Toomer's Tragedy Reactions

We highly doubt anyone isn't aware of the tragic poisoning of the trees at Toomer's corner in Auburn.  We have expressed our feeling on what a horrible act that was already.  We feel bad for the Auburn family and hope that the trees recover.  That all being said, we need to take a look at some of the events caused by this tragedy and try to get a handle on things as they start to spin out of control.

Right now Auburn has the sympathy of the public at large, and they should.  However, the recent death threats against the family of tree killer Harvey Updike are ridiculous.  His young grandchildren being threatened with death is another step in the wrong direction.  The actions of a few Auburn fans vandalizing the Alabama walk of champions were harmless pranks.  The vandalism of Nick Saban's lake house in Georgia was ridiculous, expensive, and not funny.  The killing of the trees on Toomer's square is beyond the pale.  Now the threating of children, for something their deranged grandfather did, is another step too far.  Updike's son made the following statement to the Mobile Press Register “We have children and grandchildren getting death threats from Auburn fans.”  The public at large will quickly forget about the tree's on Toomer's corner if a child is harmed.   It will quickly turn a victimized Auburn into the bad guys.  As we have said before this is the problem with pranks and vandalism.  It always goes a bit further than the last time.  They always end up in hateful and wrong-headed retaliation. Lets hope this stops now before someone from either side gets hurt.


Insensitive and ridiculous Alabama fans abound as well.  The common statement coming from these geniuses is that it's just a bunch of trees.  It's not about the trees truly,  it's about the tradition.  Soon Auburn won't be able to go to Toomer's and roll the trees for victory, a tradition dating back to at least the 60's.  It's not vandalism it's theft.  Because a large part of the Auburn tradition has been stolen from them.

We have also heard some complaints from some Alabama fan's about the timing of all this.  Some claim that Auburn had known for sometime that the tree's had been poisoned and that this was a "wag the dog" maneuver.  Our response is so what? Who cares if Auburn did know and decided to release the info Wednesday?   If they were trying to take some of the spotlight off the fact that the NCAA was questioning Auburn recruits, their families and coaches.  It doesn't mean that the trees weren't poisoned.  It doesn't make any of this any less tragic.  It sounds like a smart move, if you have to announce this horrible thing do it when you can get some good out of it.   We don't see anything wrong with this.

On the other hand some Auburn fans have made what can only be described as unbelievably controlled  statements about the tragedy.  Jay Coulter over at Track Em Tigers wrote a well thought out and sincere article almost as soon as the tragedy was announced.  Jay's article is a call for calm and reason.  To be honest if the same thing had occurred to one of the teams or institutions we follow we don't know that we could have been that big of a person.  Jay is one heck of an Auburn Tiger.  Some Alabama fans are responding to the call to help as well.  A Facebook page for Tide for Toomers has been started.  The page is taking donations to be contributed to Auburn to help repair the damage done to Toomer's corner.

Lets take a cue from the Jay Coulter's and Tide for Toomers of the world.  Calm down, lets take the heat down a notch.  We all need to learn a lesson from this and not make things worse.



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