Remember how there was a litany of articles claiming that we were the worst defending National Champions of all time? They were scouring the record books to see
who currently had the worse follow-up to their national championship season, to see who we would clearly replace in the hall of shame. It wasn't even stated as a hypothetical, despite zero games being played at the time.
Auburn was ranked 23rd by the AP in the preseason poll, which
was the lowest ranking of a defending AP #1 of all time when you consider that the only team ever to be ranked 23rd or unranked, was Minnesota back in 1961 - when they only ranked a Top 10.
At SEC media days, we
were not only picked 5th in the west, but Ole Miss, the only team we beat out, got two first place votes to win the conference. The only two teams that didn't get a first place vote was us and Vanderbilt.
Finebaum said he "couldn't find four wins on Auburn's schedule" this year.
Many others in the media agreed. Hell,
even our own beatwriter said that 8-5 is the absolute ceiling that only optimists believe is achievable. Rod Gilmore and Kirk Herbstriet said Auburn would be lucky to be bowl eligible, and if we made it to 500, we should consider that a successful season.
Any other links to crow eating I missed?