Among media members, the Auburn Tigers are known for having one of the worst football press boxes, great fanatical fans and firing football coaches.
Last Saturday, after No. 1 Auburn traveled to Tuscaloosa and beat No. 2 Alabama, a Tiger fan posed a question during a text message exchange: how many games do you think Hugh Freeze has to win next season to be safe?
This particular fan chose to leave a great job out West and move to Auburn, Ala., and has been a season-ticket holder for football but never seen a basketball game.
The SEC — outside of Kentucky, and that’s changed a little over the past decade — is football country.
Football is Saturday’s religion.
However, expect Neville Arena to be rocking when the Arkansas Razorbacks come a’calling at 8 p.m. Central on Wednesday night.
Neville Arena opened in 2010 and replaced Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum. To illustrate what a distant second basketball is, the place seats just 9,121.
Yes, less than 10,000 and by design.
Of course, whoever came up with the bright idea to underbuild didn’t realize what Bruce Pearl would eventually bring to the campus.
When Auburn hired him, Pearl had just about served his NCAA mandated show-cause penalty from his days at Tennessee.
Pearl, who turned 65 on Tuesday, found an uphill battle at Auburn when he arrived in 2014.
The Tigers struggled for three years, the first losing seasons in a career that began in 1992 at Southern Indiana, where he went 231-46 (.834), before getting the Wisconsin-Milwaukee job, where he was 86-38 (.694).
Next was Tennessee, where he was 145-61 (.704) before getting fired for lying to NCAA investigators about recruiting violations by the program. The NCAA gave him a three-year punishment.
Even though he still had five months to go on his probation, the Tiger brass hired him, but for those months he was not allowed to recruit or have contact with recruits.
Before his fourth season, his assistant Chuck Person was arrested for bribery and corruption. Auburn officials decided to sit two players while the investigation was conducted.
Still, the Tigers went 26-8 and tied for the SEC regular-season title with a 13-5 league record.
He followed that up with 30- and 25-win seasons. Then once the investigation into Person was finished Auburn was not eligible for postseason play and Pearl was suspended for two games the next season. Which the Tigers won with former player Wes Flanigan (Little Rock Parkview) and Steven Pearl coaching the team.
It has mostly been a downhill run since, at least in the regular season. Pearl is 7-4 in NCAA Tournament games at Auburn and four of those wins came in 2019, when it reached the Final Four.
This season, though, Pearl and his Tigers have made Auburn a basketball powerhouse. They are 23-2 overall and 11-1 in SEC play.
The losses were at home to No. 2 Florida and to No. 3 Duke in Durham, N.C.
Pearl has an eight-player rotation but is not afraid to go deeper in his bench. The Tigers play ferocious defense, holding all opponents to 38% shooting, including 30% on three-pointers.
Their average win margin for the season is almost 15 points.
There is a chance they will be a little hungover from the win over their arch rival last week, but Pearl is known to make changes on the run as well as during halftime.
The Tigers are 15-1 at home and their sixth man — their fans — are almost as good as those at Arkansas.
The Razorbacks have their work cut out for them Wednesday night, against a football school that has finally embraced basketball.
