From a purely journalistic standpoint, Harvey Updyke is a treasure. His ability to make news that is interesting and entertaining is priceless.
However, we're glad his trial is over, and we're even happier he's going to jail.
After Updyke's multiple confessions -- including one to our own Andrew Yawn -- it's great to breathe a sigh of relief and bask in his decision to finally plead guilty. It's been fun watching him wear blue jeans to court, get into a fight over a lawnmower and grow a handlebar mustache, but enough is enough.
Hopefully the long saga of the man who poisoned Toomer's Oaks is finally over. And maybe when the roots are pulled up from the corner of Magnolia and College, we can at last close this sad and strange chapter in the Auburn and Alabama rivalry.
We would like to see our relationship with the Bammers take a more civil tone, but we're not holding our breath. Most likely, there are hundreds more overtly fanatic, obese buffoons just like Updyke who won't let civility happen. Perhaps, that is the lesson we should take away from all this.
It's just football, right?
In our previous Updyke-centered editorials, we asked Barners and Bammers alike to take a long hard look at how much of their lives they devote to football. If you did, then good for you. We hope you learned how goofy it looks when you take a game so seriously. If you didn't, we want to encourage you to give it a try, again.
The idea of football being a religion in the South is ridiculous, for most of us anyway. Yet we still adhere to the yearly rituals of tailgating, binge drinking and fanatically cheering for athletes who make their schools millions while they don't make a cent.
Football is fun to watch, and it's apparently a good business. But when you start poisoning trees because your team lost, then it's no longer a game, it's an obsession.
So what do we do?
A good place to start would be by letting Updyke fade away. Of course, suggesting this in a publication that has gotten a few thousand extra website views because of Updyke is deeply ironic, but hopefully you can see past that.
Unless something crazy happens while he is jail, such as the spirit of Bear Bryant taking Updyke up to heaven in a golden chariot pulled by elephants, we probably won't have much more to say about him. And that is a good thing.
We can only laugh at the behavior of a fanatic for so long until we realize we might just be laughing at ourselves. After all, the rivalry between Auburn and Alabama is all about proving who is better, but in that pursuit we lose what makes us great schools and football fans in the first place. Instead we all turn into Updykes.
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