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I agree, a wins a win, I know South Florida is happy with their field goal win at Auburn a few weeks ago. That was a prime time game wasn't it?

You said-That's complete BS. Syracuse wasn't "floored by our fervor" as you say.
Syracuse at Auburn Sept.28, 2002. Looks like a good game to me!
...............1ST....2ND......3RD....4TH....OVERTIME FINAL
Syracuse ...10 .....7 ........0 ........ 7 ........10 .........34
Auburn ..... 0 ......3 ........7 ........14 ....... 13 ..........37

I wonder what happened the year before in 2001 when Auburn came up here to play Syracuse in the Carrier Dome that only seats 49,000 or so and lost 31 to 14 to Syracuse??

Alabama is better team this year then they were a year ago and they're only going to get better. It's Saban's first year. Baby steps my friend. We'll see how Auburn does against Georgia November 10th.

I guess I should have said, "The writer was floored by the fervor". Maybe thats more accurate. Would you like me to find the article and post it?

Turns out, at least for now, USF is a ranked team and a good team, not a bad loss as far as losses go, 'course none are good, so...maybe we should claim it as a moral victory since it was just an OT loss? Maybe schedule a trip to Hawaii and call it a "bowl game" to make us feel better? I'm not going to pretend for a second that Auburn is a good team or playing well...but I do find it funny that you want to compare our game against UGA some 7 or so weeks from now to yours, rather than the game that will happen on the plains a couple of weeks after that. Care to place some bullets where your mouth is on the Bama at AU game? Y'all do have a better record against Auburn in Auburn than you do in T-town...y'all have won one in Auburn before! Gosh when was that? Oh yeah...2001!

We can talk about it all we want. I don't gamble, never been my thing......got to many other bad habits.

Where to start...

As far as stadium atmosphere and games under Hallman don't count. You couldn't even give away tickets back then (literally). Its a whole different scene since 2000.

The road to the BCS championship does NOT run through Columbus. The Buckeye's are in the position of needing other people to lose to make the big game. If any two of the teams ranked ahead of the buckey's go undefeated, Ohio St will be left out.

For the guys dogging Les: Is he the best gameday coach? Not even close. But he's been great at hiring great assistants and letting them do their thing. Crowton and Peline are two of the best in the business. I wouldn't trade this coaching staff for many in the country, maybe not any.

Trey,

If you ever get out by the Ag Center we're tailgating out there every week. Should have a pretty good spread for the UF game.

Oh yeah, the Tulane game in New Orleans is going to be fun this year. Got hotels rooms on Bourbon St for Fri and Sat night.

I'll have to back .280 on this one. I remember the article, which I believe ran in the Post-Standard. It was very complimentary to Auburn, and focused on the Esprit de Corps that surrounds college football at Auburn. Basically, the writer said Syracuse plays a nice little game of football indoors. If you want to see the real deal, here it is, in the South.

For the sake of accuracy, I submit this:

GO TO AUBURN, BE FOREVER CHANGED

Written by Bud Poliquin, a columnist for the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper after covering the 2002 Auburn vs. Syracuse football game in Auburn. The article was written for and published in the Post-Standard on October 3, 2002.

BY BUD POLIQUIN
POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST

I have descended into college football's Grand Canyon. I have stood in its Alps. I have gazed at its ocean sunset. I have done all of these things and I've been changed forever.

I knew, of course, that we were different up here. I understood that autumn Saturdays in our burg have never been given over to any kind of serious sporting fervor. I've accepted for a good, long while that a fair amount of our citizens regularly choose to pick apples or seal driveways rather than head to the Carrier Dome to watch the Syracuse University Orangemen at play.

But, Lord have mercy on our college football souls, I've come to realize we're not merely quirky in these parts. And we're not just overly particular. No, having attended a game in Auburn, Ala. - which is like going to Mass in Rome - I'm convinced that, by comparison, we're as dead as the flying wedge.

"Let me tell you something," said Paul Pasqualoni, the SU coach who can recognize bedlam when he is forced to shout above it. "Being in that stadium with all those people - the noise level, the atmosphere - was exciting. It was a lot of fun. To me, it was just spectacular being there."

He was speaking of Jordan-Hare Stadium, where four days earlier his SU club had lost to the Auburn Tigers 37-34 in an environment that was equal parts Woodstock, Mardi Gras, New Year's Eve and Madonna's last wedding. And the Crimson Tide boys, those rascals from the other side of the state, weren't even in town, to say nothing of the Bulldogs, Gators or Razorbacks.

Nah, it was just the Orangemen, a non-league bunch from somewhere up north ... with a losing record yet. But it didn't matter. This, because the cherished Tigers were on the other side, and that was enough for those Alabama locals to respond the way the French did when Patton's army showed up in Paris.

"I missed my wife's birthday so I could cheer on my beloved alma mater against Syracuse," Brent Miller wrote in an e-mail addressed to me following the three-overtime affair. "But you know what? I would have been there if our opponent had been the state of New York's worst high school team."

"Country, God and college football are usually our top three passions," e-mailed another Auburn guy, Steve Fleming. "But not always in that order."

"I grew up in Denver in a family with season tickets to the Broncos games," e-mailed yet another believer, Rick Pavek. "I call Auburn home now and, take my word for this, Broncomania is nothing like Tigermania."

The point is, with the Orangemen returning to the gray Dome that is so often lifeless to play Big East Conference foe Pittsburgh on Saturday, it's clear that somebody's not getting it. Either the Auburn faithful - and people like them in Knoxville and South Bend and Lincoln and Gainesville and Columbus and Austin and elsewhere - are far too crazed or we're way too cool.

Listen, down there in eastern Alabama they pass out full-color, high-gloss, 22-by-17-inch, two-sided, fold-out pamphlets titled, "The 2002 Guide To Game Day At Auburn University." And on Page 2 of each can be found the announcement that nobody is allowed to begin tailgating until 4 p.m.--the day before the game.

"You can't be anything but envious," said Jake Crouthamel, the Syracuse athletic director who was a wide-eyed witness to all of the SU-Auburn doings. "You can't be anything but envious when you have that kind of support. I mean, there were 84,000 people in the seats. And the RVs and house trailers were lined up five miles outside of town. When you talk about the epitome of what the college football experience is all about ... that's it. Auburn is the epitome. You couldn't possibly be unaware of the spectacle, even if you were trying to be unaware."

The orange-clad zealots, who are in their seats fully 30 minutes prior to kickoff, thunder through choreographed cheers. The band, which is saluted upon its arrival by the big house with a standing ovation, blares. The PA system, which continuously blasts the sounds of a growling tiger, pipes in songs by the Dixie Chicks and interviews with the Auburn coaches.

Before the game, there is the great Tiger Walk during which the Auburn players march along Donahue Street through thousands of people, some of whom weep, and into the stadium. After the game, there is the mass papering of famous Toomer's Corner downtown. And between all of that, a golden eagle circles the place before landing on the field to a deafening roar.

And us? Um, let's see. We can't fill 49,000 seats. We debate, ad nauseam, standing-vs.-sitting in the Dome. We give our tickets to takers at the door who had to be schooled in the art of courtliness. We regularly vacate the joint long before the final gun. We allow, in a good-idea-gone-bad, a bunch of vulgar louts planted in a thing called "The O-Zone" to chant expressions you'd never say in front of Mom at the dinner table.

In other words to compare our college football experience to that of Auburn (and a lot of other places) is to compare a skillet of beans to a plate of Chilean sea bass. And while that might sound harsh, it doesn't make the words any less true.

Believe me on this. Please. I have descended into college football's Grand Canyon. I have stood in its Alps. I have gazed at its ocean sunset. I have attended a game at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. And I've been changed forever.

� 2002 The Post-Standard.

It gets a bit noisy at Florida Field as well. 97,000 screaming Gators and the design of the field make it one tough place for the other side.
I am sure some of you guys have been there.

The '97 game was not quiet. It actually registered on the sisemegraph.(sp). I know, I got married on that night. My groomsmen were in the bar watching the game. Had to go get them out to take pictures. Have pictures of a friend who has a radio plug listening to the game in the church. I had to let him slide considering the win.


Clyde

Agreed, but I can't get over that Pepto Bismol orange color.........

That '97 Florida game is loudest I've ever been too. When Cedrick Donaldson took that int to the endzone the noise was ridicolous. Still one of my favorite games in Tiger Stadium and a great night to be in the student section. And yes I went on the field that night.

Personally I take what Bud Poliquin says with a grain of salt, I read the Syracuse Post Standard everyday. Was SU excited about playing in Auburn, sure they were, floored....NO. Now if someone wants to say SU was floored in 2001 when they played at Tennessee and lost 33-9, I'll buy that. The crowd at Tennessee overwhelmed SU, there is no doubt about it. A lot of SU's players that played in the Auburn game, played in the Tennessee game the year before. Maybe Tennessee got them use to a big loud crowd, I don't know. SU played Auburn very well in 2002. You don't do that if you're floored.

I'm not going to sit here for one minute and say that football isn't A LOT bigger in the south and a lot of other places for that matter, because it is. Syracuse's Carrier Dome seats about 49,000 people. It does get pretty loud because of the Dome. However I'm sure it still doesn't compare with 95,000 plus. Hopefully I'll get to go to some football games down south and even out west in the future, have to wait and see. Maybe .280Rem can pull some strings and get into a Alabama-Auburn game someday, whatdya say .280?

How can you put Roll Tide! in your signiture and talk about Syracuse football as a die hard? You can't flaunt the Roll Tide! stuff and expect .280 to cough up tickets. It doesn't work that way. I'd shoot him first. (and take the tickets myself)

A few years ago my wife's boss talked me into going into a bar right next to LSU a few hours before LSU/Bama kickoff. We were accompanied by his son and my wife. Since all three of the fellows were over 6 feet tall and averaged about 230 lbs,we weren't too worried about all those bad ass coonass fans.

About this time a Bowl Offial wearing a badge from a 'minor' bowl comes in the bar and the biggest,baddest,drunkest cajun decides that bowl is unworthy of being on the same planet as LSU.He throws his beer at the bowl official and it mainly hits us.

Since there are 100 of them and three of us,I was willing to forgive and forget but the wife's boss walks up to Mr.Bad and asks "Did you mean to do that?"

Mr. Bad answers " If I did what you gonna do about it breaux?".

Since about twenty standard size cajuns were with Mr. Bad, I figured I better back up my host and also figured his son would be right behind me. I moved to the middle of the pack of mean cajuns and turned around to see the boss's son headed for the door with my wife.

The boss looks at Mr. Bad,puts his hand on my shoulder and answers him with " I'm gonna have my friend kick your ass"

Suddenly every eye in the place is on me and one big,bad cajun.
All of the standard size cajuns scatter like rabbits leaving David(me) and Goliath the Cajun to settle it for everyone else.

I was trying to think of how I was going to get out alive when,the big bad guy realized he had me cornered and things were getting serious. He looked me right in the eye and apoligized and shook my hand. Nobody was happier about it than me.

Having said all of this, I'd still rather go to Tiger stadium and deal with mean cajuns than go to some other SEC schools and deal with mean rednecks. At least the cajuns would rather have a party than a bar fight IME.

Britt

I always hear stories like that but have yet to see anything happen with my own two eye's. All I can say is that every group has azzholes in it. The majority of the tiger fans treat visiting fans great. We had 2 South Carolina fans hanging out with us almost all day Saturday. Just wandered up and started talking so we gave them each a plate and a beer.

NYH,

Bud Polquin just wrote what he saw, and what the coach and AD said, and compared it to Orangemen Football.

As for pulling strings...I pull them every spring when I pay the contribution...we have a block of 6 seats to every home Auburn game, including Bama when they come to the plains. The last one I was at in Tuscaloosa was 2004. Then before that 2002. Can't recall the last one I was saw at Legion field...was sometime around 1990. Been "pullin those strings" with Benjamins since 1993.

How am I talking about Syracuse as a die hard? I live in Syracuse and hope SU does well, but if Alabama came to town I'd go to the Carrier Dome dressed in crimson. I'm just stating that SU wasn't floored by Auburn in the 2002 game. Simple as that.

Of course I'd pay my own way!

Sorry but LSU fans are the least classy of any I've seen. There are a lot of OU fans that will not go back to an LSU game in LA after the way they were treated before, during, and after the 2003 NC game in NO by LSU fans. It even goes beyond the repeated cursing and name calling, taunting of 2s and 3s by dozens, and the pushing and shoving of senior citizens. The city of NO ridiculed OU's request for a police escort for their team buses and that is a standard practice at bowl games. There were other agregious afronts, but I'm getting pissed just thinking about them.

Expat

That was a ridiculous BCS match up OU DIDN'T even win their conference yet played for the BCS Championship....EVERYONE should be upset not getting the proper match up LSU VS. USC....