Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Dec. 6, 2010

The Irony Bowl

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When I was in high school, back during the Taft administration, I spent a lot time on the football field, manfully eating up yardage between the end zones. That is because I was in the Middleville High School marching band. Now granted, I’d much rather have been on the football team, sprinting for touchdowns, with a bevy of cheerleaders (I think we had six in our bevy) standing on the sidelines admiring my bulging biceps, but I didn’t have any biceps back then. I was an exceptionally clumsy youngster, and at my peak probably weighed 110 lbs. dripping wet (band members were always weighed dripping wet). The only formation I ever had to memorize involved my position on the Mighty Marching “M” with which we always amazed the crowd at halftime, especially when we were playing our arch rival, Wayland, whose fans on their side of the field appreciated what they insisted was a Mighty Marching “W.” I did tackle a saxophonist once, but that was purely unintentional. I’d tripped over the forty yard line, and was simply trying to regain my balance.

But nobody, not even an ex-high school marching band member, really gives a fig about marching bands. Those of us who endured the ignominy of the marching band experience know full well that brass instruments with hard, steel mouthpieces were not designed for awkward, non-athletic people to play while stomping up and down freshly furrowed football fields. There are probably as many injuries to band members as to football players, but the band members get no respect. There’s never a stretcher or a trainer or a water girl there for the poor clarinet player who gets a reed stuck up his nose during a difficult pivot maneuver.

The point is that just like all of the other old band members, I watch college football because it gives me a chance to coach. From my armchair. And, not to toot my own horn, but over the years I’ve been a very successful armchair college football coach.

I’ve coached three Division 1-A college football teams from my recliner. I’ll admit that my efforts on behalf of Purdue have not been successful, but that is because the Boilermakers seldom followed my instructions. The Michigan Wolverines heeded my advice more often over the years, and I helped them win several Big Ten championships and Rose Bowls. In 1997, in fact, my Wolverines won a National Championship. In between times, it was due to my armchair coaching that Auburn enjoyed that undefeated season in 1993, and won SEC championships in 1987, 1988, and 2004.

Like most old marching band members, my coaching style is loud, yet rhythmic, and only occasionally punctuated with drum beats. I know just enough about football to allow me to convince my wife that I know a lot. My coaching contributions include shouting instructions at the TV set; things like: “YOU’VE GOT A FIRST AND GOAL AT THE FIVE! FOUR RUNNING PLAYS IS ALL YOU NEED! DON’T PASS, DON’T PASS, DON’T PASS!” And at least half the time they’ll pass on first down just like I told them not to, and the pass is intercepted. I shout a lot during football games, and Marilyn’s contributions consist of wandering into the room, reminding me: “They can’t hear you, Tim,” and then leaving. And there are also her questions, which are often very distracting.

“Which one’s the wildcat in that formation?”

“Why do they make such a fuss about the facemask thing and ignore the nose tackle, which sounds much more dangerous to me?”

“Would you explain the redshirt and the red zone thing to me again?”

It’s hard to keep your mind on serious armchair coaching when questions like that keep popping up.

Which brings us to the recent Iron Bowl. From my recliner I coached what was arguably the best Iron Bowl in history, depending on which half you watched. Marilyn wasted a lot of time compiling Christmas lists and such nonsense as that, and watched only parts of the game. The first half was a disaster from an Auburn armchair coach’s point of view. When your team is behind 24-0 in the second quarter, and none of your armchair bellowing seems to help them manage even a single first down, you begin to see the handwriting on the wall. “This is awful,” I said. “It’s gonna be a blowout!” To which Marilyn answered: “They’ll come back. Where’s your faith?” I don’t know which was worse, the inability of Auburn to move the ball, or to tackle anybody, or her stubborn insistence that things would get better. A lot she knew about football. She never marched the entire length of a field holding a cornet with a lethal mouthpiece bouncing against her teeth and a leaky spit valve.

When Auburn finally scored in the second quarter, and then Nick Fairley prevented another Alabama score by sacking the Bama quarterback inside the Auburn ten yard line and recovering the resulting fumble, I cheered up, but only a little. At the half my team was still behind by 17 points.

So during halftime I was still giving full volume football advice to Marilyn and the dog and the neighbors and the refrigerator and whoever else was in the vicinity. Given my vast experience as a former high school cornet player in an actual marching band, I knew full well that the second half wouldn’t be much better. Marilyn was in the kitchen when I took a time out for chips and a beverage, and she assured me once again that Auburn would win. “Don’t worry,” she said.

So as you know, Auburn staged an amazing comeback in the second half and won the Iron Bowl by a single point. “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT, I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE IT!” I said, several times. Marilyn seemed to take it all in stride. “I told you they’d win, didn’t I?”

So the irony of the 75th Iron Bowl wasn’t that it was Auburn’s much maligned defense that turned the game around, or that it was Newton’s passing, not his running, that provided the second half firepower. No, the irony was that a veteran armchair coach with a history of marching on high school football fields in a silly organ-grinder’s monkey suit with a plumed hat and fancy epaulets was outcoached by a woman who’d never marched in formation or coached from an armchair in her life.

She still thinks a tight end is a medical problem, for Pete’s sake.