The story of Harvey Updike is a crazy one even for those of us who live in SEC country. A former state trooper planning and executing such a stupid act is something that is tough to wrap our heads around. Look, everyone outside of Auburn hates the place. We all sympathize with those who choose good over evil, but poisoning trees? Really? It takes a special kind of crazy to follow through on that idea. In college I could see my friends and I sitting around the apartment joking about doing something like that, but then the moment would pass and we would go back to pounding beers and head-butting each other before a Georgia game.
For a grown-ass man to drive 45 minutes from his home and pull this off makes one wonder just how crazy someone has to be to do something like this. Well, the answer is pretty damn crazy. ESPN’s brilliant Wright Thompson sat down with both Harvey Updike and his nom de guerre Al from Dadeville to learn more about the man. Thompson, a master with words, was left speechless on several occasions.
“Do you know the story behind Bevo?”
He begins rattling off pranks. Texas A&M fans stealing the Texas Longhorn and branding it with a score of a game, and Texas rebranding the word “Bevo” over it, hence the mascot’s name. Army-Navy, he says, and a kidnapped goat that was painted pink. One that Rice pulled on Texas.
“What do you think is different?” I ask.
“Me, personally,” he says, “I don’t think it’s a whole lot different.”
I don’t know what to say at first. I look across the table and decide he’s serious.
Updike is the ugly side to the SEC’s deification of college football. The pride Southerners feel for their team can be a wonderful thing up to the moment it engrosses them. Updike said, “I think about Alabama football, I’m not exaggerating, 18 hours a day. I have always been that way. It just didn’t start. That’s what people don’t understand. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is get on Tiderinsider and see what’s going on. I mean, I know it’s not healthy. I’ve been knowing that a long time. I have a daughter 33 years old named Crimson Tyde.”
The sad fact is the the SEC is the way it is — a hyper competitive, billion-dollar enterprise — due to people like Updike. They donate when they shouldn’t, buy season tickets when other things should take precedent and pack stadiums for spring exhibitions. While the SEC and it’s coaches will publicly say they detest the Updikes of the world, the fact of the matter is that they all get paid millions because the Updikes exist.
And with that, let’s hit the links:
Hey Notre Dame. The next time you claim to above the fray, read this and then STFU.
Year 2 feels a lot like year 1 for Turner Gill and Kansas.
Incoming Nebraska recruit can dead lift 640 pounds. That seems like a lot (video).
Will the practice of oversigning players in the SEC be dealt with next week when the SEC holds its annual meetings?
Once again, the Big 10 fails when it comes to marketing games. The Nebraska-Iowa game will be an 11:00 a.m. kickoff.
Auburn may have found another mercenary to run Malzahn’s high school offense.
Is a seismic shift coming this year in college football?
Greatest (or is it worst?) last name in the history of the college football Hall of Fame, right?
Tony Barnhart: Does the diluted Mountain West = AQ status?
Who’s up for a round table discussion on the full cost of scholarships?
Will Boston College ever win another Heisman Trophy?
Head coach-in-waiting Dana Holgorsen will fit right in with those crazy bastards from West Virginia. He was recently kicked out of a casino.
This guy is dead-on balls accurate (My Cousin Vinny reference). The full cost tuition increase would crush small schools.
I love and appreciate your anti-Auburn passion.
nice fucking lettermans jacket full of fictional national championships.
It’s all-encompassing. I feel like Updike himself.
don’t lie to me, Parrish…if he hadn’t poisoned the trees, you would have done it, no?
/I’ve wanted to light The Hedges on fire more than once
//I’ve pledged to defecate on the Tebow Speech plaque
What miz said.
/Roll Damn Tide
//That dude is fucking nuts though.
I wouldn’t take it that far. I think one of the top-3 memories for me was being in Auburn for the Michael Johnson 4th and 13 touchdown catch the year UGA won the SEC. We were at a bar because we couldn’t get tickets. When the play went down, the bar was about 50/50 AUB/UGA fans. After it went down, it was more like 98/2 UGA-to-AUB. We ran those sum’bitches out of the bar and out of downtown. It was glorious.
Remember when Charles Barkley said Auburn should have hired him instead of Chizik? Good times.
Tough to compare going to Aub where there is a bunch of talent to going to Kansas where there is none. Aub also has the luxury of paying for the best player in the nation and oversigning like a mother.
Having said that, Gill does need a bounce back year in 2011 or his ass will be on fire in 2012.
Kind of with you on this, if this was a bunch of kids at Alabama who had finished off a keg and then decided to throw some gasoline around the tree or something like that, I would have said, well, it was something my buddies and I might have done.
Now that I am an old codger of 45 years old, I simply don’t do things like that anymore. I rely on my sons to do them and chalk it up to youthful indiscretion.
that’s noon. you went to Georgia, damn it. use eastern standard times.
For the locals it’s 11:00. Football is not supposed to be played that freaking early.
/giggles
Just about every big 10 game is at noon est. There’s usually one at 3:30 and one night game a week. That’s it. It’s called tradition. I figured you good ol’ southern boys would get that.
To be honest, I don’t think it’s all that different either. The only real difference is the life and times we live in. Those A&M students tortured a steer with a branding iron, this guy poisoned trees.
Both are really stupid ideas, one was just socially acceptable back in 1916. Can you imagine the outrage that would happen if A&M students stole and branded Bevo today?
What Triston said.
cows get branded every day without death. decades old trees that are the centerpiece of a campus’ traditions don’t get poisoned to death every day.
I’m with Miz. There’s a difference between branding a fucking cow and killing a whole bunch of really old trees.
This right here.
Trees get cut down every day. Just as these trees aren’t your “average” trees, Bevo isn’t your average steer.
I disagree.
trees die when the get cut down. Bevo doesn’t die when he gets branded.
Triston eats soy bacon.
I’m not saying that what he did was ok. I’m saying that the difference is one was accepted simply because of the time when it was done. If they tried to brand an animal in the name of sport nowadays, they’d go to jail. Just as this guy will.
Trees don’t feel pain. Bevo does.
lolz
only because PETA would have a cow about it.
Bevo would get over it JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER COW THAT GETS BRANDED EVERY DAY.
It’s tradition to have games at shitty times which means the SEC and B12 get prime time slots? Awesome.
1973? Thats fucking rich, when the UPI voted Bammer # 1 before they lost the Sugar bowl to the real champs, #2 Notre Dame.
At least I will be able to find most Nebraska games now, that shitty Big 12 TV contract meant they were never on.
Another plus, because of noon starts, it will be halftime by time I wake up.
Jp/Raycom/ESPN 11:20 kickoffs are the fucking worst.
And new trees can be planted, just like they are every day.
Summoning your inner sportsgal only works if you throw in a few cuss words, DICKFACE!!!!
Jackie Sherrill see’s no problem with this.
What other Big 10 games are that week? The big 10 only puts one in the afternoon and one in the evening so they get higher ratings for those games.
Those suck at 12:30 EST, so I can only imagine how terrible they are in your neck of the woods.
you can’t plant new 130-year old oak trees, brah.
Yep. same with 1964 when Bammer was undefeated going into the Sugar Bowl, lost to Texas (who Arkansas had already beaten) and Arkansas beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl. Boom, National Championship for Bammer.
Roll Tahd
The game is on a Friday, though. It shouldn’t be competing with any other B10 games of note. They could have had the game at 3:30 (2:30 CST).
Can’t unbrand a football score in a steer’s hide, chief.
Truly awful. doesn’t help that it is usually vs. a crap team like Vandy where it is tough to get motivated for it as well.
Well, that’s an entirely different story then.
But you can cover it up.
As a fan living in GA I love the start time, but I would be pissed if I were going to the game. How can you properly tailgate for a game at 11 in the morning? That is some bullshit right there.
It’s not ideal, but you tailgate from about 7 am until 11:30. Then stroll on over for the game.
sure you can. you name it Bevo. that’s how the steer was named.
by the way, I’m fairly certain it was re-branded Bevo over the score branding.
That’s what the post says, miz.
It was.
And they can paint the dead trees green. Everything is artificial now days anyway. Auburn can be ahead of the game when it comes to the artificial tree game.
haha.
Stanford already cornered that market with their mascot.
Steer toupee?