Auburn Tigers
"War Eagle!" The Auburn Tigers are the sports representatives of Auburn University. They participate in Division I-A of the NCAA and in the Western Division of the 12-member Southeastern Conference (SEC). Auburn routinely fields nationally competitive teams in football, men's and women's swimming and diving, baseball and women's basketball.
Athletics
Football
Auburn's football team, currently coached by Tommy Tuberville, was voted national champions by the Associated Press in 1957. Two Auburn players, Bo Jackson in 1985 and Pat Sullivan in 1971, have won the Heisman Trophy. The Trophy's namesake, John Heisman, coached at Auburn from 1895 until 1899. Auburn is the only school that Heisman coached at (among others, Georgia Tech and Clemson) that has produced a Heisman Trophy winner. Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium has a capacity of 87,451 ranking as the eighth-largest on-campus stadium in the NCAA as of August 2004. Auburn played the first football game in the Deep South in 1892 against the University of Georgia at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. The Tigers' first bowl appearance was in 1937 in the sixth Bacardi Bowl played in Havana, Cuba. As of 2005, AU Football has won six SEC Conference Championships, and since the division of the conference in 1992, six western division championships. Auburn plays archrival Alabama each year in a game known as the Iron Bowl.
Auburn completed the 2004 football season with an unblemished 13–0 record winning the SEC championship, their first conference title since 1989 and their first outright title since 1987. However, this achievement was somewhat overshadowed by the Tigers being left out of the BCS championship game in deference to two other undefeated, higher ranked teams, USC and Oklahoma. The 2004 team was led by quarterback Jason Campbell, running backs Carnell Williams and Ronnie Brown, and cornerback Carlos Rogers, all subsequently drafted in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft. The team gained a new offensive coordinator, Al Borges, who led the team to use the west coast style offense which maximized the use of both star running backs.
Swimming and diving
In the last decade under head coach David Marsh, Auburn's swimming and diving program has become a virtual dynasty in the SEC and threatens to do the same nationally, with consecutive NCAA championships for both the men and women in 2003 and 2004. The men won their third consecutive title in 2005, and the women were national runner-up to Southeastern Conference rival Georgia. The 2004 championship was the third in a row for the women. The Auburn men have won the SEC Championship eleven out of the last twelve years and also won national championships in 1997 and 1999. Coach Marsh has been an US Olympic coach and AU swimmers have represented the US and several other countries in recent Olympics. Auburn's most famous swimmer is Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines, winner of three gold medals at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Auburn's most successful female Olympic swimmer is Kirsty Coventry (swimming for her home country of Zimbabwe) who won a gold, silver and bronze medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Men's basketball
The Auburn men's basketball team has enjoyed off-and-on success over the years. Its best known player is Charles Barkley.
Other NBA players from Auburn are Chuck Person, Wesley Person, Chris Porter, Marquis Daniels, Moochie Norris, and Pat Burke.
Women's basketball
The Auburn women's basketball team has been consistently competitive both nationally and within the SEC. Despite playing in the same conference as perenial powerhouse Tennessee and other competitive programs such as LSU, Georgia, and Vanderbilt, Auburn has won four regular season SEC championships and four SEC Tournament championships. AU has made sixteen appearances in the NCAA women's basketball tournament and only once, in the Tigers first appearance in 1982, have the Tigers lost in the first round. Auburn played in three consecutive National Championship games from 1988–1990 and won the Women's NIT in 2003. When Coach Joe Ciampi announced his retirement after twenty-five years at the end of the 2003–2004 season, the resulting search snared the highly experienced, former Purdue and US National and Olympic team head coach, Nell Fortner. Standout former Auburn players include: Ruthie Bolton-Holyfield, Vickie Orr, Carolyn Jones, Chantel Tremitiere and Monique Morehouse.
Baseball
Auburn Baseball has won six SEC championships, three SEC Tournament championships, appeared in sixteen NCAA Regionals and reached the College World Series (CWS) four times. After a disappointing 2003–2004 season, former Auburn assistant-coach Tom Slater was named head coach. Samford Stadium-Hitchcock Field at Plainsman Park is considered one of the finest facilities in college baseball and has a seating capacity of 4096 not including lawn areas. In addition to Bo Jackson, Auburn has supplied several other stand-out players to Major League Baseball, including Frank Thomas, Gregg Olson, Tim Hudson, Mark Bellhorn and Gabe Gross.
Traditions
Tiger Walk
Before each Auburn home football game, thousands of Auburn fans line Donahue Avenue to cheer on the team as they walk from Sewell Hall (the athletes' dormitory) to Jordan-Hare Stadium. The tradition began in the 1960s when groups of kids would walk up the street to greet the team and get autographs. During the tenure of coach Doug Barfield, the coach urged fans to come out and support the team, and thousands did. Today the team, led by the coaches, walks down the hill and into the stadium surrounded by fans who pat them on the back and shake their hands as they walk. The largest Tiger Walk occurred on December 2, 1989, before the first ever home football game against rival Alabama—the Iron Bowl. On that day, an estimated 20,000 fans packed the one block section of road leading to the stadium. According to former athletic director David Housel, Tiger Walk has become "the most copied tradition in all of college football."[1]
Toomer's Corner
The intersection of Magnolia and College streets in Auburn, which marks the transition from downtown Auburn to the university campus, is known as Toomer's Corner. It is named after Toomer's Drugs, a small store on the corner that has been an Auburn landmark for over 150 years. Hanging over the corner are two massive old-growth oak trees, and anytime anything good happens concerning Auburn, toilet paper can usually be found hanging from the trees. Also known as "rolling the corner," this tradition is thought to have originated in the 1950s and until the mid 1990s was relegated to only to celebrating athletic wins. However, in recent years it has become a way to celebrate anything good that happens concerning Auburn.
War Eagle
There are many stories surrounding the origins of Auburn's battle cry, "War Eagle." The most popular account involves the first Auburn football game in 1892 between Auburn and the University of Georgia. According to the story, in the stands that day was an old Civil War soldier with an eagle that he had found injured on a battlefield and kept as a pet. The eagle broke free and began to soar over the field, and Auburn began to march toward the Georgia end-zone. The crowd began to chant, "War Eagle" as the eagle soared. After Auburn won the game, the eagle crashed to the field and died but, according to the legend, his spirit lives on every time an Auburn man or woman yells "War Eagle!" The battle cry of "War Eagle" also functions as a greeting for those associated with the University. For many years, a live golden eagle has embodied the spirit of this tradition. The eagle was once housed on campus in The Eagle's Cage, but the cage was taken down and the eagle moved to a nearby raptor center.
Wreck Tech Pajama Parade
The Wreck Tech Pajama Parade originated in 1896, when a group of mischievous Auburn ROTC cadets, determined to show up the more well-known engineers from Georgia Tech, sneaked out of their dorms the night before the football game between Auburn and Tech and greased the railroad tracks. According to the story, the train carrying the Georgia Tech team slid through town and didn't stop until it was halfway to the neighboring town of Loachapoka, Alabama, The Georgia Tech team was forced to walk the five miles back to Auburn and, not surprisingly, were rather weary at the end of their journey. This likely contributed to their 45–0 loss. While the railroad long ago ceased to be the way teams traveled to Auburn and students never greased the tracks again, the tradition continues in the form of a parade through downtown Auburn. Students parade through the streets in their pajamas and organizations build floats. This tradition has recently been renewed with Georgia Tech returning to Auburn's schedule after nearly two decades of absence.
References
- "Auburn University 2005 Football Media Guide" (PDF). 2005-12-04.