This week’s Jeremy Pruitt Index is back. The criteria, as a reminder, is based around a few elements that would impact a fan base’s perception of their relative joy or misery as a collective:

1. Pre-Season Optimism – How rosy – or realistic – were the fanbase’s perceptions of what could happen in the 2024 season?

2. Post-Season Optimism – How rosy – or sometimes unrealistic – has the fanbase’s perception shifted?

3. Season Results – wins and losses, sometimes critical and sometimes wonderful.

4. Personnel Woes – via the transfer portal or through coaching changes, is the program making positive strides towards renewed greatness?

#12 – Auburn – Mind you, this isn’t a post on which fanbase is the most miserable to deal with. Honestly, Auburn people aren’t the worst, and if this was a ranking of which fanbases are the most insufferable, horrible, and detestable, that distinction would go to Tennessee, with Alabama and Florida a close second. But this is about the fan base’s personal misery, and while they’re not the worst, they’ve gotta be in a bad place. First, they’ve concluded year two of the Hugh Freeze and actually got worse, going from 6-7 in Freeze’s first year to 5-7 in his second. The 2024 campaign featured one high moment, beating Texas A&M, but also featured one of the lowest, losing to Cal, at home. To make things worse, Auburn hasn’t beaten Georgia since Trump’s first term, and haven’t beaten Alabama since COVID hit. While some things never change at Auburn, like meddling boosters and rolling trees at Toomer’s Corner for any minor celebration, Auburn has digressed to where they are becoming a basketball school. When Bruce Pearl is your lone and shining hope for campus pride, you’re in a bad spot. And he likes to strip at games, too. When football has been as bad as Auburn’s has for this long, the fanbase might be asking for Harvey Updyke to do his magic with the football program and hope that a new transplant might yield a healthier tree.

Score: 12/20

Pre-Season Optimism – 5 (it’s Auburn)

Post-Season Optimism – 3, Freeze is still there, but optimism should be bolstered by a strong recruiting class.

Season Results – 1, the Cal and A&M games offset, imo.

Personnel Woes – 3, same rationale as the post-season optimism, if I’m being honest.

#11 – Texas A&M – Ah, what a difference a month made for the Aggies. Despite dropping a close game against Notre Dame, the Aggies were on a roll and sitting on top of the SEC. After going 4-0 in SEC play against Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi State, and pummeling #19 Missouri 41-10, the future looked bright for the Aggies. Elko was posturing like he was Nick Saban, and they were crowing with th arrogant bravado of an A&M Yell Leader. Then, the wheels fell off. Not just a flat, but literally came off the axle worse than an overturned Boomer Schooner. A 15 point loss to LSU, at home, followed by a 24 point loss to upstart South Carolina, then a loss to #12 on this list on some questionable overtime play calling. To make things worse, they lost to rival Texas and watched the Longhorns head towards the Aggies destination that had been stamped into existence just five weeks earlier – the SEC Championship Game. Follow that with a loss to USC in the Las Vegas Bowl, and the season was up in suffocating smoke that would ever silence one of those aforementioned annoying Yell Leaders. Conner Weigman left for the portal, leaving Marcel Reed as QB1 but with what seems to be a limited throwing skillset that could make the Aggies one-dimensional in 2025. What’s worse, everyone will be talking all offseason about how Texas is “back” and Wunderkind Arch Manning, which is enough to make an Aggie lose their Yell Leader voice, along with their minds.

Total: 13/20

Pre-Season Optimism – 4

Post-Season Optimism – 1

Season Results – 4 (honestly, I think they outperformed what I expected of them)

Personnel Woes – 4

#10 – Tennessee – Ah, the Everything School. If there’s another program out there that Kirby has likely killed, it’s Volunteer Football. Tennessee hasn’t beaten the Bulldogs since Mr. Clean threw a hail mary to counter Jacob Eason’s should’ve-been game-winning touchdown in 2016. That’s right…we’ve been through three presidential administrations since Tennessee last beat the Bulldogs. Good times. Now, they crow about every sport available to anyone who will hear, while their Bobby Hill coach continues to flounder on the biggest stages available. But, hey, they’ve beaten Alabama a couple of times. It’s now become so common place for the Vols to reach lofty heights only to be shot down in the most glorious of ways that they barely want to produce coffee table editions of their two and three loss seasons. Although making the CFP should be something to be proud of, the Volunteer fanbase picked the only other fanbase to rival them in overwhelmingly perverse and annoying crowing, the Suckeyes, to poke before what would become the most uncompetitive game in the 2024 CFP. Deeming the hometown “Volumbus, Ohio”, the final result looked more like Rick Barnes brought his basketball team to play a football game. The world’s greatest offensive mind ever, Josh Hypel, has been proven to be anything but and the Volunteers’ knight and shining armor, Nico Imagonnaleaveya plays less like Patrick Mahomes and more like D’wan Mathis in the biggest of games. At some point, even a Bobby Hillbilly’s gotta wonder if Tennessee has a higher ceiling than a three-loss season. Still, they’re Volunteers, so they’re going to keep on hooting and hollering like their Sevierville sisters round back of the LP tank on a hot summer night in the Appalachian wilderness.

Score: 13/20

Pre-Season Optimism – 5, as always

Post-Season Optimism – 3, as always

Season Results – 2, they beat Alabama, right?

Personnel Woes – 3, at this point they have to wonder about Bobby, but they still see the team as world beaters, so there’s that.

#9 – Alabama – I can remember a time when you couldn’t turn a corner without hearing the bleating, lazy, backwoods proclamation of inbreeding, sounding not unlike a fattened cow splattering the air with a low, lazy mooing that the heifer’s fattened belly had been sated with feed. A fresh, steaming patty was to be shat upon the earth, and the animal would listlessly walk away from it, as though it were a freshly squeezed gift for the earth. All it really is, though, is shit. It’s no better than anyone else’s shit, but it’s so massive, so pungent, and there’s so much of it that it cannot be ignored. It’s the king of shits, if you will, and sometimes you can see a psilocybic mushroom growing from it, and if you ingest it, the world turns into hard-edged shapes and colors. Now you can pretend that life is more than a bland and disappointing adventure, forgetting that you’re not a state champion quarterback like you think you are, and the corner of your trailer that has a pile of beer cans and spent prophylactics is actually a lost Egyptian ruin of mystery, now vibrant and bright with colors and meaning. As you come off your magical mystery ride and get ready to return to your job with the Presley Brothers Septic Services company, at least you get to don the script A hat on your head; later, as you’re elbow deep in someone else’s half-digested corn and flushed cigarettes, you get to bellow like the aforementioned cows out to pasture – “Roll Tide”.

At least nowadays I’m not hearing that phrase at every turn and corner any more, and Ryan Williams could be the first 17 year old to personally witness the collapse of a dynasty. Saban’s gone, and the team lost to teams in the bottom-half of the SEC, including Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, lost to Tennessee (lol) and lost AGAIN to Michigan. Not the National Championship version of Michigan, either…but let’s face it, that Bowl game was testament to the fact that Milroe wasn’t the answer and that Alabama has some work to do. DeBoer is bringing in his former OC in Tuscaloosa, but it was glaringly apparent that the empire Saban and Smart built is not what it used to be. Team discipline, a perception of a lack of composure and toughness, and a significant backslide in offensive production has got to raise some questions about the future of the Tide. The Gumps are excited about Julian Sayin or whoever else Alabama has coming to be quarterback, but, let’s face it, the answer in 2025 will be “anybody but Milroe”. Or at least, they’re hoping that was the only problem with 2024.

Christ, how did we lose to them twice in a calendar year? Kirby has a chance, with the Tide coming to Athens, to drive a nail into a coffin and rid ourselves of the Crimson Curse this year. And he needs to do it with the same gusto and consistency he’s done with Tennessee, too.

Total Score: 14/20

Pre-Season Optimism: 4

Post-Season Optimism: 4 (there’s always another great one coming in Tuscaloosa)

Season Results: 2 (for Alabama…at least they beat Auburn)

Personnel Woes: 4 – good recruiting class and a new OC has some optimism to it