War Eagle.
Category Archives: General
Tecmo Bo knows shoes
Nike has tackled the Tecmo Bo meme.
The shoe giant’s recently released tribute to his 1989 digital counterpart makes Bo Jackson, God’s gift to God, the first person ever awesome enough to have their 20-year-old video game character awesome enough to have his own line of shoes.
Repeat: There are Tecmo Bo shoes.
If Real Bo ever put these on, God help us all…
Filed under General
Project End Zone: Authentic, Mysterious…
Kate O’Neil’s phone has been ringing off the hook all morning with calls from Alabama area-codes, all for naught.
O’Neil is the producer for Authentic Films… just not the Authentic Films that recently partnered with the Auburn ISP Sports Network to produce “Hard Knocks: Auburn” “Auburn Football: Every Day…,” a documentary series about, that’s right, Auburn football.
“It’s a great idea for schools,” she says. “I wish we were doing it.”
So likely did any Auburn fans who checked out the Cleveland-based group’s website: the creative forces behind documentaries of people running across America and mockumentaries on film school culture could surely have crafted the stretch Hummer of football reality television – Auburn’s latest headline-hungry move in Recruiting 2.0.
Not that the Authentic Films that is on the clock can’t, it’s just that no one – O’Neil included – seems to know anything about them: the only result of a Google search for “Authentic Films” + the names of the men Auburn lists as the company’s founders is the press release from the university.
“I have no ideal who they are,” O’Neil says. “If you find out, tell me, so I can pass along the messages.”
Filed under Diversions / Investigations, General
Writers, photographers wanted
The War Eagle Reader is readying for the big time and needs your help.
If you live in Auburn – or if you don’t but thrill with enough Auburn Spirit to fake it – and if you can write (Football? Music? Food? Profiles?) or take photos or shoot video and if you would like to make some money doing it, please write ASAP to thewareaglereader@gmail.com for more details. If you can’t, but know of someone who can, please spread the word.
War Eagle.
Filed under General
TWER Salutes #21 Eltoro Freeman!
Don't lock horns with "The Bully Bull of Benjamin Russell High!" (Inspired by the archaic nicknames of Auburn football players past.)
The Montgomery Advertiser says, “AU’s Freeman goes full speed full time“
The Dothan Eagle gushes, “Eltoro Freeman standing out among Auburn linebackers“
The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer exclaims, “Auburn’s Freeman bringing energy to linebacker position“
Be his MySpace friend?
Hopefully, this fall, the solid gold hits from “The Bull” will keep coming!
Filed under General
Jason Campbell on cover of Sports Illustrated
There’s a game after the game in the NFL—former quarterback Bernie Kosar used to call it the fifth quarter—in which the starting QB is supposed to send an upbeat signal to the press and the public. Watching Campbell work the crowd at Redskins Park, you’d think he’d majored in Fifth Quarter at Auburn.
Filed under General
The 1918 Auburn Tigers vs. The Great War, Georgia Tech, Flu and Injuries
From the 1919 Glomerata (click on page images to zoom in a little):
The 1918 season record for the Tigers was 2-5.
Oct. 19 OGLETHORPE 58-0 W
Oct. 26 CAMP GREENLEAF 0-26 L
Nov. 3 at Marion 20-7 W
Nov. 9 Camp Gordon in Columbus, Ga. 6-14 L
Nov. 16 Vanderbilt at Birmingham 0-21 L
Nov. 28 at Georgia Tech 0-41 L
Dec. 7 Camp Sheridan in Montgomery 0-7 L
Notes and Fun Facts, page 134
“Mike” Coach Mike Donahue. From 1913 into 1915, Donahue’s Auburn Tigers went 22 consecutive games without a loss. In 1918, his Tigers went 2-5. Record at Auburn was 99–35–5. Later went on to coach football, baseball and tennis at LSU. As the baseball coach at LSU, Donahue was preceded by another Auburn Tiger and his former football player R.J. “Moon” Ducote in that coaching position.
“Moon” Ducote or Richard Joseph (R.J.) Ducote was a running back/guard/freestyle field goal kicker?!?! for the Tigers. In the book, “The Ghosts of Herty Field: Early Days on a Southern Gridiron” by John Stegeman, Ducote is described as using his leather helmet as a kicking tee to beat the University of Georgia team in 1916 by a final score of 3-0! Read on, Tiger fans:
In the Auburn game at Columbus, the teams rocked each other all afternoon without scoring a touchdown. Both elevens had a shot at a field goal. Bill Donnelly missed for Georgia, but “Moon” Ducote, of the Plainsmen, making use of an improvisation of his own, was successful. As he lined up to sight his place-kick, Ducote put his helmet on the ground in front of him. The ball was snapped and the holder spotted it on top of the headgear. Ducote’s kick sailed high over the heads of the rushing Georgians and above the cross-bar thirty-five yards away for the only score of the game. Georgia’s protest was in vain since Ducote’s unique kicking tee was not excluded by the rules of the day.
Ducote kicked a field goal from the 48 yard line in Auburn’s 20-9 loss to Vanderbilt that same year. The 1916-17 “Intercollegiate Athletic Calendar” hailed Ducote as “one of the greatest long distance field goal kickers the South has ever seen.”
“Pete” Bonner. T.H. Bonner, a guard and Auburn’s team captain in 1919.
“Bill” Donahue. William F. Donahue, halfback. During the 1918 season, Donahue was in the U.S. Army’s Veterinary Corp. with Veterinary Company No. 1. Donahue played football in 1918 for the Camp Greenleaf team that included Sgt. Jock Southerland from Pitt, William McGill from Clemson and John C. Dawson from the University of Iowa. The Camp Greenleaf “all-star” team pummeled the Auburn Tigers in 1918 by a score of 26-0. Donahue actually played against his Tigers for the Army veterinary team that year!
The War Eagle Reader had trouble locating what branches of the Armed Services that Ducote and Bonner served under during the 1918 season.
Notes and Fun Facts, page 135
” … hung to the sour apple tree.” What a great phrase. Never heard it before. Maybe originates from the Union Army’s marching song “John Brown’s Body” with the line: “We’ll hang old Jeff Davis (3x) from a sour apple tree” with the original verse being “We’ll feed old Jeff Davis sour apples ’til he gets the diarhee.” Apparently, “diarhee” offended the sensibilities and the verse had to be changed.
“… the famous Strupper”. Everett Strupper was the famed (and apparently much feared) running back for Georgia Tech.
Atlanta Journal‘s reporter Morgan Blake commented during the 1917 game of Georgia Tech vs. Carlisle Indian Industrial School:
“[Tech's] Everett Strupper played like a veritable demon. At one time four Carlisle men pounced on him from all directions, and yet through some superhuman witchery he broke loose and dashed 10 yards further.”
Tech won the game against Carlisle by a score of 98-0. Yes, 98-0. Also, “superhuman witchery” is a bad-ass phrase that must be used more often in everyday occasions.
Later in life, Everett Strupper was a part-time sports columnist for the Atlanta Journal and responsible for the University of Alabama being associated with elephants, planting the red-elephant seed with his description of the Ole Miss vs. Alabama game in 1930:
“At the end of the quarter, the earth started to tremble, there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the stands bellowed, ‘Hold your horses, the elephants are coming,’ and out stamped this Alabama varsity.”
Further reading on Strupper: “Georgia Tech’s 1917 backfield, better than the Four Horsemen” by Bernie McCarty in the College Football Historical Society Newsletter, May 1988
“the famous Golden Tornado” From the “Ramblin’ Wreck” traditions Web page: “The Golden Tornado is another former nickname thought to be created by sportswriters when John Heisman led [Georgia] Tech to its first national championship in football in 1917. Tech was the first team from the South to earn the honor bestowed by the International News Service, and any team thereafter which approached the same level of excellence was referred to as the Golden Tornado. The nickname was used as late as 1929, when Tech defeated California in the Rose Bowl.”
Time out for a quick comment from TWER: “Why o’ why don’t we play Georgia Tech every year?!?! There’s a grand tradition between the two teams. Also, Auburn needs sweet, sweet vengeance!”
Notes and Fun Facts, page 136
“War Work Fund” Possibly meaning the United War Work Campaign, which was “a collective of the YMCA, the YWCA, the National Catholic War Council, the Jewish Welfare Board, the War Camp Community Service, the American Library Association, and the Salvation Army — authorized by the U.S. Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy to work for the soldiers and sailors in and near the camps.”
Source: A speech by John D. Rockefeller Jr. on behave of the campaign.
Notes and Fun Facts, page 137
“Several players were developed who will help bring Auburn football back to its regular standard.” And how! The 1919 team went 8-1! The Tigers the next year beat Georgia, Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, but lost 7-6 to Vanderbilt in Nashville. Also, Auburn was the champion of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association that year. War. Damn. Eagle.
Filed under General, It's Pronounced JORDAN
Visions of ’57: Auburn 29, Florida St. 7
From the 1958 Glomerata:
Filed under General, It's Pronounced JORDAN
Fly down the field, girl, fly down the field
At a recent commencement ceremony at George Washington University, there were cries of “War Eagle.”
On her name card, Auburn alumna Sara Elisabeth Burson (class of ’07) slipped our school’s illustrious battle cry in between her middle and last name.
She handed it to the announcer.
The announcer looked at it. A gag? Native American? Are you sure?
So sure.
So sure Sara graduated with a Masters in Tourism Administration from GWU not as Sara Elisabeth Burson, but as Sara Elisabeth War Eagle Burson.
This I discovered after typing “War Eagle” into Twitter’s search engine, just for kicks.
And it got me thinking about the girl whose middle name really is War Eagle.
I went to high school with her, in Birmingham no less. She was beautiful. So was her little sister – her name (her first name) was Tiger. Their last name was White. They were two of the prettiest girls in school, duh.
Alabama fans brag on their houndstoothed army of Bryant namesakes (“hi, name is Drunk Jones, this here is my brother Cheeter”), but with the single, feminized semi-exception of Tyde (you remember him – Saban’s brother?), have any of them ever had the passion or the balls to name a child after their actual battle cry?
War Eagle ended up going to Georgia. It hurt us all.
Filed under Diversions / Investigations, Features, General
