Down Through the Years: Football Season Starts

Down through the years we have seen the start of many football seasons. The point is not football itself, but the annual event, like the changing of the seasons, the coming of the holiday season, birthdays, and special family events. The point is a sense of history, a sense of the passage of time over the years---a feel for the flow of time.

This feel for the flow of time only comes with time itself. You have to reach a certain age and have a certain disposition to understand what I am talking about. At least by age 50 you have to feel it if ever you are going to feel it.

To understand what I am talking about, you have to want to see the big-picture in everything. Some of us are big- picture people: we learn best by first seeing the big picture, and then working our way down to the details. Our desire is to put everything into historical perspective. Not everyone is like this, but Fred Hudson is certainly like this.

Coach Ralph "Shug" Jordan was a big-picture, historical person, Auburn's head football coach from 1951 to 1975. He won a Purple Heart on Utah Beach in the Normandy invasion. He quoted Winston Churchill. He was an Auburn man from his first day as an Auburn undergraduate. He was an all-round man who went to the theatre, read books, and could converse easily with all people. He was, as we say, a well-rounded person. Football was important to Coach Jordan, his life's calling, but he placed football into the big picture: teaching young men how to succeed in life and reach their full potential.

At the start of every football season, I think of Coach Jordan, the greatest Auburn man who ever lived. He is the epitome of the Auburn way---discipline, hard work, accepting only what you've earned.

I wish he were here today. I wonder what he would think of Auburn today. I wish he were here because I'd like to talk to him: one big-picture person talking to another.

As this football season begins, I think about "The Coach," who was "The Man." I try and see the big picture and put everything in perspective. In myAuburn time, it's largely Shug's shadow. All Auburn people move in his giant shadow. May he always be our inspiration.