Was thinking about this today, and while both eras are extremely special to me, I’ve gotta go with the long rebuild of 1999-2004.
We didn’t win a natty at the end of it, but something about those teams just felt so “real”. The schemes weren’t elaborate. We had some really good players, but none that could realistically win the Heisman. We just built and recruited and developed. We laid some eggs along the way, but week in and week out, you usually knew what you were going to get from them: a blue collar team with tremendous character that would knock the piss out of you, wouldn’t make dumb mistakes, and make clutch plays down the stretch.
I really miss that consistency of identity.
Which brings me to the other era, 2009-2013. This is without a doubt the wildest time in AU football history. It was flashy. It was magical. It was lucky. How many times did the 2010 team just come out and completely shit the bed in the 1st quarter? Like half the season. This entire era is a roller coaster. And while it was a lot of fun and I won’t ever forget it, it’s not really an era I would consider characteristic of Auburn’s “true form”. Sometimes I still feel we’re paying for that era, karmically.
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