Goodbye and Thanks (Scott)

(Warning: the following article contains pathos and cheesiness uncharacteristic of its author specifically the fourth and sixth paragraphs)

My favorite member of the Auburn football staff is retiring this Saturday. It’s not a coach, an administrator, a chaplain, or even a ball boy. Tiger also known as War Eagle VI is retiring from his duties as the official War Eagle. She has witnessed 247 games, 2 undefeated seasons, and 4 SEC titles. Of course she has also seen teams on probation, coaching scandals, and 3 losing seasons. Her record is officially 174-69-4, but she doesn’t know what a win or loss is. The eagle is at every game regardless of the team’s performance, and I think that represents an ideal of Auburn spirit. When we see her flying around the stadium with thousands of fans cheering you see potential.

A paper covered tree on Toomer’s Corner celebrates the past. Auburn won, and the Auburn family celebrated. The few moments where the eagle flies around the stadium celebrates the future, the sixty minutes of fighting coming up. We don’t know if Auburn will win or lose, and those feelings of anticipation for the unknown give every Auburn fan chills as he or she watches the eagle circle the stadium.

Take our across-the-state “friends” at Alabama. They will probably finish their season with a 2-6 SEC record (their two wins being 3 point wins against Vanderbilt and Ole Miss), and an embarrassing fifth strait loss to Auburn. They upgraded their stadium just in time for 92,138 fans to see their storied Crimson Tide to lose to Mississippi State. There is more dread than hope in the eyes of Alabama fans as they looks to the program’s future. Though many Auburn fans can be extremely cynical, deep down there is always hope, and a few weeks out of the year that hope can been seen, heard, and felt as a Golden Eagle circles a stadium of screaming fans.

A line from one of my favorite movies says that “hope is a good, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” As 26 year old Tiger steps down as War Eagle VI, 6 year old Nova steps up as War Eagle VII, and the tradition of hope continues. While no one can definitively determine how the War Eagle tradition started, every fan can confidently believe that the tradition will last as long as Auburn University exists.

The pre-game flight is easily the greatest college football tradition, the midnight yell at Texas A&M or dotting the “i” at Ohio State, may be treasured by Aggies and Buckeyes, but they don’t compare to the inevitable, euphoric feeling that accompanies the War Eagle’s flight. Furthermore, I take utter delight at confusing sports show hosts, by being the Tigers, having tiger mascot named Aubie, having an eagle called Tiger, yelling “War Eagle,” and calling our students Plainsmen.

The latest Tiger has represented Auburn in the Olympics, survived cancer, and is part of a program that teaches thousands of children at the Southeastern Raptor Center each year. Be sure to be at the game early enough this Saturday to see the ceremony retiring her from being an official icon of Auburn, as the bird gets older and moves closer to its dying years. While animals lack that spiritual essence in humanity that I call a soul, Tiger has been the soul of the collective Auburn family for 21 years.