Auburn players share how team handled long weather delay in Southern Miss game
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Auburn’s underwhelming 24-13 win over Southern Miss is one most fans won’t dwell on for along. It was a mostly forgettable night, aside from a weather delay. Lightning in the area surrounding Jordan-Hare Stadium stopped play at the 4:27-mark in the second quarter. A thunderstorm “camped” over Auburn and play would be stopped for two hours and 44 minutes.
After the game, AL.com’s Tom Green asked Tigers players about the long delay.
“It kept on getting delayed, so it was like, you know, we made a rah-rah speech and then it was like ’30-minute delay,’ so it was like, well, let’s just wait until we actually know we’re going to go back out there,” WR Darius Slayton said.
Green notes that many players listened to music. LB Deshaun Davis said he FaceTime’d with his mother.
“Honestly, I was on FaceTime with my mom. Swear,” Davis said. “… I just kind of listened to music and went and laid by my locker and tried to stay locked in, because I felt like I was in a groove, you know? I was kind of upset that we had the rain delay, because I knew it had to be at least 30 minutes, then 30 minutes turned to like two hours or something, so the second time she called, I was like, ‘What’s up, Mom?’ We talked for about 40 minutes. Talked about the game. They had a little get-together at my auntie’s house, and I talked to everybody in the house.
“I wouldn’t do that any other day, but I had nothing else to do but sit with a wet uniform on, so I talked to my family. That was pretty neat.”
There was also the awkwardness of multiple “rah-rah” speeches to hype up the players as they would expect to be returning to the field soon only to find out the delay had been extended.
“There was one point where I thought they ain’t say nothing for 30 minutes, and there were 2 minutes left and I’m like, we’re going to go out there; everybody’s getting ready,” DB Noah Igbinoghene said. “Then, 1 minute left it’s like oh, 30 minutes again.”
More from players and Auburn coach Gus Malzahn on the delay can be found in Green’s article here.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
