sec · football
Summoning orders regarding twelve draft mules and their handlers for failure to report to the Auburn auxiliary logistics station
A Tuesday survey of the campus grounds reveals an alarming surplus of soft comforts and a complete disregard for the mule-and-wagon discipline of yesteryear.
The autumn air in Lee County carries the faint, unmistakable aroma of processed energy drinks and heated folding chairs, which is to say that the modern college football enterprise has drifted about as far from the principles of General Douglas MacArthur as a hay-rake from a modern carburetor. Walking the grounds on a Tuesday morning offers a dismal preview of what passes for preparation these days. Where one might reasonably expect to find a half-dozen durable mules tethered to a stout hitching post, nursing lukewarm water from a zinc bucket while the offensive line practices its shoulder blocks against an unpainted cedar stump, we instead find charter buses idling with their air conditioners hissing like pampered adders. The press box, once a sturdy wooden aerie where a man could balance a tin cup of chicory on his knee and dodge the occasional hornet, has been converted into a glass-enclosed incubator complete with high-speed internet cables and padded swivel stools. It is enough to make a fellow long for the hard-packed clay roads of 1934, when a team traveled with four head of livestock, six sacks of seed oats, and zero delusions about wide-open spread formations. A boy today wouldn't know what to do with a double-bit axe if it bit him on the shin, yet he expects us to marvel at his pre-snap motion. Over by the intramural fields, the band was attempting to work through a march while balancing hydration packs that look like surgical implements. One naturally wonders how a program expects to secure a conference victory when the logistics chain relies entirely on refrigerated semi-trailers rather than a trusty wagon bed loaded with spare singletrees and salt pork. The radio dial on the truck ride over was clogged with idle chatter about tempo and spacing, terms that would have earned a corporal a week of extra guard duty back when the forward pass was treated with the suspicion it richly deserved. We are breeding a generation of athletes who have never had to patch a harness strap in the driving rain or sleep under a tarpaulin with their cleats tied to their wrists for safekeeping. Instead, they recline in plush lounge areas beneath the stadium bowl, discussing routes that require five distinct receivers to gallop aimlessly across open acreage like unbranded yearlings. It is a soft, frictionless existence that breeds nothing but disappointment when November winds finally arrive to test the mettle of a program. Therefore, as this Tuesday inspection concludes without a single mule having been watered or a single wagon axle greased, it becomes necessary to address the root cause of this administrative rot. Consequently, this office formally demands the immediate court-martial of any offensive coordinator utilizing five-out receiver sets, ordering their dishonorable discharge to the intramural fields, or calling for a formal return to the single-wing formation by executive decree.