners. Surely nobody on that side would brag online about Brandon Miller, who did nothing wrong, being eligible, right? Bragging about eligibility in light of…all this?! The horror! The insensitivity! No matter. We’ll be able to endure it with grace, for now that our trials and tribulations are the same, we are finally, after all these years, one unified state of sports. That, or we’re all hypocrites.