Get local news delivered to your inbox!
Devan Cambridge slams down a dunk during warmups before Auburn’s game against South Carolina on March 5 in Neville Arena.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are, certainly, Auburn people out there who were sick to their stomach on Thursday seeing the news that fan-favorite Devan Cambridge is transferring from the basketball team. There are others, certainly, with hurt even in their hearts.
Yes, it’s just sports, just silly games, but Auburn likes to call itself a family, and so for Auburn people it should always be hard to feel like they’ve lost a family member. Imagine how the kid feels: Saying goodbye is always bitter before it is bittersweet, and for the fans who felt the highest highs with Cambridge when he slammed down dunks in the arena, it’s only natural that they want to feel empathy with him now as he packs away his dorm.
But it doesn’t have to be this way: It doesn’t have to be goodbye forever. It doesn’t always have to be “us vs. them,” and in the changing world of college sports, there’s no way it always can be.
Just because you’re an Auburn fan doesn’t mean you can’t support Devan Cambridge.
Just because you’re an Auburn fan doesn’t mean you have to spit venom at Bo Nix.
The NCAA is different now with the one-time transfer rule implemented in 2021, and it was always different for the student-athlete compared to the student. Yes, most everyone who comes through Auburn sees Auburn as their forever school, their forever home, this certain thing in their heart that nothing really comes close to and that makes their favorite color actually be two colors. The fans want that for the athletes too, but as we know, the athletes have put in unimaginable work and made unimaginable sacrifices for the sake of their playing careers to get to this level, and they can’t just throw all of that away to settle for less playing time or a bad fit when there are other pastures out there.
The duality of man: ‘There is good and evil in everyone.’
The reality of fan: ‘My team is good and everyone else is evil.’
It just can’t always be that way. Every change in the wind can’t create a permanent divorce. Fanhoods don’t last that way: That fan you see talking trash on social media about every kid who leaves as soon as he isn’t on his team — that fan won’t be a fan for long and they won’t get out of it what the good fans get. Their passion burns up or fizzles out after so many betrayals, so many turns, so often falling for everything and standing for nothing. Real relationships are built on substance.
I could list Cambridge’s stat lines, but I won’t: He jumped out the gym and dunked like a Globetrotter and he had a hilarious smile and that’s why the Auburn fans who love him love him.
Is that going away because he’s wearing a different color?
Yes, it’s sad, for a fan who wanted to see Cambridge play again for Auburn and won’t get to. Yes: brutal.
But through this crazy thing we call college sports there are ways to reach out to the individual, past the uniform, to find something more enriching, to reach out and touch.
Don’t Auburn men and women “believe in the human touch”?
Try it. Wherever the kid goes next season, try tuning in. Keep following the kid on Instagram. If it isn’t Cambridge, it could be the next one.
Maybe, one by one, Auburn can become the forever home you want it to be for everyone, even if they go when it’s time to go.
It doesn’t have to be the way it is.
Get local news delivered to your inbox!
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
It’s a schoolday again here are Auburn. The field trip is over. Here at Toomer’s Corner, a girl is taking graduation photos.
It goes by in a blink, yet it lasts a lifetime.
The Olympic champion is an SEC champion.
The Auburn fans got on their feet. No, not because Auburn was winning: Because Auburn was losing.
Charles Barkley says he can’t fathom what it’s like being an Olympic champion on a college campus. But he’s proud Suni Lee is the one at Auburn.
Bryan Harsin is trying to get better.
Auburn quarterback Dematrius Davis is looking for a new start. The rising second-year player announced Wednesday on Twitter that he is enterin…
GREENVILLE, S.C. — Jabari Smith doesn’t want this dream to end.
Auburn’s road to nationals has been set.
Devan Cambridge slams down a dunk during warmups before Auburn’s game against South Carolina on March 5 in Neville Arena.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.