"Who" Says The Tradition Is Over?

Trees lined with toilet paper after big wins. A drug store with by far the best lemonade I have ever had in my life. I'm no Auburn fan but it is tough not to acknowledge the impact Toomer's Corner has made on generations of fans. 130 years worth of families have celebrated what is now slowly dying.

Now I know what most AU fans might want to read and get from this, it might look a little like this:

"Some moron, that I barely can discuss on my own blog out of disgust, ruined all these memories, right? This guy reached deep into the heart of Auburn and cut it out, one major valve at a time! Destroyed everything that meant something to kids, parents, and most of all, the students! Alabama fans are morons! I hate them!"

If you want that, I suggest you stop reading. This is not about Alabama fans. This is about one guy who made an idiotic decision that fans of Auburn and Alabama now have to deal with. His "motivation" for it all was simply because a Cam Newton jersey was placed on a statue in Tuscaloosa after The Iron Bowl. It is truly sad that someone would dip this low and destroy parts of the environment to get back at fans who had nothing to do with his team's fourth quarter collapse and eventual loss of the game. Simple message from me to him: "Mark Ingram pretty much vomited all over himself and Greg McElroy got hurt. That's football, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, get used to it."

As everyone reading this probably knows, I am the biggest Steelers fan in the world. Did I buy a plane ticket to Wisconsin after the game so I could go pee on a statue of Vince Lombardi? No. As fans we tend to sometimes get way to caught up in something that truly does not matter. This guy can be the poster-child for the previous sentence. Football is a sport and I love sports, but I am not football. It does not rule me. I have other likes an interests and I do not spend all of my time studying zone defenses and Ben Roethlisberger's footwork. The prankster that did this lets something very meaningless control him and if anything Auburn fans, feel sorry for him.

On the other hand, this totally sucks for Auburn fans, I get that. Years and years of tradition dead and gone, right? Nope, not so fast.

Towards the end of Ron Howard's adaptation of Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas", all of the Whos of Whoville wake up and find that the Grinch has taken everything. The presents, the food, and most of all, the large Christmas tree that each of them gathered to sing around each Christmas morning for what is assumed to be years. While the Grinch expects he would not hear the song because he has crushed their "spirit", he begins to here echoes of it and cannot believe that all of his hard work has gone to waste.

As most of you know, The Grinch might have made things right with the Whos in the end, but at this point, Toomer's murderer might not want to show his face within twenty miles of the university. I can understand why they might not have the same feeling.

As I began writing this, I received a text about how Auburn students were rolling Toomer's once again. What a beautiful thing. In a sense, AU fans are like the Whos. I am not there, but I hope they all did cheers and were full of life. Because it was never about the tree or the drug store, it was about the memories and the people that each Auburn fan can take with them for the rest of their lives. Even if the tree has to be cut down or falls soon, it will always live inside of fans that truly care about Auburn and that in the end, is all that matters.