Turdistan Held Hostage: Day 25

Another delusion bites the dust:

Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban issued a specific denial regarding the University of Alabama's vacant head coaching position, saying for the first time on Thursday: "I'm not going to be the Alabama coach."

This was the strongest of the five denials Saban has given reporters in Miami. Saban had been at the top of Alabama's wish list to fill the opening created on Nov. 26 when Mike Shula was fired.

Our top-secret source in Tuscaloosa indicates that AD Maw Mooah is planning to move to a secure undisclosed location well before tomorrow's Festivus Airing of Grievances gets underway.

Separated At Birth 2: Judgment Day

What two things do Quentin Groves and The Terminator have in common?


Number one: They kill people.


Number two: They'll be back.

In related news, UAT quarterback John Wilson is missing, and presumed scared.

A Month Of Thumbdays

Heh:

Turdistan Held Hostage: Day 11

It's official: UAT has been ROD-JECTED.

Okay, Maw Mooah, what's Plan D? Or was that Rodriguez? What do you do when you offer a coach from the Big Least double his salary, and he STILL won't take the job?

I think Nelson Muntz said it best: HA-Ha!

Oops, He Did It Again

Paul Gattis, a UAT graduate and current Alabama beat writer for the Huntsville Times, isn't having a great couple of weeks. Not only did Gattis have to watch his alma mater lose to Auburn for the fifth straight time, he hasn't exactly been great shakes in reporting on the lumbering circus that is UAT's coaching search.

Less than two weeks ago, Gattis rushed to press (including pushing out a much-discussed early draft onto the Times' web site 12 hours before dead-tree publication) the following report:

Mike Shula will return as Alabama's coach in 2007, but there will be changes to the football program, a knowledgeable source said Tuesday.

High-ranking university officials have no intention of making a change in the head coach, according to the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Shula was fired four days later. Oops.

Yesterday, Gattis took another swing, again relying on unnamed "sources" regarding UAT's "I want my two dollars!" stalking of recently-successful coaches:

Alabama is expected to interview Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban this week as well as West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, according to multiple sources.

But sources also caution that the search is fluid, changing at times on an hourly basis.

It appears, though, that Alabama is ready to make its push for Saban - who has been considered at the top of the list. Sources have also indicated that luring Saban away from his job with the Dolphins won't be easy.

Meanwhile, West Virginia concluded its season Saturday night against Rutgers - clearing the way for Alabama to talk to Rodriguez.

Saban and Rodriguez looked to be the favorites to replace Mike Shula.

Not quite. Both Saban…

Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban on Sunday again denied interest in the vacant head football coaching position at the University of Alabama.

And for the first time, a source familiar with the search from Alabama's side said the university has been told that Saban does not want to be a candidate, and that Alabama no longer considers him one.

... and Rodriguez once again denied any interest by Monday morning:

Alabama athletic director Mal Moore had not contacted Rodriguez as of early Sunday evening, and WVU athletic director Ed Pastilong said Sunday afternoon Moore had not called him to ask permission to speak with his coach, although that is merely a courtesy.

Rodriguez has indicated privately to friends that he is not interested in leaving WVU and would not under any circumstances interview for a job.

… although Rodriguez will apparently listen to the sales pitch:

"If they want to go through a whole process of asking his goals and how he would do this or that, it’s just not going to happen," said a source close to Rodriguez. "But if they want to simply make him an offer, sure, he’ll listen. He’s not crazy."

There is a general belief among insiders in the West Virginia program that one of the reasons Rodriguez will not flatly dismiss the possibility of going elsewhere is that he still feels that WVU officials have not done all they can to help him build the facilities and the assistant coaches’ salaries at WVU.

Ah well, keep at it, Paul. You'll never get another vote the AP poll, but you can still keep holding the rope for your side.

Interestingly, for a school that never misses an opportunity to brag about its own "class," UAT has to date ignored the apparently-sacrosanct customs of coach hiring. From the above Rodriguez article:

Rich Rodriguez has no discussions, formal or otherwise, scheduled with Alabama officials, but on Sunday he was contacted for the second time by the headhunter hired to assist the school in its search for a new football coach.
…
Alabama athletic director Mal Moore had not contacted Rodriguez as of early Sunday evening, and WVU athletic director Ed Pastilong said Sunday afternoon Moore had not called him to ask permission to speak with his coach, although that is merely a courtesy.

There Is No Spoon

Florida won the SEC Championship last night, surprising not a few people, including me. I'd figured that Arkansas would trample the Gators flat, but since I've been completely wrong in predicting virtually every major game this year, I guess I should have expected the actual outcome. But good for Florida, they earned it the hard way. They deserved to have a championship this year.

Unfortunately for the Lizard Legions, it'll be the only one they get. Regardless of how the ongoing insanity of the BCS plays out tonight and early next month, Florida will not win a national championship this year. But that's not their fault. You can't "win" something that doesn't actually exist.

I have a very vivid memory of my first encounter with “national championships” in college football. It was early January, in the 1970’s, and my dad and I were watching the evening news. I was probably eight or nine years old.

The sportscaster announced the results of the final Associated Press football poll, and my dad said, “I can’t believe so-and-so won the national championship over such-and-such.” I don’t recall the exact year, or even the teams in question.

“What do you mean, ‘won the national championship?’” I asked. “All they are is number one in the AP poll.”

“That’s the national championship,” Dad replied.

“No it’s not,” I insisted. “It’s just a poll of people who write for newspapers. That doesn’t mean anything.”

Dad never managed to convince me otherwise, and I’ve never had any reason to change my mind since then. To this day, I have to shake my head at Auburn fans in particular who give so much credence to “championships” that are based on nothing more than a popularity contest conducted among a few sportswriters.

I’m well aware that my opinions on this subject are in the minority among football fans, and that includes my fellow Auburn fans. People have been sold for so long on the myth of the poll “championships” that like Frankenstein’s monster, they’ve taken on a life of their own. Some schools I could name place the value of their entire existence on how many times one publication or another has ranked their team at the top of a final season’s poll.

And hey—being ranked number one is a good thing. I’ll be as happy as anybody the next time Auburn ends a season with a number one ranking. It’s good for a program, it impresses impressionable eighteen-year-olds who’re finishing high school, and it gives the t-shirt and bumper-sticker makers lots of new designs to sell.

But that doesn’t turn a number one ranking in a poll into a championship.

Don’t believe me? Go look it up yourself. The NCAA keeps a complete list of all the national championships won by every member school, at every level. Click here, and look up the number of championships won by, say, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Everybody back now? Good.

Now, were you surprised by what you saw there? Were you just a bit nonplussed when you read the following summation of the complete history of Alabama’s actual NCAA championships? For those who were too lazy to click through, here’s the result, from the NCAA’s own official records:

Alabama

Total NCAA Team Championships: 4
men's championships: 0
women's championships: 4
coed championships: 0

That’s right, kids. UAT can boast four national championships. Not six, or twelve, or fourteen, or any of the other numbers stitched on red polyester between here and Pascagoula. Four. And they’re all in women’s gymnastics. (For those who insist on keeping score, Auburn has won eleven national championships, six of them in men’s swimming, four in women’s swimming and one in women’s track.)

There aren’t any football championships listed for either school for a very good reason: neither team has ever won one. But the Tigers and Tide shouldn’t feel too bad about it, ‘cause neither has anybody else. You can search the official record books until Doomsday if you like, but you won’t turn up a national championship for any team in Division 1-A football.

There are lots for the other divisions, of course, because they all have season-ending playoffs. No wonder you don’t see the actual numbers quoted very often—it’s quite a comedown to realize that Troy State (2) and North Alabama (3) both have more legitimate national championships than either Auburn or Alabama.

“But Will,” you’re spluttering, “of course there’s a national championship. What else do we talk about all the time?”

I’m glad you asked.

What you’re talking about are not championships. They’re awards, and there’s a big difference. Championships are decided by the outcomes of competitive sports. Awards are given out based on subjective criteria, and are inevitably subject to human opinion. Wins and losses—and championships—are not.

Now, awards are wonderful things in and of themselves. There’s nothing wrong with getting an award. We’re mighty proud of all those Heisman Trophies and Lombardi Awards and Outland Trophies down in the Lovelace Museum, and why shouldn’t we be?

In the same vein, they’re mighty proud (to say the least) of all their poll “championship” awards up in Tuscaloosa, and again, why shouldn’t they be? It’s a very nice thing to get an award that says you have the best team in the country, even if it is no more than a representation of a few sportswriters’ and/or coaches’ opinions.

But that’s all the poll “championships” are. That’s all they’ve ever been, and that’s all they ever will be. They have exactly as much credibility as a poll of you and your best football-fan buddies would have--maybe less, since sportswriters, being human beings, are as subject to human frailties like bias and laziness as anybody else, and a coach voting in a secret “championship” poll that includes his own rivals is pretty darn close to the definition of “conflict of interest.”

How much value you should place in a poll “championship” is directly related to how much you value the opinions of sportswriters, or of coaches who’re in competition with your own favorite team. Again, they’re nice things, but all they’ll really tell you is what a small group of people felt like one morning in January. Are you really so willing to rate the success or failure of your team on that criteria? Heck, if we placed all our trust in media polls, we wouldn’t have had an actual election in 2004, and John Kerry would be living in the White House.

Let’s cut to the chase: Florida will not be the national champion this year.

Neither will Michigan, or Boise State (next time you complain about AU or UF getting rooked, just imagine how the Utah and Boise and Tulane fans must feel), or even Ohio State.

There won’t be a national champion in Division 1-A. There never has been a national champion in Division 1-A. There have just been a lot of awards. Nice things to get—but they’re not championships. You can't "win" something that doesn't exist.

Delusion's End

Steve Spurrier put an abrupt end to the biggest collective fantasy since the last "Lord of the Rings" movie this afternoon:

SC head coach Steve Spurrier told his players Thursday afternoon that he's not leaving.

Spurrier met with the team Thursday in a previously scheduled closed-door meeting. A source close to the team told News19's Matt Barrie that Spurrier told the players that he came to Columbia, "to do things that had never been done before, including winning an SEC title," and that he's "not leaving until that's done."

He reportedly jokingly told them, "some of you might not like me, but you're stuck with me."

UAT message boards immediately filled up with variations on "we didn't want him anyway," and "this makes Saban a lock."

As Chaste Chadd once put it, the Turd Creed remains "I belive that this is a delusional world..."

Breaking The Silence

Major kudos to SI's Stewart Mandel for blowing the lid off one of the more annoying (and least reported-on) scams in all of college football and the people who cover it:

What role do agents play in all of these coaching rumors? I'm sick of Jimmy Sexton's SEC clients (Nick Saban, Tommy Tuberville, Steve Spurrier and Houston Nutt) being mentioned as "potential candidates" for every major opening on the planet. Why does the media allow this guy to manipulate them just so that his clients can get leverage in negotiating with their current schools?
--Jeff, Columbia, Mo.

They play a bigger role than you can possibly imagine. Ballpark estimate: 70 percent of the stories you read about some seemingly random coach being linked to a coaching opening are probably a result of the coach's agent -- or the agent of another candidate in the running for that job -- floating it to a reporter. Houston Nutt, in particular, has "turned down" more jobs he was never in the running for than any coach I know.

Why do the reporters go for it? Because eventually the agent will return the favor and feed him the "scoop" when one of his candidates actually accepts a job (or if he finds out someone else's candidate has been offered the job).

Hats off to Mandel for admitting what a whole lot of his collegues won't. Agents in general--and Jimmy Sexton in particular--play the sports media the way Eddie Van Halen plays a customized Stratocaster.

Separated At Birth?

We post, you decide:


UAT Athletic Director Maw Mooah


The Tall Man from Phantasm

Turdistan Held Hostage: Day Two

FTB's secret inside source in Tuscaloosa comes through again:

From The Desk Of Maw Mooah

Updated Coaching Search list:
1. Frank Beamer
2. Bobby Petrino
3. Jim Grobe
4. Paul Johnson
5. Jim Leavitt
5. Mike Sherman

Hand-written below: What is the problem here? Angus II assured me our tradishun would have these guys crawling naked over glass to kiss PBJ's ring. And who the hell is Mike Sherman? Must consult with the Roman Numerals on how to proceed. Don't think I could survive another guy named Mike who nobody's ever heard of.

Turdistan Held Hostage: Day One

Breaking News: The following memorandum was just faxed to FTB world headquarters from a secret inside source in Tuscaloosa:

From The Desk Of Maw Mooah

Prospect List:
1. Steve Spurrier
2. Nick Saban
3. Belichick guy with all the good press
4. Bill Parcells

written in margin: This isn't working out. Must listen to Finebaum show tonight for more suggestions from callers. Damn it, we need some Bear Boys for this list. Where is Danny Ford's phone number? Ask secretary to confirm whether Charley Pell is actually dead.

Thumbs Down--The Choices of Maw Mooah

So, why did UAT fire Mike Shula?

I don't mean why as in, why fire him at all--Shula was and is an incompetent coach, and if UAT hadn't been both stupid and desperate after Mike Price met his Destiny, Shula would have long since joined the ranks of ex-coaches. But they did hire him, and then give him a big raise and a ludicrous buyout just a year ago. Even so, after the raising of the Thumb (okay, I suspect losing to Mississippi State had more to do with it), Mikey had to go. But again, why right now?

Here's what I think. The last week has been a complete media circus in Alabama. Every newspaper, every local newscast, and whoa-Nellie, every radio show has had one major sports topic: Is Mike Shula going to be back for 2007?

By yesterday, things had degenerated into such chaos that UAT AD Maw Mooah had to make a move one way or the other, just to end some of the uncertainty and stop the bleeding. Remember, yesterday was the first "contact day" after a month-long recruiting quiet period. It was the first day since October that coaches could call recruits, and every single kid being recruited by Alabama had one question to ask--who is the coach next year? The Turd braintrust couldn't afford to wait any longer--Maw had to make a decision one way or the other.

When (as as I suspect) Mikey refused to fire any of his assistants yesterday, Mooah had his answer on the "can I keep him or not." That answer was a reverberating "No," and now Maw has some breathing room to conduct an actual, above-ground coaching search without the question of Shuluh staying on as a one-year lame duck. It's not an ideal situation, but it was the best of Maw's options after the stumbling fiasco of the past week.

If Maw already had a coach lined up, I think we would know it by now. Since he most likely doesn't, we can now look forward to the usual Turd coaching search thrash, which goes something like this:

Step 1. "Target" the biggest "name" coaches in the country.
Step 2. Get turned down by all of them.
Step 3. "Target" several up-and-coming coaches.
Step 4. Watch all but one or two of them parley your interest into a big raise.
Step 5. Pick from whomever's left.
Step 6. Call the new hire "the one we really wanted all along."

UPDATE: Welcome, Deadspin readers (and thanks for the link). Ah, the Instalanche of sports blogs at last...

Buh-Bye, Mikey

According to Cecil Hurt at the Tuscaloosa News, Mike Shula was fired last night. Word broke a bit after midnight Central (at least that's when I got an unexpected text message from my old bud Scott Brown) on various UAT web sites. Oddly, as of first thing this morning, nobody in the national press has picked up the story yet. At any rate, if Hurt said it, I certainly believe him. Here's the intro:

Mike Shula has been dismissed as the University of Alabama’s head football coach, multiple sources close to the Crimson Tide football program told The Tuscaloosa News on Sunday night.

Shula notified his assistant coaches late Sunday night after UA director of athletics Mal Moore gave him the news, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Neither Moore nor Shula were available for comment on Sunday night. UA is expected to make an official announcement today.

Cartoons Don't Have To Be Consistent

Gee, I thought contacting potential new head coaches without informing your current head coach was the very worst thing anybody could do. I mean, it's worse than barbecuing a toddler. At least that's been the mantra in the press--especially the in-state Alabama press--ever since a famous private jet flight just over three years ago.

But golly, something seems to be different now. Wonder what that could be?

All Thumbs

Some very scattershot stuff from the weekend and its aftermath:

* This was my fifth trip to Bryant-Denny; the first was for a high-school game in the mid-80's. Back then, calling the place a dump would have been charitable. Alabama played all its big games in Birmingham in those days, relegating its official home stadium to homecomings and then-biannual Vanderbilt "rivalry." It's hard to imagine a facility even more dilapidated than Legion Field, but Bryant-Denny fit that bill, and was UAT's neglected child for a long time.

A series of renovations, the most recent completed prior to this season, have considerably improved the place. The new end zone upper deck where UAT consigns most visiting fans is no fun to get up to, and the sightlines aren't what I'd call ideal, but it is new and clean and relatively comfortable, which is more than I could say about the old lower-level end zone seating. Even with the additional seating, though, Bryant-Denny is never going to be a particularly intimidating stadium. The original grandstand design pushes the majority of the crowd well away from the field, and the old-money Alabama fans in the best seats just don't get all that loud, even in big games.

* Of course, the recent changes can't all be considered improvements. The Auburn team entered the field mid-way through Alabama's pregame video presentation (as usual, complete with incomprehensible Bryant argle-bargle), earning no end of squaking from Turds ever on the lookout for "disrespect," but as it turned out, Auburn was just trying to get out of the line of fire. The Montgomery Advertiser's Josh Moon was in the portal with the team:

Who was the genius that decided it would be a good idea to have the visiting team exit the field by going through a tunnel located right below the Alabama student section?

Surely, Mal, you didn't know anything about this idiotic idea before the construction started and it was too late, right? Because I just can't imagine that a man who has been around college football as long as you have would hear that idea and not immediately find it, well, nutty.

For a good five minutes, the Auburn coaches and players stood just outside that tunnel trying desperately to navigate their way through the downpour of half-filled plastic cups, completely filled water bottles, miniature liquor bottles and pretty much every other item the students could lift up and send in flight. After a while, I swear I noticed some of the students sizing up their smaller classmates and trying to calculate just how much force would be required to send them raining down on the AU team.

It was a mess. An ugly, classless, embarrassing mess.

You'd think that after five straight years of losing to Auburn and four straight home losses to the Tigers that the students would be used to this scene by now.

The carnage didn't end there, of course. After the game, Auburn's David Irons was struck in the eye by a water bottle tossed from the UAT student section. I'm frankly not surprised at any bad behavior coming from the Mountain Brook cokehead brats who populate UAT's Greek "Machine," and the Turd braintrust (such as it is) shouldn't be surprised either. Hopefully they'll take some action to prevent their home-grown idiots from acting this idiotic the next time around.

* I'll never understand how an institution that so loudly proclaims its "class" could allow the tacky flea market that jams the streets leading up to Bryant-Denny before a game. I've never seen anything remotely like it at any other college campus. Every possible variety of cheesy elephant porn you could imagine, lined up for sale along several blocks. I guess it's heaven to a redneck who somehow stumbles into Tuscaloosa, but for a normal human, it's an eyesore and a nuisance.

* Watching Tyrone Prothro painfully limp out to midfield before the game was just viscerally unpleasant. I wish him nothing but the best, but the kid is basically crippled, and the television coverage Saturday did not capture the awful lingering extent of his injury.

If it was Prothro's own notion to go out there and fire up his teammates and the fans, fine and good for him. But if it was some PR guy's bright idea, that PR guy needs to be dragged out and horsewhipped.

Here Comes The Thumb

The English language needs a new word. It's long past time for a single term to describe the feeling you have on a Sunday morning after your team has won the Auburn-Alabama game. This rare combination of serene, languorous satisfaction, bone-deep joy, and let's be honest here, frank relief ought to have its own name.

For now, we'll just call it Thumbiness.

Okay, okay, before getting my gloat on, let's talk about the actual football. First and foremost, it was a hell of a good football game, the best contest on the field since the back-to-back one-pointers of 1996-97, and really the first time since then that AU and UAT were both competitive from wire to wire. There's a lot of griping this morning about missed opportunities from the other side, but from where I was sitting (which, granted, was somewhere in the stratosphere of Bryant-Denny's new upper deck), there wasn't a whole lot left on the field.

Both teams played a whale of a ball game. UAT quarterback John Wilson obviously had a solid day. Getting slobberknockered by Quentin Groves a couple of times wasn't his fault; that was courtesy of Chris Capps, the lousiest excuse for an SEC lineman I've seen in some time. Alabama's passing game was dead on the mark, even if they couldn't run much at all. That said, Auburn's much-maligned secondary deserves a lot of credit for completely shutting down D.J. Hall and containing Keith Brown--but spread that credit around to sophomore wideout Nikita Stover, who broke 100 yards and scored that late-second-quarter touchdown that kept the Turds in the game.

Brandon Cox started out the game poorly. It was obvious from his first passing attempt that Cox was still reeling from the Georgia debacle. Fortunately for Auburn, all it took was one clutch completion to Rod Smith on a third-and-long early in the second half for Cox to rise above the dismal sounds of the prior Saturday. After that, Cox was in it to win it, and it didn't hurt any that the young receiving corps finally stepped up to play. Prechae Rodriguez isn't likely to have a bigger catch in his career than the game-winner.

Of course, with only 14 pass attempts to 40 rushes, Cox was playing a secondary role to Kenny Irons, Brad Lester and Carl Stewart in the AU scheme. All three backs played well, but I think I've been most impressed with Stewart's development this season. He was pretty much written off as a too-slow tailback before the season, but a preseason injury to Mike McLaughlin thrust Stewart into a new role, and he's flourished in the interim. Stewart was a menace clearing the path for Irons and Lester, and you're rarely going to see two bigger plays in a rivalry game than his pair of long receptions off the wheel route.

It was a fun game. Not fun like last year's drubbing, but fun all the same. Take away the last couple of minutes, and I'll be you most Alabama fans would agree with me.

A few numbers of note. In modern-era games played outside dolorous confines of Legion Field, Auburn is now 10-2 in the series. Needless to say, that's a big deal. AU has won six of the last seven, and clinched the decade (whatever the 2000's are called) with Saturday's victory.

Zero: the number of touchdowns (and, not coincidentally, wins) UAT running back Ken Darby tallied against Auburn in his four-year career. Darby's rushing totals over four Auburn games--three of which he started--were: 1, 14, 89 and 48. That's right--for somebody who really loved to shoot his mouth off about Auburn, Darby barely managed to top 150 total yards over four years.

In most other cases, I'm happy to tip my hat to UAT's players for a great effort, but not for this bozo. Darby, you suck.

The End Of All That

What can I say about the 2006 Auburn-Georgia game that hasn't already been said about Krakatoa? As epic apocalypses go, this one was a doozy. It had everything: bad defense, back kick protection, and more turnovers than a Pepperidge Farm factory. The best thing I can say about this one is, there were so many big plays going against the Tigers, there's no way all of them could have made it to the overnight highlight reels. Say what you will about Tommy Tuberville, but when he lays an egg, brother, he doesn't fool around.

As far as what to take away from the debacle, I don't think it's any great revelation to point out that Auburn just hasn't recruited well at wide receiver and in the interiors of both lines. The loss of three thousand-yard receivers to graduation after 2005 turned out to be far more damaging to Al Borges' offense than the departure of the famed 2004 backfield. With only a couple of productive receivers on the field (neither of them being mistaken for speed demons) and weak pass protection up front, AU's air attack is a shadow if its former self, even when Brandon Cox is on his game. When he's off, or injured (and he was likely both on Saturday), well, you saw what can happen.

Tommy Tuberville said after the game that he, personally, had messed up the defensive game plan, which didn't come as a great surprise to anybody who recalled similar disasters against Arkansas in 2002 and Alabama in 2001. As a rule, when Tuberville leans in over his DC's shoulder and puts in a very aggresive package, you can pretty much bet the bank that overpursuit will be the rule of the day. Give the coach his due for taking responsibility up front, but this defense has been going backwards for a month now, and not because of faulty game planning. Regardless of who came up with the schemes for this particular game, the breakdowns in fundamentals are far more troubling to me than any lapse in strategy. You can fix a bad strategy at halftime. You can't fix bad tackling until next spring, and then maybe.

Of course, while everything was going wrong for Auburn, everything was simultaneously going right for Georgia. A true freshman quarterback who'd thrown three times as many interceptions as touchdowns suddenly couldn't miss, and the palms of a receiving corps that couldn't catch syphillis in Bangkok suddenly started secreting Crazy Glue. Mark Richt's offense was abused in Jordan-Hare two years ago, but Richt paid back the favor in spades this time around. You didn't have to be an offensive genius to look at Auburn's defensive tendencies and figure out that draws and counters work great (heck, you just have to watch films of the Arkansas game), but give all the credit where it's due: Georgia shook off its midseason funk with a vengeance.

As the JCCW pointed out after the Arkansas game, this is what you tend to get with a Tuberville team. On balance, he's going to win a couple that he shouldn't, and he's going to completely screw the pooch once or twice a year. That's the pattern, and with the entirely-notable exception of 2004, it hasn't changed much during Tuberville's entire tenure. Does the latest televised embarrasment mean I want him to be fired (again)? Hell, no. Tuberville proved his point since late 2003, and I'm not climing on the run-him-off bandwagon again.

Now, do I expect a lot better than what we saw yesterday? Hell, yes.

I tried yesterday to recall the last time Auburn lost a close game. The best I could do was overtime in Baton Rouge last year. Before that, you'd have to go back to the Ole Miss game in '03. Everything else that's been remotely close has been a win. That's actually a heck of a record, and a solid testament to a team that does know how to win in the clutch. The bad side, of course, is that all the rest of the losses never got to the "clutch" part--they were mostly over by halftime.

If nothing else, Saturday's putrid result will add quite a bit of spice to a pre-UAT-game week that was looking decidedly dull about 36 hours ago. It's another of Tuberville's tendencies to come out strong immediately after a bad loss, and it would be, er, good if he could manage as much this weekend. And if nothing else, nobody around Auburn is going to lose any sleep over the BCS standings for the rest of the year...

Stand By

Sorry for the lack of posting, real life has been real busy. Hopefully something new up later today.

Yaw Yaw Yaw Yaw Yaw Yaw Yaw Yaw--Sloppy!

Another week, another frustrating win for Auburn. It's funny; if you look back at Auburn's salad days in the 80's and 90's, these kinds of games were a lot more common than we seem to remember. Perspectives have changed, though, and not only because of AU's most recent success (although that certainly plays a part; there were only two games in the entire 2004 season that could be reasonably described as "close," and the Tigers whipped the nine teams they beat in '05). Most obviously, the travesty known as the BCS is playing a part. When idiocies like "style points" are suddenly a goal, even obscure individual plays get analyzed for how they'll fly with the voters. Winning by six when you're a two-touchdown-plus favorite is now a venal sin.

Less apparent is the enduring legacy of Steve Spurrier's 12-year reign of terror in Gainesville. Even though he never had a season without at least one loss, Visor Boy tended to just kill opponents, week in and week out. The standard of excellence in the SEC was raised in the 1990's: it wasn't enough to win most or all of your games--you had to win them by 30 or 40. That perception weighs heavily on Auburn and the rest of the SEC today--just look at how Florida and Tennessee are being criticized for not beating their respective biggest conference rivals, Georgia and Alabama, by a big enough margin. You didn't hear talk like that in, say, 1988, but it's common today.

At any rate, Auburn certainly didn't earn any "style points" in last Saturday's Ole Miss game. The Tigers played a solid but not great game on offense, rolling up a lot of yards but not scoring an excess of points. With the exception of a dry spell in the third quarter, the passing game looked better than it's looked all year, and the Tigers ran well against a defense that kept approximately 15 guys in the tackle box for most of the game. Unfortunately, the Auburn defense was not good, again. Missed assignments, blown coverage, and worst of all, just plain bad tackling kept a weak UM offense around for way too long. What was worse, two turnovers and an endless run of stupid penalties on both sides of the ball kept the mascot-free Rebels in business for most of the day. This one looked more like a season-opener than what it was, the ninth game of the year.

I'm as nonplussed as anybody about the up-and-down performance of the defense. With the understanding that this just isn't one of those great teams that's going to go out and whip people every week (or even most weeks), they've shown enough flashes of real-real-goodness to make one wonder, "What the hell? Why can't they do that all the time?"

Montgomery Advertiser columnist Josh Moon had an interesting take on the question last week (I should have linked it back then--the column has since rolled into the pay side of their archives). Paraphrasing, Moon speculated that AU's speed-first defensive philosophy works great in big games when the players are running on turbocharged adrenaline, but in the "small games," the same players aren't playing at full speed because they just aren't "up" enough, and the overall defense suffers as a result. I wasn't sure what to make of Moon's theory back then, but Auburn's defensive performance to date certainly gives it some credence. After hearing all summer about their bad performance in previous openers, the Tigers were on fire to stuff Washington State in the opener, and did so. Ditto for the cataclysmic LSU game, and after a now-famous pep talk, the last two quarters against Florida.

On the other hand, the defense has been lackadaisical at best against the unheralded opposition. That got them killed against Arkansas, and embarrassed more than a few times against others. Certainly Ole Miss qualifies as a "small game"--while UM fans see the word "Auburn" and instantly start ranting about Tuberville's perfidy and crowing over a dropped ball from Ben Obomanu three years back, every Auburn fan and probably most of the players see "Ole Miss" on a schedule line and think simply, "That's a win."

And what the heck, it was. But it wasn't pretty, and that has the waters roiling in Auburndom today.

Fun With Three Idiots Named Dave

Here's this week's lowlight from our Friends at Jefferson Pilot Lincoln Financial Sports, from yesterday's Auburn-Ole Miss game:

Memo to the Daves: Courteney Cox is an actress from Birmingham. Courtney Taylor is a wide receiver from Carrollton. We know these things can be confusing to people with a room temperature I.Q., but beyond similar first names and having been born in the same state, the two really have very little in common. Please make a note of it.