When A Rivalry Goes Too Far

 A lot of attention has been brought to the backlash felt by Rashaan Evans since choosing to attend The University of Alabama over auburn.  Monday night, Andrew Bone of Tidesports.com published a damning article detailing troubles the Evans family have endured since National Signing Day.  A short time later, auburnsports.com writer, Justin Hokanson, fired back with a completely ridiculous rebuttal arguing that treating 17-18 year old boys so abhorrently is normal.  He & fellow moderator, Jay Tate, discussed Hokanson's motives on a message board associated with auburnsports.com known as the bunker:

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Mr. Hokanson, there is something very wrong with GROWN MEN & WOMEN taking to social media & message boards attacking a kid & his family.  Rather than competing in a pissing contest with Bone, Hokanson's time would've been better spent trying to address this disturbing problem.  Instead, he let his little brother syndrome get the best of him & wrote about how all the 'high character' auburn signees also dealt with backlash. They just handled it better.

With that being said & given the amount of joy I usually get from bashing the auburn fanbase, this post is probably going to shock you.  In truth, the average auburn fan isn't that bad. Yes, they can be more annoying than fingernails on a chalkboard, but so can I.  The fact is, they have some nutjobs in their fanbase but it wouldn't be fair not to acknowledge Updike & the teabagger are Alabama fans (unfortunately).

However, there is a very big & very real problem within the auburn fanbase.  And that problem is the bunker, a sports message board referenced above.  And it's been one long before Evans decided to sport a Bama hat last Wednesday.  Immediately after his announcement, bunker members took to the board spewing enough venom to make Charles Manson feel kinda dirty.  What started as hopes of this kid tearing his ACL & allegations of him accepting REC payments quickly escalated to something much more sinister.  Posters began uncovering information about the Evans family with the intent to completely destroy them.  I'm serious.  People on this sports message board began trying to ruin a family because they're upset Rashaan chose a rival school & broke their hearts.  

As Bone detailed in his article, Evans has been dealing with a lot of twitter backlash like this tweet from Jamie Speakman, taunting Evans by making

fun of his father.  While I have always firmly believed that grown men tweeting these high school recruits, both positive & negatively, is just downright creepy; in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal.  And if that were the extent of the problems, it would be just another example of an intense rivalry unmatched in college football.  But members of the bunker have historically shown that they don't know when to stop.  They quickly posted information about the Evans' family business & organized a boycott.  They dug & found personal information regarding property the Evans owned, taxes they owed, where they lived.  They even tried to prove that Evans was attending Auburn High School illegally after claiming the family didn't live within the city limits.

Let that sink in for a minute.  Adult men & women, protected by the anonymity of a screen name, took to a message board trying to destroy an entire family.  All because an 18 year-old boy chose to play football outside his hometown of auburn. 

The amount of contempt the bunker still has for Evans & his parents a full week after his decision is very unsettling.  I openly admit to being a recruiting junky & taking these kids' decisions a little too personally. But I never once wished Jadeveon Clowney would suffer a career ending injury.  And when Jameis Winston didn't choose The Tide, I didn't try to make his family regret it by going after them financially.  Because no matter how much I love this sport & this team, I get that it's just a hobby.  It really doesn't affect my life in any way, shape, or form. But the bunker clearly disagrees.  Here's a few examples of what the bunker was saying about the Evans family just this morning:

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I completely understand when a Bama player gets arrested & auburn fans broadbrush our entire team as criminals.  I'm okay that auburn fans own Notre Dame, LSU, & Texas shirts.  That's part of the rivalry & nobody enjoys giving auburn fans a hard time more than me.  And I'm totally cool with them doing the same.  The majority of their fanbase understands that it's really just in good fun.  They overlook my blog posts titled, "I Hate Auburn".  I laugh when my facebook page gets bombarded with quotes like, "got a second?".  But when a rivalry affects people's lives, it's not fun anymore.  Actually, it's eighty shades of crazy & it shouldn't be tolerated.

The bunker has a long history of amateur investigations & attacks anyone who crosses them.  They love to use examples like killing trees to label all Bama fans as nutjobs.  But there is nothing sane about what they're doing to the Evans family.  If you google the antonym of sane, I bet the answer would be the bunker.  Even other auburn fans realize how completely insane it is to attack this kid.  On the bunker's rival message board, the bodda getta, posters ridiculed the bunker's line of thinking:

Let me be clear.  I'm not unrealistic.  I don't expect Alabama & auburn fans to hold hands & sing Kumbaya.  We're supposed to hate on each other.  And when we are done hating, we should be able to go grab a beer together.  I hope auburn loses every game they play.  But I'd never wish a fan's life to be negatively impacted simply because of a rivalry.  Whether it's killing trees or attacking a family's livelihood; if you have that kinda hate for a team & a fanbase, it may be time to find a new hobby.... And a psychiatrist. 

Because at the end of the day, we're all adults & it's just a football game....

***PM UPDATE***

Afternoon update:  Day 6, bad press, shamed by fellow fans, & the hate is still flowing. 

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Thanks for stopping by, y'all!!!  Roll Tide!!! Roll Rashaan!!!  And cheers Alabama AND auburn fans that aren't completely batshit crazy!!!