The Auburn University men’s basketball team may have lost to its rival Alabama Crimson Tide last weekend, but it has secured the SEC regular season championship and remains well positioned as it enters the high-stakes SEC tournament and the unpredictable March Madness.
My grandfather, Julius “Jay” Porter Farish – “Papa” to his grandchildren – would have loved watching this team. I can almost see him, eyes bright with excitement, leaning forward in his favorite chair, critiquing each play with the intimate knowledge of a former team leader.
Born in Atmore in 1929, Bubber – as he was known in college – was more than just a player. He captained the basketball team in 1953 under Coach Joel Eaves, earning three varsity letters. His name still dances across Auburn media guides, a testament to a season marked by modest success: seven wins at home, four on the road, and two at neutral sites.
His story extends beyond the basketball court. Growing up in Monroeville, he was a childhood contemporary of literary legends Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote, who were, to him, the older kids. He would often recall, with a mischievous glint, stories of their childhood tree house club: a secret society in which membership demanded some mysterious, unspecified initiation that seemed to capture the wild imagination of those small-town Alabama days.
My grandfather used to take my brother and me to what he playfully called “The Old Timers” game – otherwise known as the Auburn Men’s Basketball Lettermen Club Reunion. These gatherings of Auburn basketball alumni had a gentle dignity: former players returning to the court at halftime, acknowledging the crowd with modest waves, their athletic glory days softened by time.
I still have the cap purchased at one of these assemblies. I remember our careful circuit through the hotel, approaching these former players one by one. How patient they were with two young boys, signing their names across the brim. Some signatures remain legible while others have faded into whispers on the fabric.
I can make out the names “Po Devil” Hart (captain of the 1960 SEC Championship team), Earl Banks, Bobby Cattage, Jimmy Fibbe, Bill Gregory, Gene Blakely, Mack Lee, Jim Diamond, Wally Tinker, Jim Devaney, Lee DeFore (Auburn’s first 1,000-point scorer), Leon Posey, and Bill Kirkpatrick. Others are indecipherable scribbles.
Even during high school, when I played freshman and junior varsity basketball, Papa challenged me to one-on-one games. He delighted in revealing his repertoire: that old-fashioned two-handed jump shot executed with surprising grace, the high hook shot that seemed to hang in the air just a moment too long before finding its mark.
What impressed me most, though, was neither technique nor skill but rather his stamina and agility, preserved somehow against the quiet conspiracy of passing years. In those private games on weathered driveways, he was not just my grandfather but a living connection to a different era of the sport we both cherished.
As these young men take to the court for this exciting stage of the season, they have already made Auburn history, holding the number-one spot for so long and adding stats for the record books. As they dance and celebrate, they create memories that will someday be recalled with that peculiar mix of precision and myth that accompanies all great sporting legends.
In time, their names and exploits will settle into Auburn’s collective memory, suspended forever in that golden moment when possibility and achievement were one and the same when youth and talent burned so brightly that they cast shadows across decades yet to come.
The victories will fade into data and figures, but the echoes of these moments – the flashes of brilliance, camaraderie, and fight – will live on in the hearts of those who watched and cheered, who, years from now, will tell their own grandchildren stories of this unique team.
War Eagle!
Allen Mendenhall is Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University and Executive Director of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy. Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.
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