Five Questions With Bourbon & Coke

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

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

Regarding "The Computers"...

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

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

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

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

You know what to do.

Bo Knows Auburn, 2010

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

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Recommended Reading

ESPN's Ivan Maisel (for my money, consistently the best college football writer and analyst at the Worldwide Leader) has a great piece up on Auburn's win over South Carolina:

It may be next week. It may be next year. It may be never. But if Auburn ever figures out how to get out of its own way, the Tigers will challenge Alabama for supremacy in the SEC West.

Until that time, until the day Auburn stops losing two fumbles, stops committing false-start penalties on fourth-and-goal at the 1 and then missing the field goal, Tigers fans will have to live with way too much excitement.

For the second consecutive week, Auburn spotted a very good team from South Carolina a lead of 13 points or more. And for the second consecutive week, quarterback Cam Newton ran and passed the Tigers to victory in concert with a defense that clamped down in the second half.

Newton, a junior, rushed for 176 yards and three touchdowns and threw for 158 yards and two more scores. No. 17 Auburn overcame a 20-7 deficit to pound No. 12 South Carolina 35-27.

Read the whole thing.

More At al.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Nice Job

SI's Andy Staples has a very nice recap of last night's AU-MSU tilt.  A sample:

On the sideline, the offense sank. Those Tigers knew they had squandered opportunities to score. They prepared for overtime. In the backs of their minds, they worried Mississippi State might plow down the field and put the Tigers in an 0-1 SEC hole. But Fairley kept fighting toward Relf. Bell and Etheridge locked down their receivers. Bynes brought pressure from unexpected places. Relf threw four consecutive incomplete passes. When the fourth hit the ground, the sideline exploded. Receivers coach Trooper Taylor waved his towel and offered chest bumps to returning defensive players. Etheridge ran toward the cheerleaders. He picked up a sign that read "DEFENSE" and waved it at the crowd.

"It was a great something to build on," Auburn coach Gene Chizik said. "We said before this game that if we win this game or lose this game, it doesn't necessarily determine the outcome of the season. It only lets you have a great idea of where you are and where you need to move forward."

As the cowbells at Scott Field finally fell silent, the Tigers jogged up a ramp and into their locker room. After Chizik finished talking, the choir assembled.

Lean on me/when you're not strong/I'll be your friend/I'll help you car-ry on./Boy/it won't be long/til I'm going to need/some-body/to le-an on.

"That's our theme song," receiver Darvin Adams said.

Read the whole thing.

Posted Without Further Comment

Tennessee, 2009:

Tennessee, 2010: Dooley questions Tennessee's "Shower Discipline"

New At al.com

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

It's yet to be seen whether Newton has the talent for improvisation that made Craig such a threat (although that 72-yard touchdown was a hell of a start), but Newton brings all that extra size and height to the table. He's a bit like stuffing Craig's make-something-out-of-nothing magic into Jason Campbell's body, while adding 20 pounds of muscle and simultaneously shaving several tenths off of Campbell's 40-yard dash. And you can tell from miles away that the kid just loves playing football. Sure, it's just one game, but Newton was a pure joy to watch on Saturday night.

There's quite a bit more.

I Approve Of This Message

Premature? Sure. Funny? You're dang tootin':

Heh

Via the Birmingham News:

[Jacksonville State head coach Jack] Crowe and Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt, who are friends and former colleagues, haven't talked in detail yet. They vowed before the game to give each other scouting reports of their respective teams afterward. 

"After the game, I had a sad place in my heart because I know what Houston is fixing to go through," said Crowe, whose season-opening loss to The Citadel in 1992 abruptly ended his time as Arkansas coach. "At least he doesn't have to go talk to Frank Broyles." 

New at Rivals: Go Go Godzilla

My post-game column for Arkansas State is up at Rivals' AuburnSports.com.  A preview:

After a long spring and summer of anxious expectations, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more satisfying initial evaluation for Gene Chizik's high-risk, high-reward gamble on quarterback Cameron Newton. "Godzilla" was everywhere on Saturday night: running, passing, scoring and lighting up the sidelines with a delighted thousand-watt grin.

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

Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Houston....

Goodbye.

Final score: Jacksonville State 49, Ole Miss 48.

Recommended Reading

The blogging colossus known in some quarters as Orson Spencer Swindle Hall Mellencamp (why yes, I do like that joke; why do you ask?) is already in mid-season form--meaning, of course, that as a Florida guy, he's about to get run over by Auburn.

But never mind that right now.  Check out this excellent tribute to our mutual home sweet metro and its undying love affair with all things college football:

Telling someone the exact charms of Atlanta is difficult, particularly if you're talking to a transplanted Northeasterner repeating what everyone outside of Atlanta says: "This is a terrible sports town." They would be right in a certain sense. If I went to New Orleans I could say "This is a terrible restaurant town," since all the typical easy signs of modern food civilization are gone from the landscape of the Quarter. There is no Applebee's sign, no easy Olive Garden beckoning the eater in, only a series of stand-alone cafes, diners, and restaurants where you will not eat quickly, and where you may be denied entry for not wearing the right thing. 

This assumes correctly that the outsider has a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation, and bad taste. This is true, since sports fandom in Atlanta is almost wholly dependent on college football, the one thing suturing together the disparate group of people who come here for work, love, or because several months into a lengthy layover at Hartsfield, they decided to just stay and make the best of things. It is one of the few universal binders here along with a love of greasy food, the fear of being eaten in the night by kudzu, and a general curiosity as to Monica Kaufman's real beauty regimen. (Hint: she's a vampire, and does not age. Why do you think she does only the evening news?) 

On both radio stations it is possible to discuss college football in June...for an hour. In fact, it's encouraged. Hit the 75/85 connector on a Friday, and the waggling of car window flags turns the odious traffic into a slow moving river of tailgate potential on the move. The flags appeared about a month ago in my neighborhood. Last weekend, wandering around Kirkwood, i turned a corner to find a huge inflatable elephant staring at me from a yard. An Alabama fan had decided it was time not just to shine up the ceramic elephant in the yard, but to deploy the inflatable for the duration of the season. I only notice the inflatables, since the team-themed porch flags never really come down. I can look out my window right now and see the Tennessee flag of my neighbor waving orange in the light wind blowing down the street today, a reminder that football is tonight, and that I need to burn that flag as soon as possible but in the safest manner possible. 

(He is my neighbor, after all. Don't want to make a lifelong enemy here, just one on Saturdays.)

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:  Read this, too.  Among many other things, it's a peek into why Mellencamp has been absolutely on fire (in a good way) lately.

Benediction

To commemorate the day before FOOTBAW, an annual tradition here at FTB, and elsewhere. From 2000, the great Geoffrey Norman:

We were supposed to be talking politics but we couldn't help ourselves. 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.

First They Had No Mascot, Now They Have No QB

Late this afternoon, the NCAA denied Jermiah Masoli's petition to transfer to Ole Miss without sitting out a season.

First, read Mellencamp's entirely-too-hilarious-to-skip take.

Second, while I've got no regard to speak of for Houston Nutt or any team he happens to be coaching at the moment, this is another good example of the NCAA's institutional lack of reliability.  Was the grad-student transfer rule intended to facilitate playing time for guys who get kicked out of a program one week and jump to a different one the next?  Of course not.

Does that make it okay for the Mandarins of Indianapolis to apply that rule selectively, just because they think Nutt is a sleaze?  Nope.  Not even if Nutt is a sleaze (which he is).

Nutt, who got himself into this mess, deserves what he's getting; Ole Miss, which hired him, deserves it by extension.  But that still doesn't make it all either okey or dokey.   If the NCAA didn't want the rule to apply to booted-out program jumpers, they should have written it to say so--and not having done that, they should have followed the letter of the rule today, instead of following their subjective inclinations and denying Masoli's request.

UPDATE:  Tony Barnhart agrees.  Neal McCready REALLY agrees.

Double Shot Of PFD

Who says Pat Dye is congenitally conservative?  At age 70 (and pushing 71), he's starting on a new career as a columnist this year, with plans to pen three columns a week for the online edition of Inside The Auburn Tigers. 

Auburn long-timers will no doubt remember "The Dye-gest," a Dye column that ran in the front of the pre-internet, dead-tree version of ITAT from Dye's first season in 1981 until the NCAA nixed coaches writing in single-team-oriented publications in the late 80's.  I always figured either ITAT honcho Mark Murphy or then-Auburn SID David Housel did the actual writing back then, but that was pure speculation on my part.

At any rate, here's Dye's first column of the 21st Century, plus a related interview with Doug Segrest of the Birmingham News.  Both are particularly entertaining for Dye's (accurate) descriptions of Houston Nutt and Les Miles as "squirrely."

The Road Ahead

As most of you noticed a couple of months back, I've signed back on as a columnist with Rivals' AuburnSports.com site for this season. Part of the Rivals deal is for the Monday-morning post-game columns that originally started over there in 2001, and then moved here to From The Bleachers in 2004. If anybody's curious, that happened because the then-coaching staff didn't react well to being called out their multiple '03 screw-ups, and threatened to shut the Rivals guys out of the Auburn athletic department if they didn't drop my column.

But that's all water well under the bridge at this point, and I was happy to accept new AuburnSports honcho Jeffery Lee's invitation to return as a columnist this year. The downside of that for all of you is, my Monday columns will only be appearing at the subscriber-only side at Rivals.

However, Jeffery is offering a free first month's subscription (their usual intro deal is just a week) to any new subscriber who comes over from FTB. If you're interested, just head over to the Auburn Rivals site, sign up for a subscription, and forward a copy of your receipt email to mail -at- fromthebleachers.net. I'll touch base with Rivals from there, and you'll get your first month credited back.

Besides the Rivals gig, I'll also be participating in al.com's weekly Blogger Roundtable, and all of that content will be linked from here, and should remain free. For the first couple of bits I wrote for al.com, I've sent them considerably more traffic than they're sending me, so many thanks to all of you for tuning in and clicking over.

That's it for reading the bulletin this season. Now on to the fun part...

... And There Was Much Rejoicing

The M-Zone, where blogger Yost covered all things Michigan, went quietly into hibernation a couple of years ago. I was among the saddened legions when Yost hung up his keyboard, as M-Zone was far-and-away my favorite non-SEC blog.

But behold, the aggregation of asininity and failure known as Jim Delaney has at last succeeded at something: his proposal to move the Ohio State-Michigan game from the season-ender to October brought Yost back out of retirement, and the results are not pretty--at least not for Delaney.

Fair warning: this one has more f-bombs than Cee-Lo's new single.

H/T: Mellencamp.

It's Official: I Am The Light Bringer

Well, at least according to al.com, which kindly describes me as a "college football luminary" in plugging my contribution to their new Blogger Roundtable feature. I'll be answering a question or two there a week this season; here's a preview of the first edition:

Question No. 1: "We know Alabama fans are supposed to be worried about their special teams and non-Mark Barron safeties, Auburn fans about Cam Newton's accuracy and the depth in the front seven. But what unit or aspect of your team that's widely accepted as a-OK--or even above-average or excellent--has you secretly worried?"

Answer: I'm parting with Jerry pretty dramatically here, but I'm afraid the iron-spiked bowling ball known as Ben Tate will be a lot harder to replace than anybody thinks...

Click through for the rest.

So, All That Happened

Chaste Chadd sums up the last ten years of the SEC via Facebook (which, er, wasn't launched until 2004, but work with him, people).

It's good.

Heh

Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel had a few choice tweets this week regarding Ticketgate at UAT:

# Tix director was a Roads Scholar RT @ClayTravisBGID: Alabama misspells Mississippi on tickets

# In wake of spelling error, admission standards at Alabama to be raised. You now need a 23 on your alphabet

# To curb agent activity Nick Saban has banned runners, NFL scouts and the alphabet from campus

# Alabama thanks Penn State for sparing them full spelling of Pennsylvania; confused to discover San Jose earned statehood

An Unabashed Plug

It occurred to me this morning that I ought to post a modification of the rant just below regarding the poor state of sports coverage in the local papers.  Specifically, that occurred to me while reading Andy Bitter's account of Auburn's first fall practice of 2010.  As far the AU beat writers are concerned, if you ask me, there's Bitter (at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer), and then a long, long way farther down, there's everybody else.  He's head, shoulders, elbows, knees and feet above the rest.

If you haven't bookmarked or blogrolled Bitter's War Eagle Extra blog, do yourself a favor and grab it now.

Q & A at AL.com

Here's a brief email interview that Charlie Roberts of al.com's Tiger's Corner blog conducted with Yours Truly. I appreciated Charlie's request, but have to note that my full response to the last question was cut out of the published interview.  Here's the unedited version:

TC: Getting away from Auburn: Why is most mainstream college football coverage so mediocre (to be charitable)? What can we do to fix it?

There's a lot of blandness and sameness in today's media coverage.  You read pretty much the same things no matter where you look, and that goes for the major media websites as well as the newspapers.  Part of that is not your--the media's--fault; access is so controlled these days that it's difficult for anybody to get quotes or stories that everybody else doesn't also have.  But I have to say that the quality of both the analysis and writing is not what it ought to be, and it appears to me that there's a lot of fear of bucking convention and the popular view of the moment.  Newspapers are in a terrible business situation, and I suspect there's a reluctance to irritate the subscribers they still have left.

I don't expect every newspaper sports writer to be a modern Clyde Bolton, but I have less interest in reading newspaper stories or columns than I've ever had in the past.  One reason is that almost all of the material is written by guys who went to journalism school andhave followed pretty much the same career paths as every other newspaper employee over the past fifty years.  There's a we've-always-done-it-this-way guild mentality, and I think that model is just worn out.

[Deleted section] To put it bluntly, why should I slog through the same old beat writer reports when I can read Jerry Hinnen at War Blog Eagle? Why spend time reading the umpteenth pseudo-Paul-Finebaum opinion column when I can read Orson Spencer Swindle Hall Mellencamp at Every Day Should Be Saturday? Why bother with by-the-numbers analysis when there's Matt Hinton at Dr. Saturday, who's not only a better analyst, but also a better writer than anybody in the local paper?

I can certainly understand al.com choosing to edit out criticism of its affiliated newspaper writers, but I also think they're proving my point by doing so.  I'm also sorry that the links to War Blog Eagle, EDSBS and Dr. Saturday didn't get passed on to their readers.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Gaze, if you will, on this bit of football-season-hurry-up-and-get-here awesomeness from the Gainesville's Sun's Pat Dooley. 

Then try and peel yourself off the ceiling when you realize we've still got a month of off-season to go.

Cross-Posted

After typing in this comment to Tony Barnhart's bit on the Football Writers Association of America thing today, it occurred to me that I should have just posted it on my blog.  So here it is:

As an Auburn grad, I have to say that I don’t want it. Not because the team wasn’t deserving–it certainly was–but because I’m not interested in preserving the myth of poll-generated “championships.” The collected opinions of a bunch of media employees, whether here or in the AP or Harris polls (don’t get me started on the SID–whoops, I mean “coaches poll”), aren’t worth a cup of warm spit to begin with, and they certainly don’t add up to a “championship.” I’d just as soon tell them where they can shove their fake championships, especially when they’re trying to make up for being idiots, six years too late.

And yes, I should have said, "having been idiots."  Sue me.

And, In The "Kiss Of Death" Department...

So a local organization here in Atlanta held a season kickoff banquet yesterday, featuring the in-state head coaches and a bunch of media figures.  The latter group didn't make the AJC's (typically minimal) coverage, but I understand from somebody who was there that ESPN cartoon character Lee Corso...

... picked Auburn to be 11-0 going into the final game in Tuscaloosa.

My reaction?

A Bold Prediction

Mike Bianchi will have three very interesting days this week while covering SEC Media Days in Birmingham.

Exodus: Pete Pelegrin

Check out this extraordinary kiss-off post from now ex-Miami Herald sportswriter Pete Pelegrin, who'd been assigned to cover Florida International sports, only to be repeatedly see his work spiked and/or ignored.

Big hat-tip to Jay Christensen for giving me the the heads-up on this one.  Like Jay said to me in an email, read it before they take it down (Jay's saved a copy at WizOfOdds in case of just such an event).

UPDATE:  Jay's prediction was correct; Pelegrin's post has been flushed down the Herald's online memory hole.

More Recommended Reading

My old buddy Lein Shory takes Stewart Mandel and the entire Poll-BCS-Media-Complex out behind the woodshed for a well-deserved beating.

Reprinting Mandel's over-the-top preview of the snooze fest known as the 2005 Orange Bowl was just gratuitously mean... and entirely appropriate.

Recommended Reading

Check out this excellent 2009 Auburn recap and 2010 projection from Team Speed Kills.

The only thing I'd add would be to note that the '09 defense's real problem was plan old depth, or rather a severe lack of it.  By the second half of the season, there just weren't any backups in the defensive backfield, thus playing the same three linebackers for entire games.  That led to an awful lot of second-half points, costing the Tigers leads (and games) against Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama.

With just a couple of role-players--not stars, mind you, just guys who could fill in for a series or two to spell the starters--at linebacker and safety, AU had a serious shot at finishing 11-2.  Without them, 8-5.  Whether they'll be there this year... well, we'll see.

Making Defenses Look Stupid, One Play At A Time

This much-linked instructional video on Malzahn-ball from Offensive Musings is... pretty awesome.  Check it out:

Oily Irony

As noted here a few weeks back, long-time Birmingham News mediocrity and certified Nick Sucker Ray Melick recently left both the paper and the newspaper business.  In an example of irony worthy of Biff Henderson's Realm of Mystery, it turns out Melick's new job is... spokesman for British Petroleum.

Really, it wasn't that much of a career change for old Ray.  One on the one hand, you've got a steady gig as an apologist and booster for an oily, dishonest and generally disreputable megalomaniac... and on the other, you get to be the mouthpiece for BP.

Looks pretty good on him, now that I think about it.

New At Rivals

I have another new column up at AuburnSports.com, this time regarding the recent spate of conference expansion madness.  It's on the subscriber side, but here's a preview:

First of all, what the heck are we supposed to call all these Conferences Run By People Who Can't Count? 

"Pac Televen" is an easy one, but what about the others? The Big 10 now has 12 teams and the Big 12 has 10. 

Wouldn't everybody's lives be easier if they'd just mutually swap all their t-shirts and banners and stationary? Or maybe the Big XII-Minus-II should just revert back to the old Southwest Conference moniker, since they're now all but formally Texas And A Bunch Of Texas' Rivals.

It's enough to drive one to drink-assuming, of course, that one stopped drinking beforehand.

The Truth Comes, Er, Out

The Onion reveals the secret behind the world's worst sport:


Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay

More "Journalism" From ESPN

Here's ESPN SEC blogger Chris Low, in (admittedly) a nice-ish column about the 2004 Tigers:

After all, go back and check how many times over the past two decades that an SEC team has run the table with an unblemished record.


The answer: Four.


Alabama did it in 1992 and again last season. Both were national championship clubs. Tennessee did it in 1998 and also won the national championship.


The fourth was Auburn in 2004.

Um, Chris, that number is actually five.  The fifth undefeated team was Auburn, in 1993.  You may recall hearing a little something about that.

Sheesh.

Rivals Redux

I'm very happy to announce that I'll be returning to the AuburnSports.com site at Rivals.com as an opinion columnist this season. We haven't worked out the frequency of the new columns yet, but there will be at the very least a new column the Monday after every game, and additional columns as situations merit (I'll also continue to blog about Auburn and the SEC here at FTB--this site isn't going anywhere).

One situation that merited comment is today's announcement of NCAA sanctions against Southern Cal, including the forfeiture vacating of all USC's games from the 2004 season the 2005 Orange Bowl. At the request of AuburnSports honcho Jeffrey Lee, I wrote up this column on the retroactive impact (if any) of those forfeits the vacation (insert Go-Go's joke here) on the 2004 Auburn Tigers.

Short version: I don't care.

UPDATE: Now that the actual sanctions report is out (as opposed to the early reports from ESPN, some of which turned out to be erroneous), I've corrected the column accordingly.

Exodus: Ray Melick

Long-time columnist Ray Melick is leaving the Birmingham News, and apparently the newspaper business as well.

I was never much of a fan, but I wish him well.

The Banality of A-Day

Here's what's good about A-Day, or any other spring game: The weather is usually nice, and during the interminable off-season lull, fans to go on campus and see a somewhat-reasonable facsimile of football. And that's about it.

Every spring game is, by design, something of a bore. Coaches hate to show anything to anybody when they don't have to, and the tendency to turn spring games into demonstrations of distilled vanilla has only intensified since cable programmers with way too much air time to fill started televising them. So what you got in Auburn on Saturday was the same thing you got from every other big-program spring game: something that sort of looked like football, but really wasn't.

I know, I know, the message boards are alive today with speculation over whether Cameron Newton is a flop, whether Auburn should play it safe with Neal Caudle, or hand it over to Barrett Trotter, or just hang it all up and forfeit the season out of sheer ennui. Opposing fans, also with nothing better to do, are all a-twitter--literally so these days--as well, which all by itself is kind of funny. About the only thing more boring and pathetic than watching your own team's spring game is watching somebody else's.

To all of the above, I say: Get a grip, folks. It's just A-Day.

With one single exception*, no spring game has ever told anybody a meaningful thing about their football team. If you want to have a much better idea about the team, I suggest you sneak into the final, closed scrimmage this week (but don't tell the security guards I said it was okay)**. That's where the real offense and defense will be on display--very limited display--and where the serious decisions about the initial starting lineups will be made. The A-Day films have probably already been flushed down the digital memory hole as far as the Auburn staff are concerned.

Given the coach-mandated limitations and constant shuffling of the lineups on both sides of the ball, I hesitate to draw any specific conclusions out of the "game" that was "played" on Saturday. That's not to say that some individuals didn't impress. One thing you can't hide is speed, and Auburn should have plenty of that when the real thing starts in September. On defense, I liked the hustle from Nick Fairley and Antoine Carter and whoa-Nellie, Demond Washington. On offense the running back stable looks solid even before the freshmen arrive, and whoever the quarterback is in 2010, he should be able to look forward to having more than two productive wideouts; DeAngelo Benton and Quindarius Carr both stuck out.

As for quarterback, all four of them (apologies to Clint Mosely for not mentioning him above) looked good passing the ball. I really liked the dart Newton threw to Darvin Adams on his first possession, and the long bombs from Trotter to Terrell Zackery and Caudle to Carr, respectively, were the offensive highlights of the "game." But with the two-hand touch rule on the quarterbacks and no serious effort made to play at Malzahn Ludicrous Speed, anybody trying to eke out any serious conclusions from the A-Day offense (or defense, for that matter) is kidding themselves.

So, that's A-Day. Kind of fun, kind of dull, kind of like football. For the next four-and-a-half months, it'll have to do.

* Auburn message board readers are by now thoroughly sick and tired of me telling this story, but for the rest of you, there was exactly one meaningful play in the entire history of A-Day "games," and it happened in 1994.

In the '94 spring game, redshirt freshman Dameyune Craig led the second-team White squad against the first-team Blues. Immediately after taking his very first snap in an Auburn uniform, Craig had the ball swatted out of his hands by a defensive lineman (I've forgotten which one). The ball bounced off the turf, Craig grabbed it out of the air, and proceeded to run for his life towards the far sideline. Just inches away from going out of bounds, he pivoted on one foot and rifled the ball 40 yards down the field to hit an open receiver on the other sideline. The pass traveled 60 yards in the air, and I about lost my mind jumping up and down and screaming.

Craig's next pass went for a touchdown, and a legend was born.

** The last closed scrimmage was actually held last week. So never mind.

Recommended Reading

College Football News' Pete Fiutak, on ESPN's fat new contract with the BCS:

Over the past few years when Fox had the big bowls, I’d get a call or five every late September from various higher-ups making sure that CFN (who provides content for FoxSports.com) didn’t go over the top when commenting on the BCS. To be fair and thankful, no one ever told me or anyone else at CFN what we could and couldn’t write or tried to limit what we could say on TV and radio appearances. That was never a problem (outside of not commenting on some of the announcer teams) since we’ve made it a point to not get dragged down in all the “BCS Sucks” rhetoric (again, since the ranting goes nowhere), and there was never any discussion of what we could and couldn’t write and say when it came to the BCS chase and how the rankings were shaping up. Fire on the process and the system … not really. Go nuts on what was happening within the system … fine. It’s extremely doubtful that the ESPNers will get the same leeway and freedom.

ESPN is unabashedly about making money through entertainment, and that’s fine. However, the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader is to hard-hitting sports commentary what Tiger Woods is to Buddhism. Each throws out the idea of doing something noble in an attempt to distract from what they’d really rather be doing.

ESPN sticks the controversial discussions and the most in-depth pieces on at times when most stations are running test patterns and informercials. Why ruffle feathers when Keyshawn Johnson can do yet another enabling “interview” with a guy who doesn’t know that 85 in Spanish is ochenta y cinco? That’s no problem for 95% of the programming hours, but it’s a huge issue when it’s time to put on the big boy pants and examine the controversial items like steroids and HGH (a topic that ESPN has been embarrassingly inept at covering and shameful in its lack of integrity when it comes to delving into the question marks surrounding stars like Barry Bonds, Usain Bolt, Lance Armstrong, Albert Pujols, Michael Phelps, and any other athlete whose performances appear to be way too good to be true), or Ben Roethlisberger’s alleged transgressions (at least the first time around). And it’s also a problem when the job of the analysts is to be a major influence peddler for a sport that relies on the judges.

No, college football’s national champion isn’t really decided on the field. Boise State, Cincinnati, TCU, and 114 other teams had no chance whatsoever of playing for the title in 2009 if Texas and the Florida/Alabama winner went undefeated. None. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Bearcats beat everyone on the slate by 40 points. As long as the SEC champion and Texas were unbeaten, they were going to play for the national championship because the pollsters weren’t going to budge the top teams out of the top spots as long as they kept winning.

Read the whole thing. Extra kudos to Pete for also noticing an issue related to the preseason polls that we talked about here last year: for most of the poll voters, if a game doesn't get mentioned on ESPN, in their minds it didn't actually happen.

Theme Music

While catching up on the ridiculously-prolific Jerry's WarBlogEagle posts, I came across this photo of Cameron Newton:


... and the first thing that went through my mind was this riff:



Reminds me a little of the first time I laid eyes on Daunte Culpepper, in a homecoming game Auburn played against Central Florida many moons ago. I'd heard Culpepper's name before, when he signed with but failed to qualify for enrolling at Florida State, but I'd never actually seen any clips of him playing. UCF hadn't been on TV much (if at all) up to that point, so when they broke the huddle for their first offensive play, I locked on to that one huge dude and said to myself, "Self, that is the biggest damned tight end I've ever seen in my life."

And then he lined up at quarterback...

We Can't Repel Mockery Of That Magnitude

Chaste Chaddd got wind of Ole Miss's drive for a new mascot, and decided the rest of the SEC should probably get their own Star Wars characters as well. One of my faves on Chaddd's list:

MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY (Ewoks)



I remember some purists were upset that George Lucas used a bunch of three-foot furballs to help defeat the Empire in Return of the Jedi. Their reasoning was those little guys, cute as they were, wouldn’t stand a chance against a legion of battle-hardened Stormtroopers. But folks didn’t think Mississippi State had much of a chance against Ole Miss this year either, and how’d that turn out? That being said, State fans hate it when you pet them and try to take them home.

Personally, as much as I approve of the drive to replace Colonel Rebel with Admiral Ackbar (hey, Mississippi does have a coastline--just a really small one), if we were going for verisimilitude in mascots here, Ole Miss football would be accurately represented by one of these:

Da Noorlinzaints!

Under most circumstances, I couldn't possibly care less about the NFL. When I read Stewart Mandel's by-the-numbers recitation of the college football media's conventional wisdom a couple of years back, the only sections that stuck in my mind were Mandel's sharp-tongued rejection of the No Fun League and all its works. In those particulars, I agreed with everything Mandel wrote, right down to the punctuation (which I would quote here, if I hadn't misplaced my copy).

I've never had anything like a favorite NFL team. Like most Southerners, having to choose between the Falcons and the Saints was, for most of either franchise's history, kind of like choosing between Cholera or Bubonic Plague. With the exception of one giddy night in Buckhead eleven years ago, I can honestly say that I've never given a for rip my now-hometown team, and even after having lived in Atlanta for nearly a decade, you still couldn't get me to cross the street to watch the Falcons.

The story isn't all that different regarding the New Orleans Saints. Other than being selected as the "designated Saints fan" among a crowd of Americans when we all went to see New Orleans play Oakland in a London exhibition game twenty years ago (I drew the short straw thanks to my living closer to NOLA than anybody else at that time--but the Saints did win), I can't say I've ever followed the Saints, either.

All that said, I loved this piece by my old bud Lein Shory about the Saints, New Orleans, and the late "Buddy D," more formally known as Bernard Diliberto:

It was at LSU, probably while making the drive to New Orleans or back and forth from Birmingham, that I discovered the Buddy "Buddy D" Dilberto radio show. The Saints were terrible at the time, which always makes for better sports radio, and Buddy was leading the charge for the hiring of Mike Ditka. Ditka didn't work out so well, which continued to make for fun listening. I still vividly remember one caller, in absolute agony after another Saints debacle:

"I don't know what to do, Buddy, I don't know what to do," the fan said.

"There's not much you can do," Buddy said, "except go into the bathroom, lift up the lid, and throw up."

My wife and I moved to Kentucky after finishing at LSU, and it wasn't until we moved to Chicago that I found sports radio just as amusing as Buddy D's show. Every once in a while I could somehow pick up AM 870 (I think that was the channel) to get another taste of Buddy, and I was saddened to hear of his death in 2005.

I mourned Buddy D as well. In the days before internet streaming, before satellite radio, and before college football was something other than a one-day affair for ESPN, there were WWL out of New Orleans and WLAC out of Nashville. After dark, those high-powered AM stations were a college football fan's best friend. You could hear LSU or Tennessee games live on Saturday nights, and on the weekdays there were the call-in shows bursting with news and opinion about SEC football.

Buddy D's show, while usually geared more towards the Saints than LSU and the SEC, was still as entertaining as all get out--much more entertaining to me than the Saints games themselves. Buddy's roux-thick NOLA accent cut through the static, and virtually every sentence was punctuated with Buddy's two favorite words--"Da Noorinzaints!"

Sure, for anybody else that would be four words, but from Buddy, and from all the other lunatics down there in the curve of I-10, they were and ever shall be DA NOORLINZAINTS! The first thing I thought when I heard the Saints had won the last playoff game a couple of weeks ago was, "I wish I could hear Buddy D tomorrow."

So for you, Buddy, and for all the long-suffering fans of DA NOORLINZAINTS, my hat is off, and if I were ever to have a rooting interest in a Super Bore--uh, I mean, Bowl, this'll be the time.

Go Saints.