Alabama-Auburn Rivalry Reaches New Low: Tree Poisoning

Filed under: Alabama, Auburn, SEC

Sweet Home Alabama, where skies are so blue (and the trees are rotting from poison).

It's come to this, the 130-year-old oaks in Auburn's majestic Toomer's Corner have been poisoned and are in the process of dying. No one knows who's responsible, but anyone with an IQ above 16 -- insert SEC fan joke here -- suspects Alabama Crimson Tide partisans are to blame. After all, no one else hates Auburn this badly. Not even close. Now the South's biggest mystery since Who shot J.R.? is unfurling across the region.

It's a whodunnit bedecked in moonlight and magnolias -- "To Kill a Mockingbird" meets to "To Kill an Oak Tree."

Somewhere in Monroeville, Ala., the South's most famous living writer, Harper Lee, is quietly shaking her head. A tree-hating Boo Radley's afoot. Who could be so diabolical? Will ESPN refashion it's "Never Graduate" commercials to replace the nursing home partisans with botanical assassins? Or will the network just give up on satirizing the rivalry. After all, you can't satirize crazy. And every time we think we've seen the most ridiculous SEC antic, the state of Alabama is always there to remind us that we were sorely mistaken. Nope, they've seen your crazy and raised it beyond the point of contemplation.

How crazy are football fans in Alabama? Everyone in the rest of the SEC even thinks they're crazy. Think about this for a moment: the rest of the people in college football's biggest insane asylum have a profound respect for the insanity that is Alabama. But this latest mess, the killing of the trees, left Auburn fans comparing the trees dying to the murder of family members. Seriously. When I tweeted this consoling message to Tiger fans: "Auburn fans: The trees aren't dead because Cam Newton doesn't know the trees are dead. NCAA concurs," one of my followers was aghast:

@jeramye: "thanks Clay. I feel like a family member was murdered and you are making more Cam jokes. STFU"

He really wrote this. Other Auburn fans backed him up.

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