Yeezus

May 16th, 2014 at 4:14 PM ^

I went there for the Iron Bowl last year.  They put up a statue of Cam Newton outside their stadium.  They are capable of claiming / doing ANYTHING.  

Wu

May 16th, 2014 at 4:22 PM ^

However, I don't see a problem with a Cam statue. He's one of the two best players they've ever had, ranking behind Bo in my book probably. Sure he took money and the NCAA made it go away because the NCAA is the devil, but everyone takes money. It didn't tarnish what he did on the field, which was ridiculous at times. Just my two cents though.

Wu

May 16th, 2014 at 4:54 PM ^

In a world where he led the team to an undefeated season with a one-man comeback against Alabama, a national championship, and a Heisman. Also a season where he broke numerous conference and school records. And some national records. But that's just me.

jtmc33

May 16th, 2014 at 5:24 PM ^

The statue wasn't in celebration of his success on the field... it's in celebration of Auburn out-bidding Mississippi State for his services.

The placque reads:  "In honor of Auburn's success in paying for Reverand Newton's brand new church when Miss. St. only offered to pave the old church's driveway."

 

Wolverine Devotee

May 16th, 2014 at 4:36 PM ^

Nobody selected Auburn as their MNC in 2004.

Despite their new claims being a joke, they were actually selected by someone.

  • 1913- Billingsley Report
  • 1983- Billingsley, College Football Researchers, New York Times, Sagarin
  • 1993- National Championship Foundation

If Michigan wanted to do this, they could claim 1925, 1926, 1964, 1973 and 1985.

M-Dog

May 16th, 2014 at 8:49 PM ^

Yes.  If you want to beat the SEC you gotta compete like the SEC.

They claim a bunch of paper NC's, you claim a bunch of paper NC's.  They have a couple of bagmen, you have a couple of bagmen.  We can totally do this.

 

TheLastHarbaugh

May 16th, 2014 at 4:33 PM ^

The state of Alabama seems to be confused as to what a National Championship is, but I guess that's to be expected seeing as they aren't deep fried, covered in grease, or on a stick.

bluewoody

May 16th, 2014 at 4:37 PM ^

Delusional pageant moms come from Alabama. This whole revisionist sports history is laughable. I think Alabama and Auburn are perfect for one another. I think Shooter McGavin was right, "damn those people, can't they go back to their shanties..."

LSAClassOf2000

May 16th, 2014 at 4:59 PM ^

I suppose that there are two questions that now arise if they are going to claim the 1993 championship:

1) Did they have to carjack Florida State to manage this?

2) Does it mean that Pat Dye can rest just that much easier?

OK, maybe three...

3) Is this just a ploy to give Terry Bowden another thing to discuss?

 

Meeechigan

May 16th, 2014 at 5:59 PM ^

Three of MSU's "national championships" are claimed when their team was ranked 3 and 4.  Their coaches wiki page does not even list them because they are so ridiculous.  Teams seem to do this more and more. 

We should claim the two years for Bo and say he won those as national championships.

markusr2007

May 16th, 2014 at 7:11 PM ^

Texas (11-0) lost to Georgia (Cotton Bowl) by 1 pt.

Auburn was extremely fortunate to escape Michigan in the 1984 Sugar Bowl  - by a butt hair (by Al Del Greco's butthair to be precise) 9-7.

1983 Miami (FL) (10-1) had an almost identical season to Auburn (10-1). They lost badly to Florida (by 25 pts) in season opener. Then beat Nebraska in Orange Bowl by lousy point.

Except there is one gigantic difference between Auburn and Miami's season:

Nebraska was 12-0 and ranked No. 1 all year in every single game it played.

Auburn's Sugar Bowl opponent Michigan was 9-2 and ranked 8th.

Auburn, your '83 wishbone offense was cool, but your '83 MNC argument is invalid. 

 

markusr2007

May 16th, 2014 at 7:16 PM ^

is another reason why Miami (FL) (No. 5) blew their doors off in the rankings after the Hurricanes beat Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.

Auburn struggled to beat a team (Michigan) who had lost by 1 pt to Washington (8-4) and by 10 pts to Illinois (10-1, who got shellacked 45-9 to UCLA in Rose Bowl). 

 

gwkrlghl

May 16th, 2014 at 7:14 PM ^

If everyone else is going to claim stupid "national titles" like A&M, Auburn, etc. have done recently, we might as well claim the 5 or 6 fake ones we have too. That'd put us up to 16 or 17 I believe

Roc Blue in the Lou

May 16th, 2014 at 11:07 PM ^

According to sources, Auburn also claims two superbolw trophies from the 90's and, thanks to a glich in the space-time continuum, Cam Newton took MVP honors in both games.  

TheNema

May 17th, 2014 at 3:04 AM ^

You guys know Michigan has some sketchy national title claims from way back when, right? Particularly 1947. Obviously not THIS bad, but we can only talk so much unless you can say Michigan's oft-cited national title claim is a little ludicrous.

JayMo4

May 17th, 2014 at 10:40 AM ^

"1993. You know, the year they were banned from a bowl as well as a TELEVISION ban.

This would be like ohio claiming the 2012 MNC."

 

Living here, they kind of do.  There are t-shirts I've seen around that advertise them as "The real national champions" and list all the top teams in order of record where it shows them on top at 12-0 followed by Alabama at 13-1, Notre Dame 12-1 and so on.

I was at a sports bar last night full of memorabilia from all the local pro and college teams, as is typical.  But the single biggest thing was a blown up newspaper article the size of half a friggin' wall where the headline read something along the lines of 2012 OSU being the only undefeated team in college football.

 

You'll get the occasional rational OSU fan that will admit Alabama was probably the better team.  But I'm not sure I've heard a single one of them say that they didn't deserve a title because of the sanctions.

JayMo4

May 17th, 2014 at 10:49 AM ^

As for Auburn claiming the titles, I don't mind.  

For starters, pretty much every program will claim as many titles as possible.  We certainly claim a few that fans of other programs dispute.  Notre Dame is another great example.  Alabama used to be notorious for it before leaving no doubt on these recent few.

But we haven't had a playoff or even a BCS for most of college football history.  Any time you have two teams with the same record and few if any common opponents, to me it never seemed right to award one the outright title and the other just a #2 finish purely because both polls agreed.  For example, why is Nebraska a split champ for 1997 but Penn State doesn't get to claim 1994?  It's not because of record, it's not because of bowl results.  It's because Penn State was voted #2 in two subjective polls and Nebraska managed to grab a #1 vote in one of the two polls.  In my opinion, being that they never lost a game I think PSU has every right to call themselves national champions for that year if they want.  Years where every team finishes with one loss, it becomes even blurrier I think.

 

So claim whatever titles you want.  There was no playoff and most years not even a #1 vs #2 game for most of CFB's history.  Why shouldn't an undefeated Michigan team claim 1947 for example?  I'm calling it ours.

bronxblue

May 17th, 2014 at 1:18 PM ^

Let them claim what they want; the court of public opinion basically ignores most of these MNC claims, and at some point you are just making a stink for the alumni and marketing departments.