From The Bleachers

New at Rivals: Good Win, Fun Night

2012-01-03T11:19:00.000-05:00

My Monday (er, Tuesday--hey, sue me) morning column for the It Should Still Be Called The Peach Bowl is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. Here's a preview:

Given the fact that Auburn and UVA share the same team colors (thanks to Virginia alum George Petrie having founded the AU football program back in 1892), it was often hard to tell who was Hoo in the crowd, but the scene and the game both wound up being a lot of fun, at least if you were wearing the SEC's correct versions of burnt orange and navy blue.

Whatever you thought about Gus Malzahn's Auburn tenure and/or departure to become a head coach, you'd have to like his last game calling plays for the Tigers. The only thing we didn't see in the Georgia Dome was Malzahn's Ludicrous Speed hurry-up game; pretty much everything else in the playbook came out against Virginia, resulting in more points than the Tigers had tallied against any other opponent (yes, including Ole Miss).

I must confess, Saturday night was the first time I'd seen the Cavaliers play this season, and I've read a bit of "ah, it's just Virginia" commentary since the bowl game, particularly regarding the UVA defense. Maybe so, but that defense was still good enough to finish third in total "D" for their conference (yeah, I know, it's the ACC, but still) and in the top four of most of the ACC's defensive categories.

Their defensive line looked pretty good to me early on, as the "O" in Auburn's O-line appeared more like it stood for "Ole!" than "offensive" (again). Clint Moseley didn't have much of a chance to do anything in his brief start before being injured, and Barrett Trotter spent an awful lot of time having to make something out of nothing in a bravura return to the field after six games on the bench.

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

New at Rivals: Season of Struggle

2011-11-28T11:20:00.001-05:00

My Monday-morning column for the Alabama game is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

I think a coach at Auburn or Alabama has to lose that game at a point after they've won it at least once to really appreciate the position they're in. Very few coaches win it in their debut seasons, so pretty much all of them (who aren't named Bill Curry) get a pass on that first loss, especially if their team played well in defeat. Nobody at Auburn held the 1981, 1999 or 2009 losses against Pat Dye, Tommy Tuberville or Gene Chizik, and nobody serious at Alabama held the 2007 game against Nick Saban.

But that free pass is only good once. When Dye flubbed consecutive games he should have won in 1984-85 and Tuberville's 2001 team completely imploded against Alabama, the heat came on immediately. Last year, Saban had the cushion of coming off an undefeated season (as does Chizik today), but even so, few failed to note that Auburn's comeback marked the second straight time Saban and his staff had been decidedly outcoached by Chizik and company.

Saturday night, besides the obvious advantages Alabama enjoyed in terms of deep, experienced talent, that shoe was on the other foot. Alabama leveled pinpoint attacks at pretty much all of Auburn's deficiencies, most notably in pass coverage and up front on both sides of the ball, but they also got a lot of help from arguably the worst game Gus Malzahn has ever called.

Time after time, Auburn would come into a convertable down situation only to blow the opportunity with a goofy trick play, the very worst example being the terrible Wildcat call--after a timeout, no less--on fourth-and-a-foot late in the third quarter. It was an inexplicable decision. Alabama has a great defense, but you put Michael Dyer in a standard formation with a blocker in front of him, he's going to get a foot 49 times out of 50. "Getting too cute" is an accusation that's been leveled against Malzahn a lot this season, and it was never more appropriate than Saturday against the Tide.

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

New at Rivals: You Are What You Are

2011-11-21T10:11:00.000-05:00

My Monday-morning Rivals column for the Samford game is up at AuburnSports.com. A preview:

Under normal circumstances, Homecoming gives a team a chance to get the starters a decent workout in the first half, then clear the benches all the way down to the waterboys by the fourth quarter, giving every long-suffering walk-on a chance to get at least a few snaps.

This being 2011, things didn't work out that way. Auburn never trailed against Samford, and was never in serious danger of losing the game, but played such lackadaisical and ugly football that the Tigers couldn't really declare victory and pull the starters until well into the fourth quarter. Coming after one of the most awful losses in the modern history of the program, it wasn't the kind of game to give AU fans a great deal of confidence for the season closer next week.

I could spend a few more paragraphs running down the issues in this team's roster, but the reality is, after eleven games, you are what you are. What Auburn is right now is, unfortunately, about what they were in the opener: mediocre and inconsistent. And while you can certainly point to holes at the "skill" positions (particularly at receiver and in the secondary), it still all starts and ends up front.

From the very first game against Utah State, the Tigers have struggled to win in the trenches, and with a few exceptions--the South Carolina game accounting for most of them--those struggles haven't yielded much success. Put bluntly, Auburn still has a lot of trouble blocking on offense, and a lot of trouble getting off of blocks on defense. That's not a great combination.

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

I didn't write a column for the Georgia game; my mom passed away that Friday, and football hasn't been much on my mind since.

New at Rivals: Consistency Still Needed

2011-10-31T11:15:00.000-04:00

My Monday-morning column on the Ole Miss game is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

For all the griping about poor tackling or bad play-calling or the lack of this or that factor on either side of the football, Auburn's overarching problem this season is inconsistency. The Ole Miss game marked the third time in 2011 that the Tigers have jumped up to a 14-0 lead, only to see the other guys wipe out that margin while still in the first half.

I thought Auburn improved a good bit against Ole Miss, even given all the aforementioned buffoonery, but the Tigers still couldn't put together a four-quarter game.

The best of Saturday: Auburn's passing game finally reappeared after a four-plus-game absence. Clint Moseley had an excellent second start at quarterback, going 12-for-15 and four touchdowns, and Philip Lutzenkirchen added to his "human highlight reel" reputation with that ridiculous Lawyer-Tillman-flashback catch for Auburn's last score, but the straw that stirred the drink was Emory Blake.

Let's take it as a given that Ole Miss does not have a great defense, but the difference for Auburn with Blake in the game was still blindingly obvious.

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

More of Pete Thamel's BS Exposed

2011-10-27T10:19:00.002-04:00

Remember little Petey Thamel's breathless NY Times story about how Gene Chizik had a shouting match with NCAA enforcement honcho Julie Roe Lach? Like most of Thamel's "reporting," the story was an innuendo-heavy piece sourced mostly by people with axes to grind against Auburn. Also like most of Thamel's "work," it wasn't remotely accurate.

Lach, interviewed recently by CBS Sports' Brian Fischer, had this to say:

Fischer: The SEC meetings, do you regret the run-in with Gene Chizik?

Lach: I have no regrets. I think a run-in is really a mischaracterization, it was a discussion.

Thamel, of course, made the exchange out to be an ominous sign of Auburn's impending doom at the hands of the NCAA. Instead, AU was exonerated by the NCAA a few months later. Oopsie.

Obviously, we're talking about the New York Times here, where editorializing and innuendo in the service of a pre-selected "narrative" is the order of the day, but one of these days, little Petey's penchant for exaggeration and innuendo is going to catch up with him.

Writing like he's working for the National College Football Enquirer is working for Petey, and his editors obviously don't care enough to correct him, but the real shame is that Thamel's buddies in the sportswriting world don't have the guts or the character to call him out when he runs this kind of garbage.

(Sort Of) New at Rivals: Dominated Up Front

2011-10-27T10:04:00.001-04:00

My bad for not posting my Monday-morning Rivals column on the LSU game. It's been a hectic week. Here's the link and a preview:

It doesn't take detailed play-by-play analysis to see why Auburn couldn't hang with LSU on Saturday. All it took was seeing a couple of series: the Red Stick Tigers were just a whole lot better up front, on both sides of the ball.

For all the hoopla over Cam Newton, the real difference between the 2010 and 2011 Tiger Bowls was the relative performance of the offensive and defensive lines. Last year, Auburn owned the trenches; this year, it was LSU's turn to be dominant up front. The rest, as they say, is commentary.

But since commentary is sort of the whole point of this gig, here goes: the Auburn offensive line couldn't stop LSU's front four, most particularly end Sam Montgomery. At all.

Clint Moseley had somebody in his face the entire game, and running room was a rare occurrence for either Michael Dyer or Onterrio McCalebb. Give the level of pressure up front and a left tackle who would have had a great performance if he'd been a matador, I'm actually a bit impressed that Moseley only had one pick-six.

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

New at Rivals: Ugly, But Winning

2011-10-17T12:42:00.001-04:00

My Monday-morning column on the Florida game for Rivals' AuburnSports.com is up. A preview:

The recurring meme in the wake of Auburn's 17-6 win over Florida is, "winning ugly." I must object: anybody who tries to tell you that notching a third-consecutive win (and fourth of the last five) against an ancient rival like Florida isn't a pretty sight obviously missed the second half of the 1990's.

There's no such thing as a bad win over the Gators, no matter what the score or stats sheet might look like after the clock runs out.

But yeah, okay, if you want to get all picky and aesthetic about it, this wasn't the kind of game you'd want to have on a permanent replay in your football museum. For all the 21st Century trappings, Auburn-Florida 2011 looked an awful lot like both teams, at least on offense, had slipped into a time machine set for 1989.

Other highlights include a gratuitous shot at Charlie The Hutt, aka Mr. "Decided Schematic Advantage."

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

Clean Bill Of Health

2011-10-14T10:46:00.003-04:00

Kevin Scarbinsky, in the Birmingham News:

Instead of being swayed by public misinformation, the NCAA did what the NCAA is supposed to do. It assigned to the Newton case a bulldog of a lead investigator, Jackie Thurnes, whose previous work included the Derrick Rose-Memphis basketball case that cost the Tigers 38 victories and a national runner-up finish, and turned her loose.

Consider a list of states where the NCAA put actual boots on the ground to sniff around on Newton, the HBO 4 and beyond: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas.

Now contemplate the multiple fronts covered by a wide-ranging investigation that, according to Thurnes' "It's over" letter to Auburn AD Jay Jacobs, "was not limited to" Newton and the HBO 4.

According to people who were interviewed by the NCAA, the probe looked into everything from the repairs that were done on Cecil Newton's church to the suits that Cam Newton wore in New York during Heisman week. They asked questions about everyone from an alleged street agent in Louisiana to an alleged street agent in Arkansas.

They combed through bank, tax and phone records of Auburn players, coaches, officials and trustees. They requested and were provided some records that went back almost two years.

Did I say requested? Demanded is more like it. The NCAA made it clear that, if those records weren't turned over, the NCAA would consider that suspicious and might find Auburn guilty of failure to cooperate.

What did the NCAA find after 13 months of that kind of determined digging? Not enough to substantiate any of the potential violations it examined. Auburn's unofficial probation ended, not only without sanctions, but without a single formal charge brought against the school.

It's extraordinary for the NCAA not to find something somewhere to charge a school with when it invests this kind of time and money. People who've been involved in infractions cases will tell you. When the enforcement staff turns over this many rocks, it expects to find some serious dirt.

Auburn expected to come out clean, but it didn't expect to get the detailed letter it received that was signed by Thurnes. There probably isn't a more rare and valuable document in the possession of any athletic department in the country today.

Read the whole thing.

BREAKING: NCAA Formally Clears Auburn

2011-10-12T17:41:00.004-04:00

For nearly a year now, haters from coast to coast--but especially in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Starkville and Gainesville--have been predicting that Auburn would receive a letter from the NCAA. This afternoon, that prediction came true. Problem for them is, the letter exonerates AU. The NCAA's public statement says:

After conducting more than 80 interviews, the NCAA has concluded its investigation into Auburn University. The NCAA enforcement staff is committed to a fair and thorough investigative process. As such, any allegations of major rules violations must meet a burden of proof, which is a higher standard than rampant public speculation online and in the media. The allegations must be based on credible and persuasive information and includes a good-faith belief that the Committee on Infractions could make a finding. As with any case, should the enforcement staff become aware of additional credible information, it will review the information to determine whether further investigation is warranted.

A few excerpts from the letter, which is addressed to Jay Jacobs:

[D]uring the past 13 months the enforcement staff and Auburn University have reviewed a number of allegations regarding the football program's compliance with NCAA legislation, including, but not limited to, allegations involving football student-athletes Cam Newton, Raven Gray, Stanley McClover, Chaz Ramsey and Troy Reddick.

Regarding Mr. Newton, the enforcement staff and the university conducted over 50 interviews regarding an alleged pay-for-play scheme. Additionally, an extensive number of documents including, but not limited to, bank records, personal IRS tax documents, telephone records and e-mail messages, were obtained and reviewed as part of that inquiry. As reflected in the university's November 30, 2010, self-report, it was determined that a violation of amateurism legislation occurred when Mr. Newton's father and an owner of a scouting service [Mississippi State booster and former player Kenny Rogers --ed] worked together to actively market Mr. Newton for compensation. NCAA Bylaw 12.3.3 prohibits individuals or entities from representing a prospective student-athlete for compensation to a school or athletics scholarship. It was also determined that Mr. Newton and university representatives were not aware of that activity. Based on the information currently available, the enforcement staff has not substantiated any other violations involving Mr. Newton...

Regarding Mr. Gray... The enforcement staff and the university conducted multiple interviews, including those of Mr. Gray and Mr. Gray's family, friends and others. Ultimately, Mr. Gray's allegations were not substantiated, and in some instances were disputed by others...

Regarding Mr. McClover, Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Reddick... even though the enforcement staff made several attempts to interview those individuals, they refused to cooperate. Therefore, the allegations made during the HBO show have not been substantiated...

The enforcement staff appreciates the university's cooperation in these matters. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me. Thank you.

Sincerely, Jackie A. Thurnes, Associate Director of Enforcement

Pete Thamel (hey Pete, NOW we know it's over), Thayer Evans, Joe Schad, Mark Schlabach, Chris Low, Spencer Hall, Matt Hinton, Danny Sheridan, Paul Finebaum, Dan Mullen, Megan Mullen, Urban Meyer, Jody Wright and a host of other goons who did their damnedest to do to Auburn off the field what Auburn did to their teams on the field in 2010 were not immediately available for comment.

So: despite the uncountable amounts of ink, pixels and bandwidth spent predicting doom upon the Plains, there will be no probation. There will be no vacations, no forfeits, no returned trophies, and no asterisks. The 2010 season will remain what it always was: glorious.

Boys, you can pick up your crow at Cam's house. He'll be glad to serve it to you... at high velocity.

New at Rivals: Similar Feelings to '09

2011-10-10T13:38:00.000-04:00

My Monday-morning column for the Arkansas game is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

Years ago, inimitable football-analyst-emeritus Beano Cook observed of the Arkansas Razorbacks, "They're like the Russian Army: terrible on the road, unbeatable at home."

That hasn't always been the case for Auburn, which was actually one game over .500 in Fayetteville going into Saturday, but the Tigers' long collapse against the Razorbacks still felt equally familiar and frustrating.

For what seemed like the umpteenth time (although AU has only lost 9 games to Arkansas in its history), the Hogs exposed every missing piece in the Tigers' squad, and left the visitors to slog home with more questions than answers.

One much-asked question that did get answered Saturday night was, "Why aren't they letting Kiehl Frazier throw the ball?" The answer--obvious then and now--is, "Because you don't do that to a true freshman." Frazier is a tremendous football player, but he's also five months removed from high school. As his last couple of series showed, calling on him to outfox grown men in an SEC secondary, on the road, is at least a year premature.

Watching the offense struggle Saturday night brought on a strong sense of deja vu from the last time the Tigers tripped over their tails in Arkansas, in 2009. Once again, the offense lacked any resemblance of a downfield passing threat, allowing the Hogs to key on the running game in the early downs and pin their ears back on obvious passing downs.

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

New at Rivals: Chicken Soup for the Auburn Soul

2011-10-03T10:11:00.001-04:00

My Monday-morning column for the South Carolina game is up over at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

The defense that couldn't get Utah State off the field allowed only two third-down conversions against Carolina. The secondary that had spent four games with its backs to the line of scrimmage suddenly turned around to look for the football, allowing only nine completions and reeling in two interceptions. Linemen and linebackers who'd been diving at feet and clutching at air were now wrapping up and gang-tackling, holding the remarkable Marcus Lattimore well below the century mark for the third time in 12 months.

To call it a turnaround would constitute a landmark of understatement. How completely bottled up was South Carolina? This much: Prior to their last, desperation drive, the Gamecocks snapped the ball in Auburn territory exactly once; although to be fair, that one play was Lattimore's only notable run of the day, the 15-yard third quarter touchdown scamper through most of the AU defense.

The rest of the day, Carolina was playing with their backs in close proximity to their own end zone, and while the Tiger defense can take justifiable pride in keeping the Gamecocks backed up, I'd wager they don't have a bit of a problem in complementing the stellar day had by punter Steven Clark and his special teams compatriots.

Carolina had exactly one kick return (and it was on a kickoff) the entire game. For old-line Auburn, having suffered through the ridiculous surrendered yardage and points of September, play and numbers like that were a soothing tonic.

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

New at Rivals: Little Things Mean The Most

2011-09-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

My Monday-morning column for the Florida Atlantic game has been posted over at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. Here's a preview:

FAU, coached by retiring Captain Kangaroo look-alike Howard Schnellenberger (who's the defensive coordinator, Mr. Green Jeans?), was widely described the press as one of the worst teams in football, and Auburn fans were expecting to get their team dispatch the lowly Owls with a methodical display of power football.

That wasn't what they got in reality. While Auburn was never in any danger of losing Saturday night, the Tigers turned in a lackadaisical, sputtering effort that didn't do much to quell misgivings over the 2011 team's shortcomings. The list of ongoing problems hardly changed.
...
Auburn is an immensely frustrating team to watch at this point. For all the criticism leveled at the coaches, particularly on defense, I don't think we're dealing with a drastic deficiency in schemes. The reality is, more often than not, players are in position to make plays, but simply don't. Poor tackling, poor technique, poor communication, lack of situational awareness, dropping balls that hit the hands, the list goes on.

Little things mean a lot in football, and Auburn just isn't doing many of those things well, and certainly isn't doing them well with any consistency. And with one of the most challenging four-game stretches in the history of the program looming, the time for fixing problems has just about run out.

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

New at Rivals: Many Problems for AU

2011-09-19T10:35:00.000-04:00

My column on Saturday's debacle at Clemson has been posted at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

According to legend, when Auburn alumnus Walter Riggs founded Clemson's first football team in 1896, the school was so bereft of funds that Riggs agreed to coach the team for no salary, and wrote back to his alma mater asking if he could have a set of old Auburn uniforms to outfit his squad.

After years of heavy use and laundering, the navy blue on those Auburn uniforms had faded to purple, and as a result Clemson adopted that hue, in addition to the un-faded orange, for their team colors.

A hundred and fifteen-odd years later, the descendants of Clemson's inaugural team paid back that (perhaps apocryphal) debt by taking the modern Auburn Tigers to the cleaners, sealing an impressive two-touchdown win with an epic, clock-destroying final drive.

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

On A Roll

2011-09-14T07:09:00.000-04:00

Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News is on a major roll this week. On Monday he had a great column featuring Gus Malzahn's reaction to Cam Newton's smashing NFL debut. Today Scarbinsky lays the wood to ABC/ESPN for putting 0-For-Auburn Urban in the color commentary slot for the Auburn-Clemson game:

In December of 2010, Meyer was the only SEC coach with a vote thatdidn't put Auburn No. 1 on his final regular-season ballot in the USAToday poll. He put Oregon first and Auburn second.

But those slights pale next to the role Meyer may have played as a wizard behind the curtain of the Cecil Newton-Kenny Rogers story last fall.

According to multiple news reports, before that story broke, Meyerhad vowed on a three-way call with his protege, Mississippi State coachDan Mullen, and former Mississippi State quarterback John Bond to tell it to The New York Times and ESPN.
...

There's no similar justification for ESPN/ABC to send Meyer to Clemson,not for cameos but for a game-long stint in the booth, and there aremore than enough reasons to believe that he isn't neutral in hisfeelings toward Auburn.
...

[T]his goes beyond "a competitive rivalry that existed"while Meyer was coaching. This is wrong person, wrong place, wrong time.

ESPN should change assignments for this weekend, and Meyer, at thefirst opportunity, should change careers. He should go back tocoaching. That way, he can try to do something he's never done. BeatAuburn on the field.

Extra kudos to Scarbinsky for remembering the name and role of Mississippi State booster/street agent Kenny Rogers, both of which the "major" sports media have assiduously avoided mentioning over the past several months. Strike off a point, though, for not noting Meyer's rarely-disclosed personal and business relationships with Pete Thamel, Thayer Evans and Mark Schalbach.

Still, nice work again from Scarbinsky, who's about the only genuinely independent sports writer in Alabama these days. Read the whole thing.

New at Rivals: Next Time, Remind Auburn

2011-09-12T14:29:00.000-04:00

My Monday-morning column for the Mississippi State game is up over at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. Here's a preview:

Great finish, sure, and some scattered great play to get there, but also entirely too much inconsistency and outright buffoonery along the way. This team still has a long way to go, and an awful lot still to learn... but that doesn't take away the satisfaction of stuffing not just Chris Relf and the assorted "experts" of ESPN, but also a Mississippi State regime that isn't likely to get a better shot at Auburn in the foreseeable future.

This was the best possible matchup for State to finally make some headway in their long and lopsided-the-other-way rivalry with Auburn, and they still fell--just--short.

The Other Bulldogs have a senior-heavy team that's now had three years of stable coaching, and faced a Tiger squad with essentially three contributing seniors. And they still couldn't get it done (although my sources indicate that ESPN's Joe Schad has already been contacted by Mullen's immediate household with explosive charges that Relf really did score).

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

New at Rivals: Get Better, Soon

2011-09-06T09:01:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the long delays this week... I spent the Labor Day weekend with very limited internet access, at a secure and undisclosed location in darkest Alabamistan.

My Monday-morning column for Rivals' AuburnSports.com wasn't actually posted until late in the day yesterday, but I do promise that it was the best darn column to be submitted from the parking lot of a Jack's in Anniston during a tropical storm. A preview:

I'd like to find somebody to brag about on the Auburn defense, but frankly, it's hard to locate anybody who had a consistently strong performance. Coverage was poor, tackling was worse, and confusion was rampant. Yeah, it was the first game, and against a team Auburn's coaches obviously hadn't emphasized preparing for, but minus the dominating run-stopping of Nick Fairley and Mike Blanc, you'd be stretching things to call this even an average defense.

It's never a good idea to take a single game as representative of any team's abilities, much less its potential. Let's stipulate that coming back from two scores down with two minutes left is a respectable feat under any circumstances. Utah State may turn out to be a very good football team this year; certainly if they continue to play with that kind of power and discipline, they ought to win more than a few ball games.

But let's not gild the lily here. This was an ugly win over what all the world--certainly including everybody at Auburn--expected to be a cupcake. If the Tigers really plan to prove wrong the naysayers who've been dumping on their chances for the last seven months, they've got a load of improving to do, and precious little time in which to do it.

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

It's time.

2011-09-01T07:44:00.002-04:00

Geoffrey Norman:

It was hot. It is always hot in the black belt of Alabama in the middle of August, and it feels like it will be hot for all eternity. So we talked about sports for some relief.

"You know," the man said wearily, "I just can't wait until they kick it off again. I mean, I feel like if I can just make it for another two or three weeks, then they'll be playing football again and then everything will be okay."

Hallelujah, Amen.

New at Rivals: Conference Dominoes

2011-09-01T07:07:00.000-04:00

I have a new column up for Rivals.com's AuburnSports, regarding the looming expansion of the SEC. Here's a sample:

After over a year of toying with the idea, Texas A&M formally announced that it is leaving the Big Twelve-Minus-Two, and barring hard-to-imagine intervening events, next June the home of the 12th Man will become the SEC's 13th team.

Whether a further expansion of the conference is a good idea or not (I'd be perfectly happy to go back to the pre-1992 10-team roster myself, but nobody asked me) is now a moot point.

It's going to happen, and because a numerically unbalanced 13-team league makes no sense at all, let's whip out the old crystal ball and see if we can divine who might be joining A&M in a new and (hopefully) improved SEC.

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

"Hello...? Is This Thing On?"

2011-08-29T08:06:00.001-04:00

It's finally opening week for college football, and long-past time for FTB to wake up from off-season hibernation.

So naturally, I have very little to post today. Sorry about that; life interferes.

In the meantime, check out Jerry Hinnen's epic in-progress season preview, starting here and here, and I'll be along directly.

I will be continuing to provide Monday-morning columns for Rivals' AuburnSports.com this season, and just like last year, that site is offering a free first month's subscription to any new members from FTB; just click here for more info.

Maple Street Press Auburn Yearbook Preorders

2011-06-30T09:22:00.002-04:00

Maple Street Press has an "Auburn Kickoff 2011" glossy magazine coming out soon. A few weeks ago, editor and TWER honcho Jeremy Henderson asked me for a few words about Cam Newton's year at Auburn for inclusion. Over a weekend, "a few" turned into well over 4,000, and the (edited) result will be published a couple of weeks from now, along with another 120-odd pages of AU goodness:

Other contributors include Jeremy, Van Plexico, and the inimitable Jerry Hinnen. The yearbook is $9.99, and you can preorder copies here. Should be in bookstores and on magazine racks in Alabama by the week of July 18.

Blast From The Past

2011-04-21T11:54:00.003-04:00

While transferring some (very) old VHS videotapes to digital format recently, I ran across this 20-minute CNN interview with Pat Dye from December of 1983. Besides some great comments and recollections from Dye on what would turn out to be his most successful season as a head coach, it includes several call-in questions from viewers and ample indications that both men's fashions and cable TV graphics have changed just a bit in the intervening decades. Enjoy...

Part 1:

Part 2:

In The Klink

2011-02-17T10:22:00.003-05:00

This info has been showing up on the boards for a few hours now, and it's finally making the news sites:

Auburn police arrested Harvey Almorn Updyke, 62, from Dadeville, AL. He will be charged with criminal mischief for applying an herbicide at Toomer's Corner.

There is a Harvey Updyke currently in custody at the Lee County jail. Based on the online pictures I've seen of this dude, he looks like a real prize. He's wearing obnoxious UAT garb in all of them.

Auburn is reportedly planning a news conference at 10:30 (Central) today.

Here's a bit more, from the O-A News:

Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said an arrest has been made in the poisioning of the two live oaks at Toomer's Corner.

Jones said a 62-year-old unemployed man, who lists his address as Silver Hill Road, Dadeville, was booked into the Lee County Detention Center at approximately 2:30 a.m. Thursday.

The sheriff said Harvey Almorn Updyke Jr. was arrested and charged with one count of criminal mischief in the first degree, which is a Class C felony.

Bond has been set at $50,000 and, upon conviction, a Class C felony carries a punishment of one to 10 years.

LATE UPDATE: Stupid is as stupid does:

Auburn police more than a week ago had tracked down Harvey Updyke, the man now charged with criminal mischief in the poisoning of the oak trees at Toomer's Corner at Auburn University, by tracing a telephone voice mail to a turfgrass management professor, according to court documents.

The man charged with the crime also has told police he made the phone calls to the professor and a radio talk show, but has denied he actually poisoned the trees.

UPDATE^4: This, apparently, is the "alleged" perpetrator. Ideal example of bammiedom if you ask me:

Dawg Gone?

2011-02-08T08:55:00.007-05:00

The rumor mill and Atlanta radio are burning up with reports that Georgia starting tailback Washaun Ealey has been dismissed from the team. Ealey was retained on the team last year after committing a hit-and run on a parked car.

Still no official confirmation at this point, but one wonders (a) just what a starter at a thin position had to do to get booted out over there, and (b) whether Mark Richt has finally figured out that he might want to get some control over his team.

Yeah, I know. The latter is just crazy talk. But still...

UPDATE: ~~Chris Low~~ Mark Schlabach at ESPN says Ealey has been "indefinitely suspended from all team activities" after "failing to report for a punishment run last week." (The report appears next to a picture of Low, but the byline is Schlabach's.)

Seeding

2011-02-06T14:21:00.006-05:00

Actual photos taken around February 3, 2011, of the concourse outside Bryant-Denny Stadium:

That's winter rye grass in the shape of two now-familiar numbers; from what I understand the UAT physical plant has already received orders to get out there with the Roundup, but the photographic evidence (and it's real, not a Photoshop; click on the pictures to see large versions) remains.

As Dash Rip Rock used to say about the use of alcohol, we here at FTB do not condone such shenanigans... but we do understand them.

UPDATE: Here's a view of the whole thing:

Impressive. Most impressive.

UPDATE UPDATE: A commenter at EDSBS has an inspired suggestion for the grounds crew in Tuscaloosa:

New at Rivals: The Magnificent Moment

2011-01-13T14:09:00.003-05:00

My BCS post-game column is now up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

Ironically, the emotional peak of the night--Mike Dyer's 16-yard run that was originally called a touchdown--turned out to be anticlimactic, when Dyer was called down on the one after a review. But that was the moment when Auburn--players, coaches and fans--knew they had won. The dam was broken, the perfect season achieved, the trophy case opened up and the corks popped. Even when that score was called back, there was no doubt about the outcome. After four years of nailing clutch kicks, Oregon would have needed machine guns to prevent Wes Byrum from knocking through his career-capper.

It was a magnificent moment. Surrounded by somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 roaring fans in the stands, thousands more outside, and buoyed by the spirits of countless others back home and around the world, the 2010 Auburn team took to the field as one for the last time, undefeated, and claimed their place among the greatest of all time. I would say that you had to be there, but clearly, you did not. When the ball sailed through and the clock expired, it didn't matter where you were. You felt it, whether you were under the dome in Glendale or just off Magnolia Avenue in Auburn or hunched over a laptop in some far-flung corner of the globe: at that moment, in our hearts, we were all in the same joyous place.

Speaking purely for myself, the emotions of winning this game were directly on a par with what I felt when leaving the Superdome on the second day of 1984 and first of 2005, as well as within Jordan-Hare Stadium in November of 1993. Whether you or I or anybody else calls the outcome a "national championship" is immaterial in my mind; the achievement of winning all your games against a ferocious slate of competition is the most important achievement. When I saw the final A.P. poll the next day, my reaction was basically, "That's nice," quickly followed by a check on the current weather in ice-encrusted Atlanta. The results on the field matter. The opinions of a bunch of sportswriters and/or coaches, not so much. That's as true today as it was in any other year.

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

Done... And One

2011-01-12T00:41:00.000-05:00

Auburn University, 2010 BCS Champions:

I Know That Laugh

2010-12-31T15:42:00.001-05:00

Reports are trickling in that Boom Muschamp at Florida is on the verge of hiring Charlie "The Hutt" Weis as his offensive coordinator.

Granted, it's an ESPN report, so the odds of accuracy are somewhere below Weis's winning percentage at Notre Dame, but that's no reason not to let the guffawing begin in earnest...

Win It For... Auburn

2010-12-30T14:00:00.002-05:00

My old bud Lein Shory has set up a new blog to collect "Win It For..." thoughts from Auburndom before the BCS game. Please have a look, pass on the link, and by all means, add your own comments. I think it's a very worthy effort.

Here's my offering:

Because of my immense respect for previous Auburn teams that found themselves, through no fault of their own, on the wrong side of "national championship" popularity contests, I'm hesitant to put this--entirely wonderful--current team on a pedestal by itself. That understood, it's still more than appropriate for us to remember our heritage, on and off the field, as we prepare for this last step towards another undefeated season.

So win it, Tigers. Win it for Shug Jordan and Pat Dye and (yes) Terry Bowden and Tommy Tuberville, too. Win it for every coach who spent those endless hours away from their families so that you and your predecessors and the ones who will come after you could have opportunities like this. They laid the foundations that you stand on today.

Win it for Jimmy Sidle and Terry Beasley and Lionel James and Dennis Collier and Carlo Cheattom and Dowe Aughtman and James Bostic and Walter Tate and Mike Pelton and Thomas Bailey and Dameyune Craig and Courtney Taylor and Travis Williams and Brandon Cox and Ben Tate. Win it for every guy who wore that blue jersey and laid his guts on the line, again and again and again.

Win it for the ones who aren't with us today. Win it for Virgil Starks and John Thrower and Dean Foy, all lost on the cusp of this magical season. Win it for Greg Pratt and Ronnie Ross and Erk Russell and Connie Frederick. Win it for every spirit who stands on that sideline beside you.

Go win it, Auburn. Win it for all of them, and win it for yourselves. You have fought the fight and paid the price, and now it is your time to claim your place among the legends.

Go win it all.

Win It For... Auburn.

Tiger Tales

2010-12-30T13:56:00.001-05:00

A large group of Pat Dye's former players, led by Wayne Bylsma, has put together Tiger Tales, a book of their best stories about their years at Auburn. I had a very small hand in helping out with editing and formatting and such, and I'm here to tell you, there is some very, very funny and touching stuff in this book. Here's the official blurb:

Tiger Tales is a new book comprised of stories from the Dye Era at Auburn. It began as a gift to give to Coach Dye for this Christmas, but has evolved into a gift for all Auburn fans. All of the entries were written by former Dye players about Coach Dye, their assistant coaches, and each other. It is filled with heartfelt gratitude toward Coach Dye for the opportunity he gave many of them along with some hilarious accounts of shenanigans that took place behind the scenes. Here are a couple of excerpts:

· From Gordon Stone, “Men, you will either get better or worse but you will not stay the same."

· From David Rocker, here's a Coach Dye classic. He said several times before games during my time on the plains, "Jawbone to jawbone, cheek to cheek. Were gonna find out what ya momma and daddy done put in ya.”

· From Kelsey Crook about Coach Joe Whitt, “Son you so stupid, if I put your brain in a bird it would fly backwards. Now do it again! And get there!!!!

· Coach Wayne Hall to Lamar Rogers, In practice one day, nats were flying around Lamar Roger’s mouth. Coach Hall looked at him and asked, “Son, did you brush your teeth today?” Lamar said, “No sir.” Coach Hall screamed, “Take your ass to the dorm and brush your teeth.” Lamar jogged up to the dorm in full uniform to brush his teeth.

· From Kevin Porter, Aundray Bruce comes to me and Tracy’s room one morning on game day before we head out for Tiger walk. He looks sad and despondent. Rock asks him, “Aundray, what’s wrong? Are you O.K? Aundray says “I don’t know. I’m scared.” Rock says, “Scared of what?” Aundray says, “I’m scared I might kill someone out there today.”

The book has 80 pages of recollections from Dye’s players, and the forward was contributed by David Housel. The cost is $18.00 each; $10.00 from every copy will be donated to the AFLC scholarship fund.

To order a copy, e-mail Wayne Bylsma at wayne.bylsma@cherokeepumping.com along with Dena Quinton at his office dena.quinton@cherokeepumping.com the following information:

· Name and shipping address

· Quantity

· Payment method, you can send a check or use a credit card. So send me the number and expiration date. (I prefer credit card)

· If you want them overnighted, and you have UPS or Fed Ex number we will need that number.

· We will add the shipping postage or if you do not have an overnight number, we can use my company’s account and we will add that cost to your total.

Consensus

2010-12-15T19:23:00.005-05:00

Chris Low of ESPN needs to check his rulebook. Low writes today:

LSU cornerback Patrick Peterson was the lone SEC player to earn consensus All-America honors this season.

According to the NCAA, unanimous status is given to those who appear on all of the following All-America teams: American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), Walter Camp Foundation, Football Writers Association of America (FWAA), Associated Press and The Sporting News.

Even though he won the Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding player in college football this season, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton didn't earn consensus All-America status. He was left off the FWAA All-America team.

Incorrect. Per the NCAA's definitions, "consensus" is not the same thing as "unanimous." According to NCAA.org,

The NCAA compiles consensus all-America teams in the sports of Division I-FBS football and Division I men’s basketball. These teams are compiled from a point system computed from at least four different all-America teams named by coaches associations or media sources. The point system consists of three points for first team, two points for second team and three points for third team. No honorable mention or fourth team or lower are used in the computation.

In football, the teams are compiled by position and the player accumulating the most points at each position is named first team consensus all-American. [Basketball rule section omitted by me --WC] If there is a tie at a position in football for first team, or a tie for the final player on the first or second team in basketball, then the players who are tied shall be named to the team.

Currently in football, the five teams used to compile the consensus team are from the Associated Press, the American Football Coaches Association, the Football Writers Association of America, The Sporting News and the Walter Camp Foundation.

Having been named the first-team All-American quarterback by three of the five organizations--the AP, the AFCA and the Sporting News (Walter Camp won't announce its All-American team until December 20)--Newton has already qualified for the NCAA's definition of consensus All-American.

Low should run a correction.

Notable

2010-12-14T15:27:00.001-05:00

Good CFN column by Barrett Sallee on the Malzahn retention here, read the whole thing, but of note:

What seems to be lost in this is the statement that was made with Malzahn’s decision. With so many people assuming that the NCAA hammer may drop on Auburn because of Mississippi State’s recruitment of Cam Newton, Malzahn chose to pass up more money and power to stay at Auburn for another year. That tells me that he’s not concerned about the NCAA at all – and he probably knows more than the rest of us.

Reading any (and I mean any) comment threat in which Auburn is mentioned these days would lead one to believe Sallee is obviously off his rocker here. By my rough estimate, 99.2827% of the internet is firmly convinced that Auburn won't have a football program by mid-2011.

I mean, what could Gus Malzahn possibly know that they don't...?

Doing My Part To Help Jim Delaney

2010-12-14T09:41:00.002-05:00

The Big Tweleven announced the names of its new divisions yesterday, and the response has been overwhelming--overwhelmingly negative, that is. In what will certainly be cited as the canonical example of decisions-by-committee, the original Conference That Can't Count came up with "Legends" and "Leaders" as their divisional names.

Please, hold your applause.

The best zinger, of course, came from Orson Spencer Swindle Hall Mellencamp at EDSBS, who tweeted, "Leaders and Legends are the names of conference rooms at an airport Marriott."

Now, I've had my differences with the Big Ten's leadership in the past, but never let it be said that FTB isn't willing to help when a sister conference is in need. In the spirit of intercollegiate sportsmanship, I hereby offer, gratis, these suggestions for replacement divisional names for the Big Innumerate Conference:

New Big Ten Divisions:

Snow and Ice
Overrated and Irrelevant
Big and Slow
Lose To SEC and Lose To Pac-10
ESPN and ABC
Mackovic and Corso
Also-ran and Never-was
Can't Count and Won't Win

No, really, Jim. Thanks aren't necessary. It was nothing.

Malzahn Declines To Go Country, Plans More Rock At Auburn

2010-12-13T14:19:00.000-05:00

From Charles Goldberg at the Birmingham News:

The mastermind of Auburn's offense has turned down an offer to become Vanderbilt's head coach.

Gus Malzahn told Vanderbilt that he'll remain as Auburn's offensive coordinator after turning down a lucrative offer from the Commodores, said someone close to the situation.

Vanderbilt offered him a deal that reportedly would have paid him close to $3 million annually. Auburn is expected to at least double his current $500,000 annual salary. That decision was made before Vanderbilt called.

Sub-Urban

2010-12-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

Word broke this afternoon that "0-For-Auburn" Urban Meyer is stepping down as Florida's head coach for the second time in less than a year. Florida has a press conference scheduled for 5PM today.

In possibly-related news, Brett Favre has filed a lawsuit against Meyer charging "trademark infringement."

New at Rivals: Go Win It All

2010-12-07T16:55:00.000-05:00

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.

The Final Countdown

2010-12-05T20:21:00.005-05:00

Extra bonus: home jerseys in Glendale.

Required Reading

2010-12-03T07:43:00.001-05:00

Jerry Hinnen, writing at the exquisitely-named Norman Einstein's Sports & Rocket Science Monthly:

By midseason, the comparisons were no longer sacrilege. Once he had vanquished LSU, "Is Cam the new Bo?" had become a legitimate topic of conversation, with the lean firmly towards "Yes." And after he led the comeback at Tuscaloosa in the Iron Bowl, a victory so cerebellum-meltingly improbable we know it could only happen with the aid of one of the football immortals, it was official: he had ascended to the highest pinnacle of Auburn's Mount Olympus. There's a small temple up there, orange and blue columns out front, and it's just Bo and Cam, hangin' out. Pat Sullivan gets to stop by occasionally.

This is why it's difficult to watch Cam. When you realize this is the kind of player you're dealing with, when you know you're witnessing not just sports history but - this being college football in Alabama - actual cultural mythmaking, you process things a little differently. You stay on a mental edge for every offensive down, wondering if this is the play when Newton does something you really might tell your grandchildren about. You evaluate each snap against the impossible standard of your wildest expectations: was that play truly worthy of a Heisman-winning legend? How 'bout that one? You try and file away every detail of the viewing experience for future use, since this is Cam Newton we're talking about. You don't want to only remember where you were and who you were with when he, say, catches a pass against Ole Miss deep in the back of the end zone with the kind of ease that makes you believe he's A.J. Green in the next dimension over; you want to remember what color plastic cup you had in hand, at what angle the sun was coming through the window or over the tip of the stadium, the precise words you swore in your amazement.

Read the whole thing.

New at Rivals: Camtermath

2010-12-02T17:16:00.001-05:00

I have a new column up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com on the aftermath of the NCAA's eligibility announcement on Cam Newton. Here's a preview:

The world being what it is, a great many people weren't satisfied with this result. ESPN's Joe Schad, having staked his reputation on a hearsay story peddled to him by people with axes to grind, pouted on camera and jumped on every opportunity to suggest that there might be more revelations somewhere down the road.

Montgomery attorney Donald Jackson, who unlike Schad, has vast experience in NCAA cases, scoffed at that notion in an interview with the Birmingham News. "If there was a big fire here, that ruling wouldn't have happened," Jackson said flatly.

Several of Schad's collegues, apparently unwilling to give up on such a rich trove of ratings and site visits, opined that a "Cam Newton loophole" had been opened. A popular line of attack, as enunciated by the normally-sane Gene Wojciechowski, asserted "The NCAA just made it possible for anyone with a blue-chip prospect to shop that player without fear of real punishment."

Well, no, Geno, and you're a smart enough guy to know better than that. The distinction you're breezing over is, while Cecil Newton apparently did talk about getting money from Mississippi State with MSU booster and erstwhile agent Kenny Rogers, Cam Newton didn't sign with or play at Mississippi State. If he had, he'd most probably be ineligible, but the last time I checked, State's quarterback was Chris Relf, not Cam Newton.

Nobody at Auburn was asked for anything in return for Newton's signature, and nobody provided anything for it. On the basis of that, Auburn ought to be punished… why? Because that would make you feel better?

The carping wasn't limited to sportswriters. Even Southern Cal athletic director Pat Hayden elected to jump in, even though he runs a program some two thousand miles away from the SEC. Hayden griped to the L.A. Times, "In the Reggie Bush case, when the parent [did] something inappropriate the kid and the school suffered."

Indeed they did, Pat. And you know why? Because Reggie Bush's family actually got illegal stuff, and your coaches knew about it! Crazy, man!

The rest is available on the "free" side, no subscription needed.

Reax

2010-12-02T10:14:00.001-05:00

Kevin Scarbinsky:

Auburn has not received an official letter of inquiry in this matter. That means it hasn't crossed the line from eligibility issue to infractions case.

It's always possible that new information can come to light, but consider the expert opinion of Montgomery attorney Donald Jackson, a frequent opponent of the NCAA in eligibility cases.

"If there was a big fire here, this ruling wouldn't have happened," Jackson said.

Multiple Chicken Littles have cried that the ruling opens a loophole bigger than Nick Fairley's belt loops, that greedy fathers everywhere have been given license to become auctioneers before signing day.

Please. If Newton were playing at Mississippi State when the NCAA found his dad and his dad's accomplice had shopped him there, do you think he would keep playing at State without missing a snap?

If the NCAA found that Cecil Newton or Rogers got paid by anyone on his behalf, do you think Cam Newton would've been declared ineligible but reinstated almost immediately without conditions?

Of course not. The NCAA can't sit a player based on suspicion, and a school shouldn't. Based on the evidence, Auburn and the NCAA got this one right.

Tony Barnhart:

If the NCAA punished School A because a father solicted money from School B (and no money changed hands and school A didn’t even know the solicitation took place), now you have another slippery slope where the possibilities are endless. If I’m a recruiter at school B and lost a recruit to school A, when the head coach starts chewing on my butt I can just put it out there that the parent solicited money from me and get school A in trouble and take the heat off me.

The fact is that on Wednesday the NCAA issued a very narrow ruling in an area where there is a gap in its legislation. We know that the mere solicitation is a violation of amateurism rules, which is why Auburn had to suspend Newton on Tuesday. An NCAA representative told me the knowledge, or the lack thereof, of the athlete is a “mitigating factor” in whether or not the athlete is eventually reinstated.

But can you punish a school that is not involved in that solicitation simply because the athlete chose that school? Do you at least have to have evidence that the school did something wrong? Eventually, the NCAA will have to get some clarity on this issue.

Now could the facts on the ground change? Could there be evidence uncovered in the future that contradicts the current findings of the NCAA enforcement staff? Of course.

But the NCAA can only make its ruling based on what it knows today. Because of the unique nature of this case, the NCAA owed it to everybody involved to get some kind of resolution if it was possible. Thus, Newton is eligible to play on Saturday against South Carolina.

Matt Hayes:

You should all be embarrassed. You know who you are, the great unwashed of the gotta-get-it, gotta-have-it, hyperbole-fueled world.

The same suckers that listened with bated breath while LeBron James explained where he’d “take my talents” next season, are also the gullible lemmings who jumped on the "let’s ride Cameron Newton out of college football" train because perception supersedes reality.
...

Did Newton take money from Auburn or Mississippi State or anyone associated with those universities? No, the NCAA says, he didn’t.

In the everlasting struggle of perception vs. reality, perception goes down like a tall, cold glass of sweet tea. Reality, meanwhile, gets upchucked at every turn.

I’ll refer to the great sage of the 21st century, Josh Bynes, when reflecting on the three weeks of Newton Nonsense.

“Even if you guys were told the truth, you wouldn’t believe it,” said Bynes, Auburn’s star linebacker. “The truth doesn’t sell.”

Sadly, I’m beginning to believe him.
...
because Newton was playing for Auburn, because he was the game’s best player and was leading the Tigers on an unthinkable journey to the national title game, well, that must mean he knew of the deal, took the money and would leave Auburn in shambles after the NCAA found out months or years later.

Opinions formed along blurred lines, the gap between truth and innuendo filled with whatever was easiest to run with.

There’s only one problem with this tale: It didn’t exactly play out the way television pundits and talk radio gabmasters, and message board mongers and truth-seeking journalists thought it would. It’s now complete, and whaddya know, Cam Newton is eligible to play.

Save the sanctimonious pleas that the NCAA should have penalized Newton for his father’s actions. Shove them in the same barf bag as the holier-than-thou grandstanding of Heisman Trophy voters proclaiming Newton hasn’t won with “integrity.”

He has, however, won after his team gave up a 24-spot on the road in the toughest place to play in college football. But instead of celebrating all that Newton has accomplished on the field, the truth-seekers are caught up in a swirling drainpipe of what-ifs and could-bes and you-never-knows -- and there’s nowhere to go but right down the sewer.

NCAA Declares Cam Newton Eligible

2010-12-01T12:49:00.001-05:00

From NCAA.org:

Auburn University football student-athlete Cam Newton is immediately eligible to compete, according to a decision today by the NCAA student-athlete reinstatement staff. The NCAA concluded on Monday that a violation of amateurism rules occurred, therefore Auburn University declared the student-athlete ineligible yesterday for violations of NCAA amateurism rules.

When a school discovers an NCAA rules violation has occurred, it must declare the student-athlete ineligible and may request the student-athlete’s eligibility be reinstated. Reinstatement decisions are made by the NCAA national office staff and can include conditions such as withholding from competition and repayment of extra benefits. Newton was reinstated without any conditions.

According to facts of the case agreed upon by Auburn University and the NCAA enforcement staff, the student-athlete’s father and an owner of a scouting service worked together to actively market the student-athlete as a part of a pay-for-play scenario in return for Newton’s commitment to attend college and play football. NCAA rules (Bylaw 12.3.3) do not allow individuals or entities to represent a prospective student-athlete for compensation to a school for an athletic scholarship.

In conjunction with the case, Auburn University has limited the access Newton’s father has to the athletics program and Mississippi State has disassociated the involved individual.

“The conduct of Cam Newton’s father and the involved individual is unacceptable and has no place in the SEC or in intercollegiate athletics,” said Mike Slive, Southeastern Conference Commissioner. “The actions taken by Auburn University and Mississippi State University make it clear this behavior will not be tolerated in the SEC.”

“Our members have established rules for a fair and equal recruitment of student-athletes, as well as to promote integrity in the recruiting process,” said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for academic and membership affairs. “In determining how a violation impacts a student-athlete’s eligibility, we must consider the young person’s responsibility. Based on the information available to the reinstatement staff at this time, we do not have sufficient evidence that Cam Newton or anyone from Auburn was aware of this activity, which led to his reinstatement. From a student-athlete reinstatement perspective, Auburn University met its obligation under NCAA bylaw 14.11.1. Under this threshold, the student-athlete has not participated while ineligible.”

Thayer Evans, Pete Thamel, Mark Schlabach, Chris Low, Pat Forde and Joe Schad were not immediately available for comment.

Does Mark Schlabach Do Any Research?

2010-11-30T18:10:00.011-05:00

ESPN writer, Georgia alum, and business partner of Urban Meyer Mark Schlabach has an article in the December 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine. As far as I can tell, it's not online. I can readily understand if you haven't seen the article, as hardly anybody actually reads the ESPN mag unless they're stuck in a waiting room without their iPhone, but it's basically a lament for the by-gone--and thoroughly mythical--days when college programs supposedly didn't turn each other in for NCAA violations.

After whining about getting angry emails about his part in November's Cam Newton kerfuffle, Schlabach hilariously goes to media hound and coaching failure Bill Curry for a quote. Curry, as always, was happy to put on his holier-than-thou hat and proclaim that in his day, "[W]hen I was involved at the high level of recruiting, we usually called each other and worked it out between the two of us if we caught someone doing something wrong... I would call and say, 'Look, let's talk about this. If we can't talk about this, I am going to turn you in.'"

Schlabach, who calls such a position a "gentleman's agreement," clearly doesn't know much of anything about Curry's brief tenure in Tuscaloosa, or he'd have called out the Georgia State coach for having told a great big fib. In the spring of 1988, at the impromptur of none other than Bill Curry, Bob Dare, the father of an Alabama player named Charlie Dare, went to the SEC with allegations that Auburn coaches had offered the year before to "fix" Charlie Dare's ACT test (Dare wound up being a partial qualifier thanks to his bad grades and low test score) if he'd sign with AU.

In Pat Dye's autobiography, Dye noted, "Bill didn't call me. To be honest, I think the temptation was too great. It looked like they had me dead to rights. That I could be put out of business. And they went to the Commissioner of the SEC with it."

The Charlie Dare story exploded across the state and national headlines, and lingered through the summer. Columnists were quick to jump to the conclusion that Auburn was at fault, and that the NCAA hammer would be falling on the Tigers as a matter of course.

There was just one problem: the Dares' story wasn't true. The NCAA spent more than a year investigating, and eventually cleared Auburn of all the charges--but of course, the exonerations weren't carried with anything like the wall-to-wall press coverage of the initial allegations.

I don't doubt that Bill Curry would like to forget the entire Dare story. Curry certainly should have known better than to trust Bob Dare, who had a long history of shady business dealings even in those days. Years later, both Bob and Charlie Dare were indicted on multiple counts of fraud, and Bob did time in Federal prison (I'm not sure whether Charlie was ever convicted or served time or not, but he was indicted by the state of Alabama for, among other things, wire and securities fraud). Bob Dare was released from prison in 2006, and passed away last August.

No matter what Bill Curry might think today, Mark Schlabach certainly should have known to research Curry's own story before going to print. I guess that would qualify as being "too good to check," though.

Full disclosure: Charlie Dare was a sophomore at Enterprise High when I was a senior. I don't believe I've ever so much as spoken to him, though.

New At al.com: Roundtable For 28-27

2010-11-30T12:36:00.000-05:00

My contribution to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable has been posted. I should note here that I didn't state my initial answer to the first question very well. I should have written that Auburn-Alabama 2010 ranks in the "in the top tier" of the best games, as opposed to "in the top rank" in the rivalry; the latter leads the reader to assume I'd placed that game as the "best ever," which wasn't exactly what I meant. I'd hesitate to put any one contest as the sole "best of the best," and I ought to have said that more clearly.

At any rate, here's a preview:

Iron Bowl question(s): Where does this year's game rank in the pantheon of all-time Iron Bowls?

In the top rank. No question. There's never been another game like it, not just in the series, but in the entire century-plus histories of both teams. The final seconds hadn't even ticked off the clock yet when 2010 took its place among the absolutely legendary games in the rivalry. Auburn's 28-point turnaround fits firmly in with Bama's last-second kick of 1985 and the "Punt Bama Punt" miracle of 1972.

As in those cases, the winners will exalt for decades to come, and the losers will never, ever get over it. It's much, much worse to lose when you've had the game in the palm of your hand than it is to simply get blown out.

At what point was it apparent that the lead wasn't safe?

Auburn's second play of the third quarter, when Terrell Zachery broke into the open field for his 70-yard score. The Tigers had pulled out of their offensive funk by the middle of the second quarter, but were still down by three scores at halftime. Nobody at that point could have been optimistic about a full comeback. But that lightning strike to bring the game within 10 points lit up Auburn on both sides of the football, and improbably knocked the air out of a Tide team (to say nothing of the front-running home crowd) that had been hitting on all cylinders.

New At Rivals: Ever To Conquer, Never To Yield

2010-11-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

My column for the 2010 Auburn-Alabama game is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. Here's a preview:

For those who follow this old series in daily love and hate, every season's game is all-important on they day when it is played, and during the 364 days immediately before and after. But once the ball is kicked off again, twelve months later, most of those games quickly fade into the rivalry's storied background. Even in the bitter and endless war that is Auburn vs. Alabama, wins and losses alike mean less to all involved as the years pass and the world moves on.

But now and again, there are those rare years and rare games that do not fade. The events of those days carve permanent grooves into our souls, scars that we will not just bear to our graves, but also pass on to those who were not yet drawing breath when the last seconds ticked off the clock on game day.

The memories of those days grow rather than fade in the recalling, passing on their cargoes of emotion from one generation to the next, retaining their power to cheer or chill as they quickly transform from news into legend. Some are given names of their own, like "Punt Bama Punt" or "The Kick," but in all cases, all you have to do is recite the year to readily draw either a curse or a cry of exultation: 1949. 1967. 1972. 1981. 1982. 1985. 1989. 2001. 2002.

And now, 2010.

There has never been a game like it. In a combined 236 seasons and over 2,300 games of varsity football, no Auburn team had ever trailed by 24 and won; no Alabama team had ever led by 24 and lost. Not until the afternoon Alabama will come to call "Black Friday," that is.

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

Jimmy Sexton, Dark Lord of the Sith

2010-11-29T10:04:00.000-05:00

If Ole Miss is dumb enough to fall for this planted story and give Houston Nutt a raise and/or extension, I want the contact information for the administration guys in Oxford. I just happen to own a bridge in New York City that would make a great acquisition for the Rebel Bad News Black Bears.

(Yes, I have a column for the Bama game written... just waiting for Rivals to get it posted.)

Party Like It's 1989

2010-11-26T22:15:00.002-05:00

Auburn 28, uat 27:

Get the shirt here.

New At al.com: Pregame Blogger Roundtable

2010-11-22T13:37:00.000-05:00

My contribution to this week's pre-Auburn/Alabama Blogger Roundtable is up at al.com. A preview:

Question 1: Is the Iron Bowl the best rivalry in the country? Why or why not? What is your greatest Iron Bowl memory? Worst Iron Bowl memory? If you're an outsider to the game/state, on what level of crazy do you place Alabama and Auburn fans?

On the grounds of having beaten all of those questions to death many years ago, I'm going to cop out on this one. Scott Brown and I covered this ground in great detail in our book The Uncivil War a decade and a half back. For those who are interested, Amazon usually has several used copies on sale (for the Bama fans who aren't familiar with the book, it's a bipartisan effort--Scott is one of yours).

All that said, as we rumble through one of the flat-out ugliest periods in the history of the rivalry, here's a short excerpt from my introduction to that book, one that tried to address the positive aspects of this old family feud:

My favorite part of every Game, every year, has always been the playing of the National Anthem just before the battle begins. Stop and picture the scene for a moment. The stadium is always packed to capacity and beyond. The fans have been shouting at the players warming up for about two hours, and at each other for days, weeks, months. And then, for a brief moment, all fall silent as the band on the field plays a familiar tune. You can hear the wind as it wraps around the bowl of an arena where a moment earlier, you would have been lucky to hear yourself screaming. You can even hear the sound of the American flag whipping in that wind as it is raised above the throng. You look out at the vast gathering standing in expectant silence, and you realize that it is not hate at all that has brought them to this place, to this cathedral of grass and concrete and steel. You realize that this game, this experience, is a reaffirmation of what we really are. It is a statement of family, of state, of country, and yes, of religion. You take a deep breath of the cool Southern wind, and in that magical pause, you see all the things that bring us together, and you look far beyond the things that tear us apart.

And then, of course, the song ends, and you roar out your school's battle cry at the top of your lungs, and the war is on for another Game and another year. But you are always left with that warm stillness, filled with giddy anticipation, and whether you win or lose, that feeling will always be with you, until you come back the next year and experience it again. That's what draws us back, year after year, that's what keeps us thinking about this larger than life THING that happens once every twelve months.

New at al.com: Roundtable Part 2

2010-11-19T13:38:00.000-05:00

The rest of my contribution to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable is up. Here's a preview:

Auburn question: Onterio McCalebb had another solid game against Georgia, and has really picked things up since that talk with Bo Jackson. Talk about McCalebb's development and how he compares to Auburn's other running threats of the past and present.

The obvious answer is diminutive early-80's star Lionel James, but personally, when I look at McCalebb, I don't really think of previous Auburn players, but rather the recently-departed Trindon Holliday at LSU. McCalebb is about 20 pounds heavier and five inches taller than Holliday, but they both give off the vibe of the little guy who can fly.

Certainly McCalebb's game has gone through the roof since #34 advised him to just turn it upfield and go. He's been lethal in the speed sweep, sort of a running-game equivalent to having a giant receiver who can go up and catch a fade. McCalebb kind of looks like a kid who snuck onto the field when he's standing next to the 6'-6" Cam Newton, but once he gets the ball and turns the corner, he's a kid you're going to have a hard time catching.

New At al.com: Roundtable, Part 1

2010-11-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

The first part of my contribution to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable is up. No questions were asked about the actual Auburn-Georgia game this week. I'm assuming the rest of my response will be up at a later date. In the meantime, here's a preview:

Auburn question: It's clear Auburn's gone "All in" with Cam Newton this season. Is that the right decision? Is it worth the risk of more sanctions down the road? If you were a voter in the polls or for the Heisman, would this situation impact your vote?

The question pre-supposes something that hasn't even been alleged outside of middle-of-the-story innuendo and message board chatter: that Auburn has broken a rule somewhere. "More sanctions" assumes Auburn is going to be sanctioned in the first place. Before you get to that point, it's usually necessary for an actual rule to have been broken by the school in question. That hasn't even been credibly alleged. Every level of administration at Auburn University is convinced it's not the case. If they'd had any doubt at any point, going all the way back to last July, Newton never would have played a snap.

To believe that AU is knowingly playing Newton in the face of actual rule-breaking assumes a mutual career suicide pact on the part of, among others, the university's president, athletic staff, compliance department and coaches. Fans in the SEC are willing and eager to believe in that sort of nefarious plot when it comes to their rivals, especially rivals who are winning. People working for media organizations ostensively engaged in reporting news (as opposed to guessing what the news might be if it were really juicy) ought to know better.

New at Rivals: Bulldogs Don't Have Thumbs

2010-11-15T12:38:00.000-05:00

My Monday-morning column for the Georgia game has been posted at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. Here's a preview:

Amidst all the griping about the 2010 Auburn defense, observers have tended to miss an important distinction: the Tigers have consistently played better in the second half than in the first, a marked difference from the multiple collapses of the 2009 season. The Georgia game marked the third time this year when the Tigers fell behind significantly early but went on to comfortably outscore the opposition in the second half.

Those recoveries have been partly due to sharp defensive adjustments, but they also owe a lot to the old axiom about a good offense being the best defense. The Tiger sr machine doesn't just wear down the opposing defense; it also scares the pants off of opposing play-callers who know they're going to have to score on virtually every possession just to keep up.

That relentless pressure gives a significant second-half advantage to Ted Roof and his troops on the AU defense. Since his first year in the league a decade ago, Mark Richt has always preferred to chuck-and-duck as opposed to establishing a running game, and his old proclivities, plus the knowledge that Auburn and Newton were most likely going to score every time they had the football, caught up with Richt again this week.

Even after pulling to a tie midway through the third quarter, Richt didn't see any choice other than to keep passing (after all, everybody knows Auburn can't cover, right?), and that mix of tendency and desperation killed any chance of a Georgia comeback. Auburn's much-maligned defense knew what was coming, whipped Georgia up front, and shut out the Bulldogs entirely in the final period.

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

New At al.com: Roundtable For Homecoming

2010-11-10T14:49:00.000-05:00

My contribution to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable is up. A preview:

Auburn question 2: The Tigers can clinch a berth in the SEC Championship Game with a win over Georgia Saturday. What would winning the West mean for Auburn, and what are the chances Georgia can pull an upset?

Georgia is going to score some points. Star receiver A.J. Green has a big mouth, but he's got big-time skills to go with it; he'll find the end zone against Auburn's secondary. UGA's problem is, beyond Green, they've got a lot of issues. Georgia has a lot of trouble on third down, on both sides of the football. Their running game has been suspect all year, and I don't think Georgia's offensive line can stop Nick Fairley any more than LSU's could, meaning freshman quarterback Aaron Murray is likely in for a long and painful day.

I also don't think the Georgia defense has a prayer of slowing down Auburn's offensive machine, either on the ground or through the air. They'll have a chance if the game is a shootout in the fourth quarter, but if Auburn can get to Murray, it probably won't come to that.

Quote

2010-11-09T17:30:00.002-05:00

"We, at Sports Illustrated, have dug and dug and dug on this [Cameron Newton] story, and we have found no wrongdoing."

--SI reporter Lars Anderson, appearing on the Paul Finebaum Show, November 9, 2010

New at Rivals: UF Academic Sources: Nothing Reported To Us

2010-11-09T14:47:00.002-05:00

I have a new story up at Rivals.com regarding today's Thayer Evans article at FoxSports.com. Here's a preview:

FoxSports.com writer Thayer Evans published a story today alleging Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton "had three different instances of academic cheating while attending the University of Florida."

According to Evans, "Newton was to appear for a hearing in front of Florida's Student Conduct Committee during the spring semester of 2009 but instead transferred to Blinn College. The committee could have levied sanctions against Newton that included suspension and expulsion from the university."

The story follows several days of editorial attacks on Newton by Thayer, a former stringer for the New York Times.

Two independent sources with detailed knowledge of the UF academic discipline system during the period in question have disputed the Evans story. According to the sources, no allegations of academic impropriety regarding Cam Newton were sent to the Florida Student Conduct Committee at any time either during or after Newton's time at UF.

"Nothing was reported, officially or unofficially" says one source, who did not wish to be identified. "The formal process is for allegations to go through the Student Conduct Committee. If [any allegations against Newton] didn't follow that process, then they didn't follow the rules."

Updates

2010-11-09T12:29:00.000-05:00

CBSSports.com's Gregg Doyle, on the ESPN/NYT Newton story:

So who is John Bond? He's a Mississippi State guy who feels he has done enough talking for now. Bond had his attorney, Phil Abernathy of Jackson, Miss., call me Monday to decline comment for this story.

But Abernathy did tell me one thing. Well, he implied one thing. He implied that ESPN.com and The New York Times made an enormous error in their stories -- the same error, it turns out. And it's an error so large that, if this were a court of law, the case against Cam Newton would be thrown out in a hail of laughter.

Before I tell you the error, let me tell you the background:

Last week, Bond told ESPN.com and the Times that someone claiming to represent Newton had offered him to Mississippi State for a large sum of money, back when Newton was in junior college during the 2009-10 school year. ESPN.com and the Times reported that the middle man in question, the guy trying to sell Newton to Bond, was Bond's former teammate at Mississippi State, Kenny Rogers.

That would be a first-hand witness, speaking on the record, about a major NCAA violation. Short of a paper trail, that would be some damning evidence.

If it were accurate.

But it's not.

"John Bond never named Kenny Rogers," Abernathy told me, implying that ESPN.com and The New York Times had erred in their reporting.

Read the whole thing.

Lein Shory looks at the connections between the the Times' Pete Thamel, FoxSports.com's Thayer Evans, ESPN's Mark Schlabach, and Florida's Urban Meyer.

Kevin Scarbinsky thinks the current media assault on Newton amounts to "character assassination." Paul Finebaum, who knows from character assassination, surprisingly agrees.

For his part, Meyer denies any involvement to the Gainesville Sun's Pat Dooley; CBS's Adam Jacobi thinks otherwise.

New at Rivals: Dawgs Won't Hunt

2010-11-08T17:42:00.001-05:00

My Monday-morning Rivals.com column for the Homecoming game against Chattanooga has been posted at AuburnSports.com. There honestly wasn't much to say about the UTC game, so I moved right along to the upcoming tilt with Georgia, and addressed an incident from Atlanta radio last Friday:

WCNN-AM 680's Buck Belue and John Kincaid made particular fools of themselves last Friday afternoon. Ex-Georgia handoff artist Belue conducted a one-minute softball interview with John Bond, most of which was dedicated to Belue and Bond talking about how they'd been buddies since childhood. At the end, Belue obligingly tossed Bond a softball about the alleged Bond-Urban Meyer-Dan Mullen phone conversation. Bond denied the call had ever happened and hung up, and then the hosts were off to the races.

Kincaid, who was once described in 680's own advertising as "a token Yankee ass," proceeded to rip Jeffrey Lee, who first broke the Meyer story, as well as Scout's Mark Murphy and 247Sports' Phillip Marshall, who each independently confirmed it, as pathetic bloggers with no "journalistic" credibility. The tirade lasted for quite a while, and got nastier as it went.

I used to know John Kincaid slightly, not long after he first moved to Atlanta. My impression was that he's generally a good guy, but like most guys in radio, he has no off switch, and once he heads down a path, his only settings are "push harder" and "say it louder."

Kincaid is from Philadelphia, and apparently the last decade he's spent in Atlanta didn't result in his learning anything about the sportswriters in his neighboring state.

That's the only explanation I can come up with for trashing Marshall, the dean of Alabama sportswriters. Marshall has a 40-year track record as a reporter for the state's biggest papers and several shelves full of awards for his work. Murphy was reporting on college football for a living when John Kincaid was still in grade school, and this site's own Jeffrey Lee, while a relative newcomer compared to those veterans, is a respected and diligent reporter with no history of chicanery.

Kincaid's current job isn't journalism, it's stirring things up on a radio show, but he has obvious ambitions towards greater things in his business. It's doubtful those greater things are going to be out there if he continues to pull stunts like trashing veteran sportswriters based on the questionable word of his broadcast partner's old jock buddies.

Given the fact that other media organizations, including all three major newspapers in Alabama, have now confirmed Lee's original reporting, Kincaid would be well-served to revisit and revise his ugly remarks from the immediate wake of the Bond interview.

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

New at Rivals: Cam Kerfuffle

2010-11-05T10:48:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay in getting anything up about last night's ESPN meltdown over allegations about the recruiting of Cam Newton. Rivals.com picked up my column on the subject, and I had to wait for them to publish it before posting here.

Here's a preview; the rest is on the free side, so you can click through and read the whole thing whether you have a Rivals subscription or not:

Unless you've coming out of a coma this morning (watch out for the zombies), you know by now that ESPN and the New York Times went public last night with allegations that an "street agent" runner had solicited Mississippi State for $200,000 (minus a $20,000 "hometown discount") as the purported terms for Cam Newton's signature on a national letter of intent. The story was floated by former MSU quarterback John Bond; the runner is an old teammate of Bond's, a character named Kenny Rogers, who despite his handle, apparently doesn't have much of a grasp of when to hold and/or fold them.

That's really it. ESPN's Pat Forde, Chris Lowe and Mark Schablach, along with the Times' Pete Thamel, don't make any overt accusations against either Auburn or the Newtons, although both sling around innuendo suggesting that Cecil Newton, a minister and bishop, came into some extra cash he needed to repair an Atlanta-area church he's responsible for. The senior Newton firmly denied all the allegations when contacted, and says he willingly turned over his personal and church financial records to the NCAA when asked earlier this year. A local news report published in September 2009, months before Auburn ever contacted or began recruiting Newton, indicates the money for the church renovation was already "in-hand" at that time.

By halftime of last night's Virginia Tech-Georgia Tech game, ESPN was already backtracking on the innuendo; Forde himself eventually admitted that he knew of no evidence implicating Auburn in wrongdoing. For Auburn's part, the athletic department and Gene Chizik both released brief statements declaring that Newton has been and remains eligible to play at AU.

Those statements, while short, are significant. Auburn's current compliance department isn't known for either leniency or looking the other way-just ask new basketball coach Tony Barbee, who nearly walked away from his job entirely last month because of the onerous terms that department had added to his contract.

Multiple reports since the story broke indicate that Auburn has been fully aware of the Kenny Rogers allegations since early last summer, and I feel very safe in saying that if there were any chance of Auburn being implicated in any rule-breaking in this case, Cam Newton would never have put on a Tiger uniform this year. The guys in that office just would not take that kind of a chance-and not because they have any particular love for Auburn University. Sheer careerism on their parts would move them to declare Newton ineligible at the first sign of any potential violations.

Institutionally, Auburn obviously wants to win football games, but the idea that the entire AU administrative apparatus would play Newton with foreknowledge of serious violations-remember, this stuff was known to AU, the SEC and NCAA as far back as July-doesn't stand up to the smell test. You couldn't get that many people to burn their careers over one guy, not matter how many yards he might gain one day.

New At al.com: Roundtable For Ole Miss, Part 2

2010-11-04T15:16:00.000-04:00

The second half of my contribution to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable has been posted. Here's a preview:

Auburn question: It was bound to happen sooner or later, but speculation heated up this week that Cam Newton might jump to the NFL after this season. Talk about both sides of the decision and what factors would matter for you if you were in Newton's large shoes.

I'm at a disadvantage here thanks to my not caring one little bit about the No Fun League. I've lived in Atlanta for a decade now, but I wouldn't go to a Falcons game if it were across the street and I had free skybox tickets. All that said, you don't have to be an NFL fan to understand why guys come out early--namely, numbers that start with a dollar sign and include two commas.

The question, obviously, is how much do you help--or hurt--yourself by going pro as a junior vs. staying on campus for another year. The perils of coming out too early can be summed up in two words: Jevan Snead. Newton's not likely to go un-drafted in that fashion, but guys who know a lot more about this stuff (or at the very least, pay a lot more attention to it) than I do think Newton needs another year of college ball to perfect his passing game.

Interesting Days Ahead

2010-11-04T12:48:00.004-04:00

If you live out of state (like me), you may not have heard yet that the Alabama legislature flipped decisively from Democrat to Republican in Tuesday's elections. That change, after nearly 140 years of Democratic majorities, could have a profound effect on Auburn University in the next couple of years.

Bear with me, folks. This is not a political post, although politics certainly plays a part in the story.

As anybody with even cursory access to the media knows, for the last 30-odd-years, the Auburn Board of Trustees has been dominated by Montgomery banker Bobby Lowder, resulting in (to be polite) no small amount of controversy. Former governor Fob James attempted to replace Lowder in 1995, when one of Lowder's many terms expired.

Lowder successfully clung to his seat, in large measure thanks in to the aid of then-state senate president pro tem Lowell Barron, himself an on-and-off-again Auburn trustee. Barron repeatedly refused to allow the required senate confirmation vote for James' appointees, allowing Lowder the opening he needed to hang on to his seat. Lowder was eventually re-appointed to another 12-year term in 1999 by "Dirty Don" Siegleman, whose campaign he'd lavishly supported. Barron continued to act as a "gate guard" for Auburn board appointees over the last decade.

All that's over as of this coming January. Barron was defeated in his umpteenth run for reelection, and his party was decisively thrown out of the majority for the next Legislature. That's a very big deal for AU, since no the terms of seven of the eleven appointed members of the Board (the sitting governor is the twelfth member) expire in 2011. Two more appointments expire in 2012.

With Barron out of the legislature and Lowder legally barred from another term (to say nothing of having lost his bank in the financial crash), things are going to be very, very different for the Board of Trustees over the next dozen-plus years. An entirely new legislature whose power brokers are unknown quantities at this point throws even more chaos into the issue. Add to that the fact that the new governor who'll be appointing all those trustees is not, to put it mildly, an Auburn man.

The times, they are about to change. Better? Worse? Heck if I know. But we're all going to find out very soon. Two current board members' terms expire on February 9, 2011.

Nick Bell, 1990-2010

2010-11-03T08:48:00.000-04:00

This is the most awful story of the year.

Mississippi State football player Nick Bell died of cancer Tuesday, sending shock waves through the campus.

Just six weeks ago the 6-foot-3, 265-pound defensive end was on the field as a starter in State's 24-12 victory over Georgia.

"The emotional roller coaster you go through is hard to comprehend sometimes," MSU coach Dan Mullen said. "We build these guys up to be big, fast, strong, tough. We try to make them feel invincible, that they can accomplish and do anything in this world and then they see this situation. It's just a tidal wave of emotion that runs over our players."

Bell, 20, died at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital a day after undergoing emergency surgery.

The redshirt sophomore was diagnosed with a form of skin cancer after a tumor was removed from his brain on Oct. 1. He had recovered enough by Oct. 23 to attend the Bulldogs' home victory over UAB, but last week he learned the cancer had spread, said family friend Moreland Smith.

Bell was scheduled to begin chemotherapy this week, but after he fell ill Sunday, surgery was performed Monday morning. Bell fell into a coma and didn't recover.

My wife goes to work every day treating kids with cancer. I don't know how she and her co-workers do it. They're a lot tougher than I am. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to deal with dying children on a daily basis.

Tough isn't enough. Help them if you can.

Mississippi State has set up a memorial fund for Nick Bell, here. You can also donate to the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he was treated, here, as well as the AFLAC Cancer Center at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, here.

New At al.com: Blogger Roundtable for Ole Miss, Part 1

2010-11-02T16:46:00.001-04:00

Looks like al.com elected to break up my responses to this week's Blogger Roundtable again, here's a preview of the first part, which was just posted:

Auburn question: With Cam Newton hogging the highlight reels, it's easy enough to forget about the five big guys behind him who make the offense go. Talk about the job Auburn's offensive line has done this season.

They've been tremendous, and it's well past time for them to get their due. It's not unusual for an SEC line with four seniors--center Ryan Pugh, guards Mike Berry and Byron Isom, and left tackle Lee Ziemba (all joined by junior Brandon Mosley at right tackle)--to play well, but as Jon Solomon pointed out, this bunch is leading the way for an offense that's performing at historic levels. Forget this "finesse spread offense" business; in 2010 Auburn is running the ball better than any previous SEC team that didn't include the wishbone or Bo Jackson. That doesn't happen without an outstanding set of linemen.

Yeah, Newton is special (and Onterio McCalebb and Mike Dyer aren't exactly chopped liver), but you don't average over 300 rushing yards a game unless the guys up front are blowing the opposition off the ball. And you absolutely don't go out and destroy LSU's defensive line for a ridiculous, two-team-record 440 rushing yards unless you've got five monsters up front to go with the ones in the backfield.

Little Whiner

2010-11-02T16:14:00.002-04:00

Alabama coach Nick "I'm not going to be the Alabama coach" Saban whined to BamaOnline this week about his schedule--hilariously, after saying "It's something we don't ever complain about":

"I don't think it's right that last year we played Auburn on a Friday and we had a game the Saturday before, so we had to play them on a short week. And Auburn had a bye before the game. That stuff is not good for the players. It's not fair, but it's not good for the players, either."

Well, I'll tell you, Flipper--you should really have a talk with your athletic director. If Maw Mooah hadn't gone crying to the SEC to force the Auburn-Alabama game to move to Thanksgiving weekend a few years back, against AU's wishes, we'd be playing on November 20, and Auburn wouldn't have an open date. Auburn also opposed moving the game to Thanksgiving weekend because we knew CBS wouldn't be able to resist moving it to Friday--and we were right about that.

Of course, Maw did his crying to the conference on your bidding, after the 00's demonstrated UAT couldn't handle playing Mississippi State, LSU and Auburn back-to-back-to-back (with the order of the first two occasionally swapped). You can still have that lineup back, if Auburn's open date bothers you so much. Just say the word. We'll even vote with you.

So take your pick, little man. Auburn would be perfectly happy to go back to playing Georgia and Alabama back-to-back, with no open date. If you want to keep the game on Thanksgiving weekend, you're entirely free to pick the week before as an open date yourself. But you can't have it both ways.

Oh, and Flipper--you can spare us the complaining about things you "never complain about."

New At Rivals: Turning The Corner

2010-11-01T12:05:00.000-04:00

My post-Ole Miss column is up over at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

Call me an optimist, but I don't think hanging half-a-hundred-plus on SEC teams is ever going to get old.

In a new twist on Ole Miss's apparently-perpetual mascot-and-symbols thrash, somebody in the offices of the Rebel Bad News Black Bears thought it might fire up the home team to play "grey" on Saturday against Auburn's blue, and made a late request for the Tigers to wear their home jerseys at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Switching uniforms is always a bush-league tactic, and as such it was entirely appropriate for a bush-league coach like Houston Nutt. It certainly impressed failed coach Bob Davie, the epitome of bush-league announcers, but other than that, Nutt's attempt at ersatz Civil War reenactment didn't have much effect--unless you count Atlantan Cam Newton's willingness to play the part of William Tecumseh Sherman in burning Nutt's home field right down to the ground.

While the ephemera of the Mississippi jersey colors was at least notionally a "secret" prior to kickoff, Nutt made no effort to hide his team's defensive plan in his public statements: throw as many bodies as possible into the tackle box to stop Newton's legendary running game, and make him throw the ball.

Newton, being a gracious visitor, was glad to oblige. Four of Auburn's first five offensive plays went through the air for completions, with the coup de grace being delivered via a Kodi Burns fade that would have done Danny Wuerffel proud. The ball, of course, was caught by Newton in a catch we'll be seeing in highlight films for several decades to come. Newton would go on to finish the day at 18-for-24 for 209 passing yards, two touchdowns and no picks.

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

Bo Knows Cam

2010-10-28T18:16:00.002-04:00

From Chris Low at ESPN:

For 25 years, Bo Jackson has been looking for a way to cast his Heisman Trophy vote for an Auburn player.

He's found his man.

Jackson, who won the Heisman Trophy at Auburn in 1985 and is considered one of the greatest players in SEC history, said Cam Newton has his vote and then some.

"I've looked for a chance for the past 25 years, and it never happened," said Jackson, now a businessman living in suburban Chicago. "So I don't have to tell you who I'm voting for this year. I've already got the ballot marked & with an exclamation point."

More here:

In my time of watching SEC football, which goes back to the late 1970s, Jackson would be in my holy trinity along with Herschel Walker and Peyton Manning as the three best players I’ve seen in this league.

So when Bo speaks, I listen, and something tells me they’re listening on the Plains, too.

He’s marveled as much as anybody this season at what Newton has done to SEC defenses.

But over and above that, Jackson is a fan of where this entire Auburn program is headed.

“From an Auburn football player, it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been this excited about Auburn football,” Jackson said. “I actually don’t watch football and don’t watch baseball, but I watch Auburn football.

“This is one of those years when I couldn’t wait for the season. It was the same way last year. I couldn’t wait for the season to start, not because of what has happened, but because I knew the people that are running the show down there now care more about the players than just what they do on the football field. When you have that and the performance they’re getting, this is the kind of season you get.”

Spur Of The Moment Link-Fest

2010-10-27T13:07:00.000-04:00

Normally I (quite happily) leave this kind of thing up to Jerry, but since he's taken CBS's Boeing, what the heck:

Lein Shory rips Bob Stoops and Andy Staples a well-deserved collective new one.

Thanks be to Zod, he's not on the cover--let's wait until after the season, or better yet, after his eligibility is exhausted, m'kay?--but SI has a feature article on Cam Newton in this week's issue.

Think they're getting a little worried about Auburn up in Tuscaloosa? Bama Online writer Travis Reier tweets that the Tide has been practicing against AU's offense during their off-week. I've heard the same thing from several other people today.

Rick Cleveland from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger indulges in a bit of "I told you so" regarding Newton.

Is it just me, or does Ivan Maisel sound more than a little butt-hurt (thank you, youth of America, for this entirely useful new phrase) over Auburn's recent success in his Monday ESPN podcast? Either way, well worth the listen, as always.

Here's a typically-excellent Phillip Marshall piece on the AU offensive line.

Tony Barnhart waxes euphoric over the Tigers in his CBSSports.com column.

Finally, check out Andy Bitter's rundown of the early-week news from Auburn. Another outstanding outing from the best newspaper reporter on the AU beat.

Obvious But Obligatory

2010-10-26T13:03:00.000-04:00

So, it's Ole Miss week. The Bad News Black Bear Rebels started the season by losing to Jacksonville State and Vanderbilt. Since then they beat Fresno State handily, upset Kentucky, lost to Alabama and Arkansas, and sit at 3-4 (they also beat Tulane along the way, but hardly anybody noticed).

Your thoughts, Admiral?

To put it another way, "Don't get cocky."

New At al.com: Roundtable For LSU

2010-10-25T16:13:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to my contribution for this week's al.com Blogger roundtable. A sample:

Auburn question 1: Saturday may have been the best overall performance by Auburn's defense this year. How has that unit grown from last year, and is the defense good enough to win a championship?
If so, the key words will be "good enough." As demonstrated against LSU Saturday, Auburn is entirely capable of being dominant up front to stop the run, but as also demonstrated against Arkansas, the patchwork secondary is just as capable of being torched--repeatedly--by good quarterbacks and receivers.

The comparison with the 2009 defense is apt. Auburn's problem last season was across-the-board lack of depth. Not being able to substitute linemen or linebackers just killed the Tigers late in ball games, particularly against the run. That's been largely corrected this season--but only in the front seven. Behind them, the 2010 secondary has attritted almost as quickly as the '09 version.

The biggest difference, though, is obviously the dominant play of Nick Fairley up front. Auburn arguably hasn't had an interior lineman as disruptive and dangerous as Fairley since the days of his coach and mentor, 1988 Outland and Lombardi Award winner Tracy Rocker. The attention, double-teams and sheer terror generated by Fairley's massive push has opened up a path for linebackers Josh Bynes, Craig Stevens and Daren Bates to smother ball carriers, and helped to take some of the pressure off the beleaguered secondary.

In terms of winning and losing, you have to look at Auburn's defensive improvement in the second half...

New At Rivals: Corn Dogs--Fried, Broiled and Blackened

2010-10-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to my post-game column for the LSU game, as posted at Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

Another week, another win, another eye-popping, record-shattering, jaw-on-the ground day from one Cameron Jerrelle Newton.

It's gotten to the point where just about every sports guy on television and in print is making jokes about how hard it is to find new ways to describe just how amazing this guy is on the football field.

Newton will be the first to tell you--or anybody else--that he doesn't do it alone. When asked after the LSU game about his 54-yard touchdown scamper, one of the most amazing displays of broken-field running I have ever seen, Newton called it "a great example of blocking" on the parts of his teammates.

Newton was being thoroughly modest in that particular case, but he was entirely in the right to point out how tough Auburn has been on the offensive line and in up-field blocking from the receivers. LSU's famed defensive lineman Drake Nevis was almost completely shut down, logging only two tackles. All-everything cornerback Patrick Peterson was almost as unproductive, notching three stops, and was unable to catch either Newton or Onterrio McCalebb on their long scoring runs.

But still. You're talking about a guy who could meet Kelvin Sheppard, a senior three-year starting linebacker in what was touted as the nation's best defense, at the one yard line... and pancake him for a touchdown. This is not normal behavior.

Look, it's time to say it: there's never been anything like this guy in modern football. The closest analogue is of course Tim Tebow, but Tebow didn't have anything like Newton's speed and elusiveness, and I suspect Newton also has a stronger throwing arm. While there's a marked trend today towards dual-threat quarterbacks, I'm guessing that in twenty years we'll look back at Newton the way we look at Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker today: an unearthly talent the likes of which appears once or twice in a generation--if you're lucky.

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

What He Said

2010-10-25T08:43:00.001-04:00

Via just-took-the Boeing uber-blogger Jerry Hinnen:

Look, no one’s got more sympathy for Mario Fannin than I do. But enough is enough. That fumble might not have led directly to points, but it flipped the field position that Auburn had worked so hard to dig themselves out of right back to LSU. And a few backed-up drives later, the double-pass finally forced Auburn to pay. That touchdown was on Mario. If Dyer–who, by the by, ran for 100 yards on just 15 carries–is healthy, there’s just no reason to let Mario to carry the ball anymore. The risks are too great for the reward.

Read the whole thing.

LSU, Before And After

2010-10-24T19:11:00.000-04:00

LSU, before Auburn:

LSU, after Auburn:

Any questions?

New at al.com: Blogger Roundtable for Arkansas

2010-10-21T17:32:00.001-04:00

Thanks to an email mix-up, my contribution to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable got delayed a few days, but it's up now. A preview:

Auburn question 1: Cam Newton's Heisman buzz is building with every linebacker he trucks over en route to the end zone. Archie Manning is ready to give him the trophy already. Is he your front-runner? Why or why not? Where would Auburn be without him? Where would Florida be with him?

Asking where any team would be without their star player has always struck me as a silly question. I remember when Alabama fans in the early 80's used to grouse that AU wouldn't have won a game without Bo Jackson; in other related topics, your car would run a lot slower if gasoline didn't exist. It was a goofy point then, and it's a goofy point now when applied to Newton.

Nobody knows where Auburn would be without Newton, other than being sure the past seven games would have been significantly different, in that they would have had no Godzilla on the field. Perhaps Barrett Trotter would be breaking records in the passing game (if the Arkansas game on Saturday said anything, it's "don't underestimate the second-string quarterback"), and perhaps not. I don't know, and you don't, either.

All that said, duh--Newton is special. He's that rare player that elevates the team around him, and he does so with an aplomb and effectiveness that can't help remind me of one Vincent Edward Jackson. He's a great player at Auburn, and he's helped by the fact that he's playing in an offense perfectly suited to his style, but it's pretty clear at this point that he would be a great player anywhere. I find it really hard to believe that Florida would be 4-3 right now if he were still wearing their tacky shade of blue.

Five Questions With Bourbon & Coke

2010-10-19T21:07:00.002-04:00

The title sounds more like some of my weekend study sessions from twenty years ago than a blog post... but actually, I was asked by the guys at the Bourbon & Coke site to answer a few questions about the season to date and the looming 2010 edition of the Tiger Bowl. Here's a sample:

B&C: We are running out of superlatives to describe Cameron Newton. As an Auburn fan, where do you rank his first seven games in a Tiger uniform, is his current run the best performance by a newcomer in the school's history?

FTB: The simple answer is first. There just isn't anybody who compares as far as their first seven games go. Bo Jackson, as great as he was, didn't get to the point where he could take over football games until about his sophomore year. The QB/WR combination of Pat Sullivan and Terry Beasley were a huge improvement on the Auburn offense that preceded them, but they also didn't really light up the SEC until their second season (1970). Newton has personally dominated every game he's played in to the point where, as you note, it's hard to find the right words to keep describing it, and there's just no precedent for his level of performance to date.

But all that said, we do have to remember that unlike Bo and Sullivan and most other great stars of the past, Newton isn't starting as a freshman (or a sophomore; in Sullivan's day, freshmen weren't eligible). He's got a great advantage in that he's not debuting as an eighteen-year-old kid who's still trying to adjust to his first year of college as well as big-time football. He's a 21-year-old adult who's had--as we're all reminded regularly by the media--significant life experiences. Having come through all of that to return to SEC football has clearly given him a lot more maturity and stability than your average freshman is ever likely to enjoy.

He's really something, though. Newton isn't just playing football at an extraordinary level; he's obviously having the time of his life doing it. He's a joy to watch.

I mistakenly thought when I was answering that B&C was an LSU blog, but it turns out to be an all-SEC affair, and quite a good one. Check them out.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

2010-10-19T12:17:00.001-04:00

Photo: AP/Dave Martin. Cape: Lein Shory.

Regarding "The Computers"...

2010-10-19T08:25:00.001-04:00

Tony Barnhart's column today concerns the vicissitudes of the computer rankings used by the BCS. My comment:

The problem with the computer rankings is, well, they're garbage. Journalism majors are apparently impressed when told "the computer says...", but anybody with technical training knows the dictum, garbage in, garbage out. Nobody knows--because the "poll" owners won't reveal--what data goes into the software, and with one exception, nobody knows what math the software uses to generate the rankings. What little we do know tends to indicate that the math is bogus, meaning the output is just as bogus (Tony alludes to this above; Oklahoma was still ranked #1 by computer software in 2003 even after being drilled in their conference championship game).

The human polls aren't notably better, since they're compiled by entirely fallible human beings, but placing any faith in "the computers" speaks more to general technical ignorance than any objective reality.

Leftover Ribs

2010-10-18T18:12:00.001-04:00

There really wasn't anywhere to fit this bit into my Monday Rivals column, so here it is as an FTB extra:

The officiating, as usual, was terrible. Referee Penn Wagers is so clueless he doesn't even know not to stand in front of a kick returner when the ball is in the air, so what did you really expect from his crew? Don't expect things to get any better on that front; if the last decade-plus of officiating incompetence has told us anything, it's that the SEC's old boys club is much more concerned about squelching bad press than in actually fixing the annual buffonery of its punch-line zebras.

The best thing you can say is that the bad calls generally canceled each other out--but that still doesn't excuse the sheer awfulness on display when Wagers and his buddies inserted themselves into seemingly every other play.

From what I hear, whining about the refs dominates the discussion in Hogland today. As far as I can tell, though, there doesn't appear to be any acknowledgement of the phantom holding call that set up Arkansas' first drive, or the terrible spot that saved Arkie from turning the ball over own downs in the second half, or any other Penn Wagers screw-ups if said screwup didn't hurt the Pigs. But that's life in the SEC--especially if you just beat Arkansas

Thankfully for the nation's sanity, Wally Hall's columns have been pulled behind a paywall, but I'll bet his conspiracy theorizing after 65-43 was epic.

I Can't Understand Why People Think He's Dumb

2010-10-18T15:02:00.001-04:00

From Clay Travis's Twitter feed:

Les Miles: "If we had Cam Newton, he'd be our third quarterback." True quote.

UPDATE: I'm told this was much less a case of Miles belittling Newton than it was a case of Lesbonics in action. Apparently he was asked who on the LSU scout team would be "playing" Newton in practice this week, and meant to answer, essentially, 'if I had a guy who could play like that, he'd be playing quarterback for the varsity.' But being Lester, the quote above came out instead.

New at Rivals: Pork Special

2010-10-18T13:10:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my column for Rivals' AuburnSports.com on the Arkansas game. A sample:

One hundred and eight record-shattering points. Over a thousand yards of total offense, a blocked punt, a 99-yard kickoff return, three turnovers, fourteen combined penalties and four hours of CBS-commercial-larded football. Sixty-five to 43. And I'm supposed to sum all that up in about nine hundred words?

Not gonna happen. That's way too much for one column. But here goes anyway.

Let's quickly get past the obvious stuff, that you've likely already heard and/or read thousands of words about. Cameron Newton: awesome, now a Heisman front-runner, and probably not human. Auburn's pass defense: bad. Game: exciting; even given this season's standard, entirely too much so. Seventh consecutive win to remain undefeated: hell, yes.

I'm pretty sure if I'd convinced you on Friday that Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett would leave the game for good midway though the second quarter, you'd have bet the mortgage on the Tigers. I'm just as sure that if I'd told you Arkansas was going to score 43 points with 428 passing yards, you'd have placed the same bet on the Razorbacks. It was that kind of a day.

For a good long while there, it looked like Auburn was going to fall victim to yet another coming-out party for a backup quarterback. There's been more than a little speculation in the SEC that this, likely Mallett's last year in Fayetteville, was Bobby Petrino's last chance to make a big splash at Arkansas for a while. We can put that one to rest; if anything, he's going to have a better starter next year than he's had this season, since not only is Tyler Wilson one hell of a passer, he's not a whiny prima donna.

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

Yes, It's THAT Week

2010-10-18T08:55:00.000-04:00

You know what to do.

Bo Knows Auburn, 2010

2010-10-17T18:41:00.000-04:00

Your instructions for today:

1. Click here.

2. Click on "Bo Jackson Speech" on the right side of the web page.

3. Call the contractor and get your house fixed, because you're going to run through a wall.

New at al.com: Roundtable Part 2

2010-10-14T07:27:00.000-04:00

As promised, the second part of my responses to this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable questions has been posted, here's a sample:

NCAA question: Now that Alabama has a loss, who should be the No. 1 team in the polls? Which teams have the best chance of making it to the BCS Championship?

If I had an AP vote, Oregon would get it this week. They've been the most consistent team against good competition. Ohio State hasn't played anybody except a very suspect Miami, but the Big Televen, as usual, is as soft as pudding, and it's unlikely that they'll lose in the regular season. Given the love affair that the media has with TOSU and the Big Televen in general, they're most likely going to make it to the BCS final--and when they get there, of course, they're going to be exposed. Again.

Humorously, the Bammie contingent in al.com's infamously-ridiculous comments area appears to have discovered my posts in a big way. I always get a kick out of seeing dozens and dozens of furious and subliterate responses regarding a team that fan base likes to claim is "irrelevant" and "not our biggest rival anyway."

On Playoffs

2010-10-13T08:09:00.001-04:00

Tony Barnhart's column today concerns the proposal for a 16-team playoff as outlined in Dan Wetzel's book Death To The BCS. I agree with both Wetzel's conclusion that the BCS is bogus, and also with Barnhart's real-world analysis that the current power structure in college football isn't remotely amenable to such a plan. That said, I think Tony missed an opportunity to mention the sports media's interest in maintaining the status quo.

If you want to rile up any MSM sportswriter, just point out to him how ridiculous it is that we've been subject to an Associated Press poll that's overwhelmingly populated by a bunch of beat writers who get to see one game a week and base their rankings off of (a) the highlights they see on ESPN and (b) justifications like, "well, that's where I've ranked [team] for weeks, and they didn't lose, so I'm not going to change anything." The unspoken statement in the latter is, of course, "If I did, that would mean admitting I was wrong about something."

At any rate, Barnhart asks in his conclusion whether readers would, if they were university presidents, vote for Wetzel's playoff plan. This was my response:

Hell, I’ve been voting for a playoff for 30 years. The current subjective, beauty-contest system is a complete joke. I’m all for a selection committee with absolutely no input from the polls, which are at best uninformed (Harris, AP) and at worst corrupt (SID-uh, I mean, coaches), or garbage-in, garbage-out computer rankings. I don’t think the Sun Belt, MAC, WAC, CUSA or even the Big Least deserve automatic bids; if they have a team good enough to qualify in a given year, a selection committee would catch them.

Hey, New Look!

2010-10-12T16:57:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, FTB got a fresh coat of paint and some spiffy new detailing today, thanks to friend-of-the-blog and all-around good guy Lein Shory.

All together now: THANKS, LEIN!

Even Better Than The Real Thing

2010-10-11T16:13:00.002-04:00

EDSBS is running live commentary on today's (Monday, October 11) Finebaum show. We're an hour in as of this writing, and the thread is already epic. One sample chosen more or less at random:

What do they talk about on this show from Feb-August?

I’m very worried that the answer is “this.”

by Waitin' for a SuperFrog on Oct 11, 2010 12:31 PM PDT reply actions

Not to be missed, and much better than having to listen to the rampant insanity on the actual radio.

New at al.com: Roundtable Part 1

2010-10-11T12:25:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my latest post for the al.com Blogger Roundtable. I sent them quite a bit more than this one item, so I assume they'll be posting the rest later in the week. A brief sample:

I can only imagine what a pleasant week it's going to be for Auburn folks who've been bombarded with two and a half years of full-on media tongue baths for the Tide and Nick "I'm not going to be the Alabama coach" Saban. I'm guessing a stat that won't show up on the box scores will be the drastic drop in public displays of UAT car flags, t-shirts and magnets over the next several days. That alone is cause for plenty of celebration -- and that doesn't even mention the entirely-satisfying sight of a fan base that holds rankings in the AP poll above all other priorities having to look up to see the Auburn Tigers.

Will The Last Un-Arrested UGA Player Please Lock The Equipment Room?

2010-10-11T09:09:00.000-04:00

Things are now officially ridiculous in Athens. From the AJC:

University of Georgia tailback Caleb King was booked into the Clarke County Jail early Monday on unspecified charges.

I like Mark Richt as much as the next guy (really), but this is just another symptom of being a Bowden-trained coach. Everywhere Bobby and his descendants (either literal or figurative) go, the police blotter fills up in a hurry.

New at Rivals: To Skin A Cat

2010-10-11T08:45:00.000-04:00

Here's my post-game column for Kentucky, at Rivals' AuburnSports.com:

I'm going to run out of superlatives to describe Cameron Newton long before this season is over. That ridiculous first-half sideline pass is already one of the season's top highlight clips. It'll take a much better writer than me to accurately describe just how dominant Newton was in the first half and in the game-winning drive. To severely mix my movie metaphors, the stomp of Godzilla's feet was the sound of inevitability for the Wildcats; he just absolutely could not be stopped. Gene Chizik's call to go the safe route by running down the clock and kicking the field goal was absolutely the right decision, but if for some reason kickers had been outlawed for this game, is there any doubt that Newton would have found the end zone anyway?

You've got to be impressed with the combined job former coach Rich Brooks and current top 'Cat Joker Phillips have done in Lexington. It's still hard to picture the Wildcats as perennial contenders, but they've come a very long way since the days of Bill Curry and "You can't spell 'sucks' without UK." Phillips certainly got the most out of his guys on Saturday, and his staff deserves a lot of credit for one hell of a rally after getting dominated over the first half. Defensive coordinator Steve Brown looked clueless during Newton's initial barrage, but he made a dynamite halftime adjustment. All-everything back Randall Cobb and Boone-from-Lost look-alike QB Mike Hartline both had great games against the Tigers. It won't surprise me one bit if they upset a still-celebrating South Carolina next week.

It would have surprised me, to say the least, if they'd managed to beat AU on Saturday night, though. Auburn's game-winning drive was the kind of feat, when been performed by certain other teams more beloved by the media, that's described as 'a gritty comeback' and 'the measure of a championship team' and other such cliches. I don't care to jump on that particular bandwagon this morning--Auburn shouldn't have needed to make a game-winning drive in a game the Tigers had under control--but it really was something to see.

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

Barnhart vs. Godzilla

2010-10-05T18:36:00.000-04:00

Tony Barnhart weighs in with a very nice appreciation of one Cameron Jerrell Newton:

Newton is like nobody else in the SEC. He has Terrelle Pryor quickness but he is stronger. He has a Ryan Mallett arm and can throw it 50 plus yards with the flick of his wrist. On third down and less than 6 he exerts tremendous pressure on a defense. If his receiver is not open chances are he's going to get to the first down marker and move the chains. And when Gus Malzahn picks up the tempo of his spread offense with the big fella running it, just trying to keep up will absolutely wear a defense out. South Carolina simply gassed in the fourth quarter because Newton was relentless.

"There are things we can do with Cameron that work well in this offense," said Malzahn. "He obviously has skill. Our challenge is to take advantage of those skills but to also distribute the ball to our other playmakers. What we can't do is become predictable because we have a talented player at the quarterback position."

Newton is surrounded by a veteran offensive line and a ton of playmakers. He is the SEC's No. 4 rusher but two other Auburn backs, Onterio McCalebb and freshman Michael Dyer, are both in the Top 10. Auburn's receiving group is as good as any in the league with the possible exception of Arkansas.

"There are so many guys here who can make plays it's incredible," said Newton. "I am going to get some chances because that is what the quarterback does. But this offense is going to be good because we get a lot of people involved."

Read the whole thing.

In other news, Orson Spencer Swindle Hall Mellencamp at EDSBS channels closet college football fan Christopher Hitchens today, with hysterical results. I'm running out of ways to say that the dude's game is off-the-charts lately.

New at al.com: Blogger Roundtable for La-Mo

2010-10-05T15:22:00.001-04:00

Here's my post for this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable. A sample:

Q: Pick your favorite player from this year's team. Since we've already talked about him a few times this year, I'm barring Cam Newton. Tell me why the player resonates with you and why you enjoy watching him play. If you can't bear to pick a favorite, make a case for someone as your team's most overlooked/underrated player.

A: Nick Fairley. Defensive ends, particularly rush ends, usually get the glory (such as it is) in any front three/four, but Fairley has been breathtaking this season. You might have to go all the way back to the late 80's heyday of Ron Stallworth and current AU assistant Tracey Rocker to find an Auburn tackle (or back then, nose guard) getting that much consistent push into an opponent's backfield.

I'd nominate running back Eric Smith for the most overlooked--and maybe the most underutilized--player on the squad. Smith, who can play all over the field from halfback to fullback to receiver, has been dynamite both as a blocker and in his rare moments carrying the football. He had a memorable play against Clemson, gutting out tough extra yards late in the game.

Auburn's offense is getting a little crowded these days, what with Darvin Adams, Terrell Zachery, Mike Dyer, Emory Blake, Onterrio McCalebb and Mario Fannin all getting touches--not to mention Phillip Lutzenkirchen--but I'd still like to see Smith get his hands on the ball more often.

... And This Was After A Win

2010-10-04T18:32:00.001-04:00

Check out this video from WWL in New Orleans. It was taken inside and outside of Tiger Stadium immediately after LSU's 16-14 win over Tennessee:

Remember--these are actual LSU fans, almost all of whom paid serious money to be at that game. Those kinds of fans are the backbone of a program, and of a coach's support. When they turn on him...

Don't make any long-term plans, Lester.

New at Rivals: So Far, So Very Good

2010-10-04T12:48:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my post-game column on Louisiana-Monroe for Rivals' AuburnSports.com. A preview:

In my mind, the real measure of a team and its coaches lies in whether they can build on what they've done week-to-week and continue to improve. That's why I like this team, and why I liked Saturday's game. Sure, we're talking about Louisiana-Monroe here, a fourth-rate program that no self-respecting SEC team and/or coach should ever be threatened by, much less lose to. Beating La-Mo soundly in a checkbook game isn't anything to be inordinately proud of, but how you do so can be a measure of where your program is at that moment in your season.

The sportswriter cliche for this one is, Auburn took care of business. The War Hawks were effectively dispatched in four offensive plays totaling less than a minute of possession time, for two early Tiger touchdowns. But anybody with a pulse already knew Cam Newton and company can move the ball and score; what impressed me Saturday was how seriously the defense took its job, and how well they played through to the end. The '09 Auburn defense, once substitutions began in earnest, would probably have given up a score or three to La-Mo's dink-and-dunk attack. That didn't happen Saturday; a first-quarter field goal was the beginning and end of their points.

I liked that a lot. A year ago the subs gave up four second-half touchdowns to Furman, which in and of itself wasn't meaningful (Auburn still won going away), but the late defensive slump spoke poorly--and accurately--of AU's lack of defensive depth. This year, Ted Roof was able to substitute all the way off the printed roster and still maintain a three-quarter shutout. Nearly blanking La-Mo won't win any awards, but following through is a big deal in football, and something Auburn wasn't able to do often enough last season. Again, in a word: improvement.

I also like the way the staff approached this game offensively: as a live practice for diversifying the offense. Gus Malzahn has griped a bit (mostly good-naturedly) about Newton's being the team's leading rusher over the first four contests. I'm guessing Newton was probably told if he ran the ball any Saturday, he could count on doing some additional running on Sunday--as punishment. Obligingly, "Godzilla" stayed in the backfield and led the offense like a traditional quarterback, moving the ball around to a plethora of receivers and running backs.

Malzahn was not completely without mercy--or a sense of humor--of course. Newton made his first contribution to yet another line on the Auburn stat tables Saturday with his first (and let's hope, last) punt--the one and only Auburn punt of the day.

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

New at al.com: Roundtable for South Carolina

2010-09-29T12:15:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my contribution for this week's al.com Blogger Roundtable. A sample:

I suspect you're going to see Auburn diversifying the offense more over the next few games, but that's more thanks to the rest of the offense maturing than a desire to limit Newton's carries.

It's taken some time for Auburn to get the running back situation established. Now that things have worked themselves out, I think you're going to see Mike Dyer and Onterrio McCalebb get a lot more snaps from here on out, and Newton (with, I suspect, plenty of help from Gus Malzahn) also did a great job last week of spreading the ball around to multiple receivers (achtung, Lutzenkirchen!).

All that said, I don't think you take a player of Newton's abilities and then design your offense out of fear he might get hurt. When you've got a thoroughbred, you let him run. Newton himself seems to be more than happy to carry the load. I can't remember the last time I've watched a player who's so obviously delighted to be on the field.

Since I wrote and submitted that (a couple of days ago), I did recall another player who always seemed overjoyed to be playing football: Carnell Williams.

A Single Bound

2010-09-29T10:34:00.005-04:00

You will believe a Cam can fly:

Thanks to Lein Shory for the capeification; click on the picture to embiggen.

New at Rivals: Chicken Fried

2010-09-28T06:52:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my post-game column for South Carolina at AuburnSports.com. A preview:

It's become fashionable of late to say that [Steve] Spurrier has mellowed. His abject failure in the NFL and long stint of mediocrity at South Carolina have, on occasion, humbled the guy once known as "Coach Superior." Spurrier's pre- and post-game zingers have given way to a more human face over the years, but the old insufferable Stevie still pops out on occasion, and Saturday night was one of those times. In his post-game press conference, Spurrier peevishly charged, "It came down to the fumbles."

Well, no, Visor Boy. What it came down to was your career-long refusal to abide by the first two commandments of SEC football: thou shalt run the ball, and thou shalt stop the run. Auburn lived and thrived by those commandments Saturday; your guys couldn't run or stop the run at all, and you paid for it.

Going all the way back to your years at Florida, your chronic impatience and ex-quarterback's obsession with airing it out has bitten your teams in the butt every time you couldn't simply out-talent the other guys. Those towering receivers and tricky routes of yours are still plenty impressive, but you got beat--again--because the rest of your team couldn't handle a physical SEC game on either side of the ball.

And as far as fumbles are concerned, you're plenty smart enough to know that if you didn't get two gifts from Auburn in the first half, that game isn't even close in the second.

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

More At al.com

2010-09-22T06:46:00.001-04:00

As promised, al.com has posted the second half of my Blogger Roundtable response for this week. Here's a sample:

Auburn Question: It's easy now to see why Auburn kept recruiting Marcus Lattimore so hard, even after Mike Dyer committed. With the Gamecocks coming to Jordan-Hare this week, which back would you rather have? Which will have the bigger impact Saturday? Long-term? Will you secretly dream about what could have been if both had come to the Plains?

It's way, way too early to judge either of these guys at this point. They've both looked good; Lattimore has (deservedly) made more of a splash, but he'll have to play against a bunch of top-notch defenses in the next couple of months, and so will Dyer.

We might not even know who has the upper hand after Saturday, since South Carolina and Auburn are right next to each other in rushing defense (#2 and #3 in the SEC, respectively). Like I always say when asked about recruiting and freshmen, "Ask me again in four years."

I Question The Timing

2010-09-21T10:01:00.005-04:00

Interesting story in the Tuscaloosa News today regarding the Tommy Gallion circus/trial from back in 2002. The presiding judge has a new book out:

[Retired judge Steve] Wilson says shoddy reporting by the state and national media led to a frenzy of anger that resulted in the $30 million judgment against Culpepper.

The retired judge said his book contains details that show it was part of lead Cottrell attorney Thomas Gallion's legal strategy to use the media to mislead the public into believing that there was a University of Tennessee-led conspiracy to bring down Alabama football and that was what led to the defamation of Cottrell and Williams. He also said the book would show that lawyers withheld certain documents from the press to help deliver that message.

For example, the much-discussed memos from Fulmer to the SEC home office that raised questions surrounding Means' recruitment made no mention of Alabama's involvement, Wilson said.

The SEC's investigation of those memos resulted in the allegations being declared an “unsubstantiated rumor,” which in turn meant that none of its member institutions were warned that violations, specifically by UA booster Logan Young, were occurring in the recruitment of Means.

“(Another) thing that was not told to (the press) is that the Albert Means violation was not reported by the University of Tennessee,” Wilson said, “but by the University of Arkansas. ...

“All of these facts totally refuted the UT conspiracy in the case.”

News writer Jason Morton can't help gilding the lily here, though. Morton adds this editorial laugher towards the end of his story:
Still, Wilson said the penalties imposed against UA by the NCAA — a two-year bowl ban, 21 lost scholarships and five years' probation — forced the athletics department to correct its course and become the respected model of NCAA compliance it is today.

Gee, the last time I checked, the 'respected model of NCAA compliance' was back on probation, and not even a year ago, the NCAA itself referred to UAT as a "'serial repeat violator' with an 'abysmal infractions track record' and an 'extensive recent history of infractions cases unmatched by any other member institution in the NCAA.'"

But, y'know, tough times. Gotta sell those papers.

H/T: Blutarsky.

New at al.com: A Test Of Fanhood

2010-09-20T18:13:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my latest contribution to the al.com Blogger Roundtable. I'm told there will be a "Part 2" posted later in the week. A preview:

Auburn Question: Auburn came away with the win over Clemson, but it was hardly a thing of beauty. What went wrong for Auburn early that went right later? What was it like as a fan to watch such a gut-wrenching game?

I wasn't surprised that Clemson came out with their hair on fire and playing well. Besides needing to make a big splash against an SEC team, Dabo Swinney is a Bama grad who wanted to put one on Auburn, and his staff clearly spent a great deal of the past several months studying and scheming for this game. Give them the credit--it worked. Clemson was supremely well-prepared, and took it to Auburn with a vengeance. After their first score, I figured, "Okay, they're ready. Now we get to answer."

Four Auburn three-and-outs and 17 Clemson points later, I was, um, somewhat less sanguine. Not only was nothing working on offense, Auburn was getting physically pushed around on both sides of the ball. Not good. An old friend in the stands asked me just before halftime ended if the game was already over. "We don't score on the first possession, probably," I told him.

New At Rivals: Catch A Tiger By His Toe

2010-09-20T11:46:00.002-04:00

My postgame column for Clemson is up at AuburnSports.com. Here's a preview:

I can't recall ever seeing an Auburn team play that badly, for that long, against a good opponent and still win.

The closest analogues might be the 1990 comebacks to beat Florida State and tie Tennessee, but even there the Tigers did better than being outgained roughly 15-to-one and failing to get a first down for the first 24 minutes.

Yes, Clemson had nine months to prep for this game, and it showed. Beyond one quick snap and that nifty pump-fake, trickery got Auburn almost nowhere on offense, and CU's Kyle Parker put on a clinic for aficionados of the blocker-release screen pass.

The ACC Tigers were immensely well-prepared, utterly dominating the first half. Making things worse, on the rare occasions when Auburn did get on track in the second quarter, AU reverted to bad habits, giving up a turnover and blowing drives with dumb penalties.

While the half-ending field goal drive wasn't half-bad, and a welcome display of good clock management, it was about the only thing that went right for Auburn in those first 30 minutes.

The dismal 17-3 score probably should have been even worse. Of course, things did get better.

While Auburn doesn't deserve any awards for coaching excellence in a game where they were so soundly outmatched for 30 minutes, the real measure of a staff is how it responds to adversity (or as Brent Musburger memorably mumbled, "diversity").

By all accounts, the coaches challenged the team in the dressing room, coming up with an entirely new game plan on the spot. AU's third-quarter explosion for 21 unanswered points (even after an early interception) indicated as strong a halftime adjustment as you're ever likely to see.

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

I had way more materiel than I could fit into one column for this one, so there will be more about Tigers vs. Tigers I here at FTB later on in the week.

In The Mailbox

2010-09-18T07:23:00.002-04:00

If Instapundit can do it, I can too:

God And Football: Faith And Fanaticism In The SEC, by Chad Gibbs, and

Bigger Than The Game: Bo, Boz, the Punky QB, and How the '80s Created the Modern Athlete, by Michael Weinreb.

New At al.com: Roundtable For MSU

2010-09-15T12:04:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to my contribution this week at al.com's Blogger Roundtable. A sample:

It was very heartening to see something that looked like an Auburn defense for the first time since last year's Alabama game. Other than that one, Tennessee '09 is about the only really impressive defensive performance we've seen out of the Tigers in quite a while.

MississiPPi State isn't exactly a title contender this year, but I remain ferociously impressed with the turn-around job Dan Mullen has managed over the last 20-odd months. Holding MSU to 248 yards, one sustained drive and two total scores, in a game they've been keying on for nearly a year, was no mean feat.

I was particularly relieved to see how well the defensive line and linebackers were able to get consistent pressure on State's quarterbacks and stuff the running game. If DL Nick Fairley isn't the defensive player of the week [I wrote and submitted this on Sunday, before the announcement], they ought to retire the award. It took a bit for the defense to adjust to Mullen's new option read play, but Ted Roof did a much better job making that adjustment than, say, Georgia's Todd Grantham.

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is USA Today

2010-09-14T14:21:00.002-04:00

Jaw, meet desk. From Gregg Doyel at CBSSports.com:

Good thing I type for a living, because I'm stunned speechless. I just found out why college football is plagued by a preseason coaches poll, a poll that sets the tone for the entire season and is probably going to lead -- four months later -- to Boise State riding its Holiday Bowl resume into the national championship game.

What did I find out? I found out that it's the media's fault.

More to the point, it's USA Today's fault.

The coaches wanted to eliminate the preseason poll last year. USA Today, which operates the poll, talked them out of it.

This is not a guess. This is a fact. I just hung up with USA Today deputy managing editor Jim Welch, who relayed that story to me. Last year the American Football Coaches Association commissioned the Gallup World Poll to study its poll and to make recommendations for improving it. One of those recommendations, Welch said, was to do away with the preseason poll -- and to not release its first poll until a month into the season.

"The coaches seemed to agree with that," Welch said.

So why didn't it happen?

"We don't view that as a good idea," Welch said.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go break something expensive.

H/T: Blutarsky.

New At Rivals: Back To The Future--With Cowbell

2010-09-10T14:52:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to my post-game column on the MississiPPi State game for AuburnSports.com. A preview:

Billed as a no-defense shootout, Auburn vs. MississiPPi State, 2010 turned into more of an old-school SEC defensive slugfest—although, thankfully, it did feature more than five total points.

Contrary to expectations, the game ball in this one goes emphatically to the Auburn defense. Led by the lights-out play of Nick Fairley, the “D” repeatedly bailed out an AU offense that seemed determined to focus on appendage marksmanship at every opportunity. State had chance after chance to either get back in the game or take outright control—the Tubervillian onside kick being a prime example—only to get stopped by nick-of-time (no pun intended) defensive stands.

While there’s still work to be done, particularly in the secondary—Auburn can’t count on future opponents being cursed with concrete-handed receivers—the defensive performance was (duh) miles better than in AU’s opener. Scores of national prognosticators figured the State game as a track meet with an allegedly-deficient Tiger defense coming out on the bad end. In reality, Auburn held State to less than 250 yards of offense and one sustained scoring drive. Unless anybody out there believes Arkansas State has a better offense than MississiPPi State, I think we can safely call that a significant improvement.

On offense, the bag was more mixed. Way too many dumb penalties—again—and other mental mistakes kept the Tigers’ attack in neutral at too many big moments. Cameron Newton was as good as advertised once again, making one crucial play after another, but even for all of his heroics, the offense seemed stuck on sputter after about the middle of the second quarter.

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