It's easy for Auburn Tiger fans to feel like there's a conspiracy against them from the SEC after last night's 90-88 loss to the Texas A&M Aggies at the Neville Arena. It appeared Keyshawn Murphy won the game on a near-half-court heave as time was expiring, but it was ruled the ball didn't leave his hand in time.
On3's Jake Crain shut down the idea of a grand conspiracy against Auburn, especially as it pertains to last night's game, but in general on the hardwood. However, he does believe SEC football officials don't respect the Tigers the same way they do the bigger brands like the Georgia Bulldogs, Alabama Crimson Tide, LSU Tigers, Oklahoma Sooners, and Texas Longhorns.
"To the game last night, you can't blow a 16-point lead at home to a team that you're bigger than and better than. And I'm happy for Bucky McMillan. Bucky's a great guy. I don't know how you overturned that call when you said it was good on the court. I didn't think there was enough evidence there," Crain said.
"Do I think there are some guys sitting in a smoky room finding ways to have the refs, you know, for lack of a better term, screw over Auburn? I don't think it's that. What I believe is that, and I separate football and basketball, I don't think the officials respect Auburn the way they do Georgia, Alabama, LSU, even Oklahoma, and Texas. I don't think they respect Auburn."
SEC didn't like Bruce Pearl or Hugh Freeze, but Auburn football lost games they could've won
Crain still doesn't subscribe to the idea that the SEC had a definitive agenda against AU, even if the conference definitively didn't like Bruce Pearl or Hugh Freeze. Instead, Crain believes the blame lies on Freeze and Co., and Bryan Harsin and his staff before him, for the failures on the gridiron.
After all, Pearl took the Tigers to two Final Fours.
"I don't think it really has anything to do that much with Hugh Freeze," Crain said when I asked him about the online sentiment that the SEC may have held something against Auburn for hiring him in 2022 after his previous Ole Miss Rebels-related banishment. "I mean, if they didn't want (Auburn) to hire Hugh Freeze enough, they wouldn't have let them do it.
"And look, let's be honest, they didn't love Bruce Pearl either. Auburn has hired guys that I don't think they're exactly the biggest fans of. But having said that, Bruce Pearl took Auburn to the Final Four twice. So it didn't inhibit him in any way. Auburn has had chances to win games in football. They just didn't have the dog in them to do it, if we're being honest."
Auburn doesn't have any built-in advantages in the SEC. That much was obvious after an official was disciplined for his calls during the Georgia loss. This point is one that few would argue.
A lot of the misery is self-inflicted, though. As Crain relayed, it started with a culture problem in Freeze's locker room and manifested on the field.
"The culture wasn't right. So I think, again, two things can be true at once. I don't think Auburn gets the benefit of the doubt in football like other schools do. I think that's a real thing. But Auburn has had its chances, and Auburn has gotten calls to go its way as well, and they haven't taken advantage of it. So, you know, again, I don't think there's some grand conspiracy to wait for Lincoln to get to the theater," Crain said.
Jake Crain optimistic on Auburn's Alex Golesh era, evokes Nick Saban's name
Crain believes all of that could change under Alex Golesh.
"I think you're going to get the opposite of what we just had at Auburn. Golesh wants to mold great people, but he molds great people a different way, not through appeasement. He is going to mold them through putting them through the rigor together, having a super high standard, understanding that you're not going to reach your goals by just being talented," Crain said.
"They're going to have to earn it every single day, and you hear the term process-driven, and that's 100% true. That's why Nick Saban was the best in the world at making every Monday the same, every Tuesday the same, every Wednesday the same, every Thursday and Friday the same, and on Saturday, a lot of it was the same. You're going to go out there and rip somebody's a**, because that's just what you do on this day.
"And I think Golesh understands that. It's not about who you're playing, it's about yourself. It's not about, 'oh no, we play Bama this week, we better play good,' or 'oh, we play Mercer this week, so we can just play okay and get away with it.'
"That's not what he's going to do. It's a faceless opponent, and he is willing to be real with the players about where they stand. And at the end of the day, even to an 18- to 24-year-old, they're going to respect that more than you just telling them that it's okay and you love them regardless and here's some more NIL money."
While some fans see the exodus of their highest-rated recruits leaving as a major negative for his first few months on the job, Golesh's approach could lead to more wins and a program that doesn't drive fans to believe the fix is in against them.
It certainly helps that Golesh isn't on the SEC's radar from nefarious means.