History Repeating: The Ole Miss Game

Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images

Man it is getting dark around here. The LSU loss must have counted for three losses based on the way the fanbase is taking it. You’d think a road loss to a top one team would be forgivable, yet I don’t hear the chimes of forgiveness sounding on the plains. I hear the gong of doom. And it is loud. And it is trashy. It’s a gong. Who owns a gong? Thing looks like it’s from the housewares section of SkyMall.

We need a get-right game and luckily ole chucklehead Matt Luke is coming to town. Seriously, he looks like he’s probably the nicest guy alive. Nice guys shouldn’t get into coaching in the SEC West because it is a deep pit of mud in a battlefield full of corpses. I’ve been listening to a lot of WW1 podcasts, you guys.

Ole Miss is not a good team, nevertheless, the sky is falling if you ask the Auburn fanbase so I want to put your minds at ease. We can look at the past (the distant past, not last week’s game because we will never speak of that again) to determine future outcomes, like we always do.

THE SPRUCE GOOSE

On November 2, 1947 billionaire crazy person Howard Hughes flew an airplane a few hundred yards over the ocean and it was a really big deal. Why? Well, this was the largest airplane ever built and it was also weirdly made of wood. I really don’t modern people understand how wild the olden days were. Could you imagine getting on an airplane for a trip, and noticing it was made out of the same thing as your desk? There was a shortage of aluminum because the boys needed the aluminum to beat the Nazis. Even though the war had ended a few years before, they built the H4 Hercules AKA the Spruce Goose out of wood, because that had been the plan.

Photo by George Rose/Getty Images

Hughes had envisioned this massive wooden airplane would be the key to winning the war. It could transport troops and tanks without getting hit by submarines, and it was crazy big. “I bet the Japanese would have just surrendered after they saw how big it was,” he probably thought. Turns out the Spruce Goose wouldn’t win the war. Instead the United States would drop two nuclear bombs on the Empire of Japan, vaporize two major cities and a few hundred thousand people, and that would just about do it. No big wooden planes needed. Still, Howard wasn’t going to just NOT fly his big ole plane.

So he did it. It stood for decades as the largest fixed wing aircraft to ever fly. It’s a big dumb expensive thing in a country that specializes in big dumb expensive things. It was made by a person who at best was an eccentric billionaire obsessed with advancing mankind’s achievements and at worst was a psychotic war profiteer. It’s the most college football thing I can imagine.

Auburn-Ole Miss

On November 2, 2019, Auburn will host the Ole Miss Rebels in a college football game. Ole Miss isn’t very good. A win would mean nothing to Auburn, while a loss would be the worst case scenario. Many Auburn fans would take an outbreak of plague to avoid a loss. It’s a game that needs to be played, because big dumb expensive things have to be done. Auburn can blow Ole Miss out, so they should. It won’t mean much, it won’t make Auburn’s season better. The war of trying to win a national title is mostly over. However, Auburn should blow Ole Miss out because it is there to be done. Because doing the meaningless in a big way is something we all appreciate.

Auburn 50

Ole Miss 20

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