An NCAA football champion has been crowned.

2017 football is over. Way to go, SEC!

But while all the fussing, fighting and finger-pointing was going on during the regular schedule, I was struck by one fan’s unnecessary disappointment in general, and it was for his alma mater. I am a fan of that school. My undergraduate degree was from Georgia Southern University when there was no football program. I studied at the University of Georgia for my master’s.

Afterwards I married an Auburn man. And I became a good Auburn wife, too. No house divided. I may have been a devout Georgia fan when we married, but I quickly became the perfect Auburn spouse. Why? Here’s my rationalization.

• Playing and not really studying is a right of passage in undergraduate school.

• In graduate school you have to study to maintain that “B” average. You love your school but not much time to play and get too attached.

• When Auburn husband came into the picture, I acquiesced to keep harmony AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: he pays for all my charge card expenses, which makes me happy. Also, you never know which bunch of 18-22 year old “boys” will show up on any given Saturday, so I shouldn’t be too obsessed about football.

• 

But I really do love football probably because my dad coached all high school sports after his stint with the Chicago Cubs, which was interrupted by World War II.

And when I heard uncalled-for digs about a good coach, I became irked. I remember my mother sharing this story: After my dad quit coaching and teaching, he went into another profession but still called the football plays from the press box and refereed high school basketball games. One time a booster was either oblivious or didn’t care that the ref’s wife was sitting behind him. He objected to the referee’s calls and was letting everyone in the stands know it. But being the lady she was, she kept silent.

I am not that lady. Oh, I was brought up to be a Southern Belle, but like Scarlett O’Hara, I will speak my mind. More likely than not, I will prank somebody to get my point across. And I did with our friend.

It concerns Auburn’s football coach. We SEC schools can’t all win every game. Toppling the #1 and #2 teams in the nation in one season is huge and this fan should be happy, but all season he wanted to ditch Malzahn. I wanted to teach him a lesson.

This friend is a fraternity brother of my husband’s who lives in Auburn. He pays big bucks for the Scholarship section seating at Jordan-Hare Stadium. You know about the Scholarship section, don’t you? Your food comes “free.” You have a great view right under the press box. You don’t have to walk around those spiral ramps a zillion times. Life is good up there. I’ve been a few times. Once you are there, you really don’t want to go back to general seating.

So, he is special.  Really… and that’s fine. I guess that gives him the right to spout off because he is paying a lot of money for not only all that comfort at the football games but also to the university scholarship committee, some of which probably goes to the athletic department. But I heard about his remarks and decided to see if he could take my frivolity about his comments.

This Auburn Tiger fan received an Auburn-designed Christmas card from “Head Coach Gus Malzahn.” The holiday greeting not only was “personally” signed by Malzahn but also had a hand-written note in the card from the coach. It thanked him for his endowment to the scholarship fund and his continued support of “all things Auburn” and was looking forward to next season. Auburn Athletics’ street address was posted in the return address corner and the post mark was from Opelika, Alabama – as close to Auburn as I could get it at the time.

And at the bottom with the coach’s scrawny and almost undecipherable signature was the word which he is most popular saying and which he demonstrates when something exciting happens for Auburn on the sideline of all the television games:

“BOOM!”

This is a secret, Mark Pass, Randy Beavers, Hugh Farmer and Frank Farmer.

Lee St. John, a retired Coweta County high school English teacher, is the author of five humorous books and two audio books. She can be reached at lee@leestjohnauthor.com