New at Rivals: Go Win It All

My column for the SEC Championship Game is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com (actually it's been up for a couple of days now; sorry about that).  Here's a preview:

Auburn folks have waited twenty years to really lay the wood to Spurrier in a meaningful game (the 48-7 win over a 7-5 USC in 2005 was certainly nice, but nothing much was riding on it other than workaday conference standings). Old Visor Boy wrecked a lot of Auburn seasons in his Florida heyday, and while the Tigers were able to return the favor a few times, they never did so with an old-fashioned butt-kicking until Saturday. For everybody who lived through 1990 and 1996 and 2000, this one was particularly sweet.

But like the conference schedule and endless rounds of BCS speculation, all that is now in the past for the Tigers. Thanks to the vagaries of television contracts, the magic of 2010 will stretch well into 2011, and the next thirty-five-odd days of December and January are likely to be even more excruciating as those final weeks of pre-season anticipation in August. When all those days of preparation and waiting have finally passed, the lights will go up on college football's biggest stage, and the Tigers will be there.

Despite the recent round of carping from various rivals, the Tigers won't exactly be standing alone in that spotlight. On the field in the aftermath of the SEC Championship, South Carolina's Garcia found AU defensive superstar Nick Fairley, and echoed the command an Ole Miss assistant issued to Newton on the day before Halloween: "Go win it all."

The rest is on the subscription side, but Rivals is offering a free first month to new subscribers coming over from FTB.