By MIKE HERNDON

You might not have heard, but I have now won four Pulitzer Prizes. That’s right, after somehow being overlooked after each of my 23 highly productive years as a Professional Journalist, your friendly neighborhood word-slinger is now a four-time winner of the most prestigious prize in the field.

How did that happen? Because I said so. By my criteria, four Pulitzer Prizes is what I deserve.

But that’s not how Pulitzers are awarded, you might say, and you’d be right. I am not a Pulitzer winner just because I say I am, no matter what criteria I use. It makes about as much sense as Auburn arbitrarily awarding itself seven more national championships in football, which is exactly what it just did.

After years of celebrating only two national championships in 1957 and 2010, Auburn will declare itself a nine-time national champion. They’ve already added the extra years to the wall in the stadium, so it must be true.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit a case can be made that when USC was forced to vacate the title due to recruiting violations in 2004, it should have been awarded to Auburn. In fact, I made exactly that case back in 2010.

But guess what? Neither the Associated Press nor the Coaches Poll did that. And, while both AP and the Coaches Poll were flawed methods of determining a champion, particularly in the bowl era, that is how national champions were decided. Not “trust me, bro.”

Just because you believe you should have won a national title doesn’t mean you did.

But why, you say, shouldn’t Auburn claim as many titles as they want? Alabama did. And you’re right. It was dumb when Alabama did it, too.

The Crimson Tide claimed only six national titles until the mid-1980s, when it suddenly started claiming five more. Add the 1992 title won by Gene Stallings’ team and the six won under Nick Saban’s tenure, and Alabama now claims 18 national championships.

Those five magically appearing championships include four titles in the 1920s and early ‘30s, when there were almost as many groups crowning a champ as undiagnosed concussions (and before the AP poll was established). You and half the rest of the country can make your retroactive case for those, I suppose, but Alabama also bizarrely included 1941, when the Tide was 9-2 with losses to Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. Alabama bases its claim for that title on a recognition by something called Houlgate, which apparently is not a horror film.

Never mind that three teams were undefeated that year, including AP national champ Minnesota, and Bama was ranked 20^th going into bowl season. The Crimson Tide proudly lists this silliness right in there with legitimate crowns like 1961, 1978, 1992 and 2011. And because they say it’s so, it’s gospel to most of their fans. They have it on T-shirts and everything.

So now Auburn has decided to follow suit, more than quadrupling its national titles overnight. Aside from 2004, it now also claims three national titles in the 1910s (two of those years, they didn’t have the best record in their own conference) and one in 1958, when the Tigers were 9-0-1 and ranked fourth in the final AP poll. It includes 1983, when the Tigers finished 11-1 and ranked third, and 1993, when they were undefeated but on probation.

So congratulations, I guess. Throw yourself a parade. Make T-shirts. Roll Toomer’s Corner if you want.

All the “championships” in the 1910s were mythical or retroactive anyway. For the other four, tacking those years on the wall at Jordan-Hare doesn’t make you champions anywhere outside Lee County. 

Most of us who follow the SEC laughed when Central Florida claimed itself a national title in 2017, hanging a banner in Orlando and getting a proclamation from the governor. It was, at best, a marketing ploy to draw attention to the inequities of what was then a four-team playoff that left mid-major programs with no shot at a title. But it came across as a whiny plea for attention.

For programs that have actually won legitimate titles, however — programs that have all the advantages of major conference membership, programs that ought to know better — it’s even worse. It’s just kind of pathetic.    

Categories: College football

Tags: Alabama football, Auburn football, College football, football, national championship, ncaa