'Nobody Cares' About New Auburn Title Teams, Says Former ESPN Analyst

The Auburn Tigers, coming off a week in which it entered an on-field sponsorship deal with YellaWood, landed its first 5-star safety in history and retired the number of one of its most famous players, has been all over the headlines for a slightly different reason.

The university announced on Tuesday that it would be claiming four additional national titles for its football program, including 1910, 1914, 1958, and 2004, and fans of the rest of the college football world looked upon it quite unfavorably.

Former ESPN analyst David Pollack on his "See Ball Get Ball" podcast provided some interesting insight into the decision that could quell the outside hate and hype.

“I always find it interesting,” Pollack said. “Like some people just go nuclear and blow things up. Like, nobody cares about that. Nobody cares about any of those teams. Nobody cares about claiming anything back in that day. Now, listen, when UCF did it (in 2017), everybody was pissed. That was a different animal. They did it fresh off the season. Like, this is (from) so long ago, you can’t even name names on the teams back in the day they’re trying to claim national championships on. So I don’t care.”

Admittedly, barring the 2004 season, this is a pretty fair analysis. It’s hard to reasonably support or admonish the decision, as, to Pollack’s point, without research, it’d be hard to name even a
single player from Auburn’s 1910 or 1914 rosters– or any other player in the league, for that matter.

Pollack’s analysis that people seem to really be going “nuclear” about it, on both sides of the argument, is quite reasonable. Social media has been a firestorm of people blindly supporting or denying this decision, mostly just due to their own current team affiliation.

The best-case scenario for Auburn would be to do something like Alabama did. Years ago, they claimed several titles that they perhaps didn’t deserve, but the critics were quickly silenced by Nick Saban taking the team to dynasty status, and the Tide’s claimed titles were quickly forgotten.

If anything, the decision to claim these titles puts a target on Auburn’s back– head coach Hugh Freeze certainly has something to prove if he’s to silence the critics of a decision he likely had no say in.

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