Finally a well-reasoned response. You sound as shocked as I was by the 'rented mule' crap at our game earlier in the season. By the way, that seemed to be VERY well publicized to so many drunk male fans that it seems obvious that there had been much discussion and conjecture that AU HAD to have bought Cam.
But a little thought is required here:
I think to understand why AU fans may have over-reacted, you need to get into our collective mindset as of mid-season. Cam had turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime talent at Quarterback for us beyond any one's wildest hopes, he was playing spectacularly and had raised the collective game of our entire team. Fans are giddy and many had heard nothing of any of MSU's allegations against Cam or Cam's dad or whatever. THEN, one of MSU's FORMER PLAYERS (key point) starts making allegations against Cam or his dad. Then the UA influenced media go ape$hit bananas and tie AU to the story as if we just did a home invasion and killed a family. Then the insane cheating allegations come out from some sort of leak from UF though news outlets very much tied to Florida and Urban Meyer (remember everyone knows where Mullen came from)... Then TWO MORE of your former players (who sound like 'bag-men' in this story, they really do..maybe not john bond so much, but Bell sounds bad) start firing off allegations.....AND all this time, all these allegations, (wet phones and all) just tie back to who? a former MSU player.
If the shoe were on the other foot in this situation, the MSU fanbase would be furious. Angry at everyone..but particularly at a school that could have THREE FORMER PLAYERS involved in discussions of buying/not buying a player go public without a single shred of evidence against AU (or even Cam's dad really). I mean seriously...it all looks like Rogers was trying to take you guys to the bank. The release of info nonw looks orchestrated and petty and really like a set-up. Now we have aholes like Thayer Evans calling our professors trying to find someone, anyone that will tell him anything bad about AU. We have UA people over here cooking up theories that are beyond the pale and improbable beyond belief. (You guys know what UA people are like, any of you that live close to the border do anyway.)
Anyway, sorry you all hate us now, nothing I can do about it, but I kinda hate that my kid is there getting fed this crap about AU being so mean and buying your players. I truly don't believe we paid for him (we are too confident and I've seen us not be confident before), I think Cecil chickened out or this was a Rogers creation. I guess we will see, but now I have to feel weird and disliked by MSU when we come for games. No big deal really but, my husband and I actually went to the AU-MSU game in AU shirts and MSU caps this year. I expected people to be nice like they used to be, and most were not friendly at all. A few of the old-timers were cool. I'm just sad over it but it cant be helped.
War Eagle and Go State.