{"id":911,"date":"2008-02-25T06:20:35","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T11:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=911"},"modified":"2025-05-30T07:12:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T12:12:53","slug":"second-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"The 12th Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Number One Son road-tripped to Auburn this past weekend to visit with some friends and to watch the Bama v. Auburn basketball game. The visit with friends went well. The game? Not so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Number One was driving to church when he stopped at an intersection with a crosswalk. He looked both ways, halfway expecting a herd of cattle to come ambling by. Instead, a lone figure in a ill-fitting, cheap suit walked down the sidewalk to his right and into the intersection.<\/p>\n

Number One stayed stopped like he was supposed to. He gazed down to fiddle with something in the car, and when he looked back up, the man in the suit was directly in front of him and staring straight at him. Number One recognized him immediately and took in a sudden breath.<\/p>\n

It was Tommy Tuberville<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coach Tuberville smiled at Number One and waved as if to say, “Thanks and good morning!” Perhaps he didn’t see the Bama student parking tag hanging from his rearview mirror. Perhaps he didn’t see Number One’s scowl. Or perhaps he did, and he was just doing what he needed to do to survive.<\/p>\n

Later that afternoon, Coach Tuberville spoke at halftime of the basketball game. He was receiving some kind of recognition and was talking about how Auburn has won six Iron Bowls in a row now and that they were working hard on number seven. The Barners in attendance hooted and hollered and stomped their feet, creating quite a racket. You would have thought it was feeding time the way they carried on.<\/p>\n

As Number One listened to Tuberville and then watched the Crimson Tide hoopsters conduct one of the patented second half meltdowns (really, nobody does it better), he reflected on that moment earlier in the day when he’d had The Smug One in his sights. He could have ended Tuberville’s streak right then and there.<\/p>\n

Oh sure, he would have been arrested and gone to jail for a little while. But his lawyers would have likely made the case for temporary insanity, and Number One would have gotten off the hook. Outside of Auburn, Opelika and Montgomery, who wouldn’t have believed it?<\/p>\n

Of course, his lawyers would have likely had to file for a change in venue. Red Bay would have been nice, Tuscaloosa even better.<\/p>\n

He would have largely been considered a hero, the latest addition to Bama’s storied pantheon of gridiron greats. He could have been famous, a 21st century Bama 12th man, surpassing even Tommy Lewis’s storied sprint from the sideline and his bareheaded tackle of Rice halfback Dickey Maegle in the 1954 Cotton Bowl.<\/a> Just like Lewis, Number One could have said in his own defense, “I was just so full of Alabama.”<\/p>\n

He reflected on all of that, and the moment when he had taken his foot ever so slightly off the brake pedal and started moving it toward the accelerator, only to set it back down again.<\/p>\n

Frankly, he was having second thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Number One Son road-tripped to Auburn this past weekend to visit with some friends and to watch the Bama v. Auburn basketball game. The visit with friends went well. The game? Not so much. On Sunday,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,29,43,48,40,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama-crimson-tide-football","category-college-basketball","category-college-football","category-family","category-southern-culture","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12037,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/12037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}