Auburn Tigers basketball coach Bruce Pearl and AD John Cohen celebrated their team being the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament this past March with rings.
To many, this is an easy-to-meme mistake that could be brought back up at inopportune times for the program. It's not hard to picture the final score being posted from a loss, and dozens of opposing fanbases, though let's be real, they'll mostly be Gumps, flooding the graphic with call-backs to this decision.
OutKick's Austin Perry believes the Tigers "out-embarrassed" the Georgia Bulldogs for a similar gesture and the Tennessee Volunteers for extending a coach who hasn't even achieved a No. 1 overall March Madness seed or a Final Four.
"I tell you what, if it weren't for the Florida Gators winning the National Championship back in April, the SEC would be on a generational run of mediocre, loser moves," Perry wrote.
"First, we had the Georgia Bulldogs hanging a banner for the incredible accomplishment of making it to the NCAA Tournament, a feat roughly 1/6 of all Division I teams achieve.
"Then, not to be outdone, the Tennessee Volunteers gave a lifetime contract extension to head coach Rick Barnes for keeping with the program tradition of never making it to a Final Four.
"It looks like Auburn told its intraconference brethren to "hold our beer" and out-embarassed both of them by having "championship rings" made for being the number one overall seed in this past year's March Madness tournament."
Auburn shouldn't have done this. Especially not in the wake of claiming an additional seven national championships in football this year.
The football titles make sense to show to recruits. Not every one of them will look into each championship to see how legitimate it is. Seeing a program that is a nine-time champion via Jordan-Hare Stadium's decorations could add to the environment.
Nothing good comes from making rings for something the North Carolina Tar Heels, Duke Blue Devils, Kansas Jayhawks, Kentucky Wildcats, UConn Wildcats, and UCLA Bruins would laugh about and that no college basketball program has ever done before.
Auburn Tigers basketball usually doesn't make mistakes like this. Good thing it's a small one narratively that members of the 2024-25 roster will forever cherish.