What type of head football coach are you? Find out by taking the 2010 quiz! Just about everything Michael Elkon writes on the SEC at Braves and Birds is worth a read, but this thoughtful examination on “CEO” head coaches vs. more hands-on types like Saban and Meyer rates as just about essential. Elkon wonders: if Les Miles is only as good as his coordinators, and that sometimes he can hire exactly who he wants and sometimes he can’t, then isn’t any success he might have more luck than acumen? Can you really call him “good” or “bad” when so much of his success or failure is dependent on forces beyond his control? Wouldn’t it be better to have a coach like Saban or Meyer who all but guarantees you at least one well-coached, elite unit?

Those are good questions, and the possible answers have some interesting implications for Auburn fans, starting with the ongoing appraisals of Tommy Tuberville’s tenure. Tubby was widely regarded as a Miles-type CEO (and Elkon seems to echo this viewpoint) whose success rested on whoever he happened to have hired as his offensive coordinator, but I think this does a disservice to Tubby’s incredible defensive record. When you consider that it didn’t matter who the DC was–Chizik, Muschamp, Rhoads, whoever wasn’t David Gibbs–the defense was going to know its business. You ask me, Tubby was quietly more Saban or Meyer than Miles in his affect on his team’s on-field performance. You can also argue that as damaging as the Tony Franklin hire proved to be, what ultimately determined the fate of Tubby’s offensive coordinators wasn’t how skilled they were, but what kind of talent they had to work with. When Tubby had Leard/Rudi/Daniels/Nowland or Campbell/Cadillac/Ronnie/McNeill, his offense worked, even with Noel Freaking Mazzone in charge. When he didn’t have those kinds of players, the offense didn’t work, even with Al Borges–who I think we all agree is no dummy–at the helm.

That brings us to Gene Chizik. In theory, Chizik should be able to replicate Tubby at his absolute best: top-notch offensive recruiting combined with a closely-supervised and brilliantly-coached defense, with an offensive coordinator who, at the very least, knew enough not to screw up the collection of talent he’d been handed.

This is why Auburn fans, yours truly included, are so giddy about the long-term potential of the Chizik regime. If Gus Malzahn could do what he did in 2009 with that level of talent, what happens when he (or some equally-creative replacement in the hopefully-distant future) gets his hands on the mid-Aughts-caliber players the current Auburn recruiting machine appears to be bringing in again? What happens when that offense gets to play opposite the kind of defense that Chizik helped produce under Tubby and has promised to produce again? In theory, 2004/2005 redux happens.

But this is why this year’s defensive performance is critical to our evaluation of Chizik going forward. For all of Chizik’s defensive success as a coordinator, we have yet to see that translate into anything similar as a head coach. Iowa St. declined in total defense both years Chizik presided there. So did Auburn last year. There’s extenuating circumstances in all three seasons, of course: a hopeless combination of youth and non-talent in Ames, the almost-as-hopeless combination of Dr. Gustav’s hyperdrive offense opposite the thinnest Auburn defense any of us can remember. Even the evidence of three straight statistical steps backward under Chizik’s watch isn’t damning just yet.

But a fourth straight–or even a minor step forward that doesn’t take full advantage of what ought to be a lethal offense–might be. At some point, and I would guess a shaky defensive outing this year would be that point, we’d just have to accept that Chizik isn’t going to have the sort of single-handed schematic impact we’ve seen from the likes of Tubby or Meyer or the coachbot or, to expand our net of examples a bit wider, a Paul Johnson or Pete Carroll. He’d be Auburn’s version of Les Miles.

Before you start firing off that angry comment, know that 1. that’s not what I’m expecting from his defense this season and 2. that wouldn’t be the end of the world, not by a long shot. Miles has a national championship under his belt that didn’t happen by accident, you know. When his defense collapsed in 2008, he made the necessary coordinating hire and saw them rebound to just about where they needed to be in 2009. The conventional wisdom says that Miles has yet to accomplishing anything without “Saban’s players,” but he’s recruited just about as well as Saban did on the bayou. What appears to be holding him back is what we might call “Tubby’s Disease”: a drastic lack of development from offensive recruits thanks to sub-par position coaching and the absence of any overriding offensive philosophy to unify the coordinator’s and position coaches’ efforts. As long as the likes of Taylor, Luper, and Grimes stick around, position coaching’s not going to be a problem for Chizik, and with the hire of Malzahn he’s also already shown a willingness to find a strong, unique vision to hold it all together. Just because he might be the same kind of coach as Miles doesn’t mean he’s doomed to make the same mistakes–and of course, given his production to-date on the recruiting trails, who’s to say he won’t enjoy the same successes?

However, it would mean Chizik would be vulnerable to the same weaknesses that have plagued Miles and even one-sided coaches like Tubby and Richt*: in the event he had to replace one or both coordinators, he’d be left at the mercy of what the market could offer him. One poor hire would hurt. A poor hire combined with a downturn in recruiting, even on one side of the ball, and you wind up at 5-7 and losing to Alabama 36-0. And unlike Tubby, Chizik might have to worry about both sides of the ball betraying him, as they have for Miles (albeit in different seasons … if you’d combined the ’08 defense with the ’09 offense, he’d already be out of a job). If Chizik’s 2010 defense doesn’t improve by a substantial amount, if it doesn’t bear the kind of personal fingerprints we’d want to see out of our head coach, Auburn fans should buckle up; there should be some big highs ahead of us, thanks to Chizik’s current staffing decisions and his recruiting, but there could also be some big lows.

Again, I’m not trying to be alarmist; what I expect is that the 2010 Tiger defense is going to finally show what Chizik and his staff can do with a modicum of depth, talent, and more than one season in which to work. You don’t have to look any further than last year’s Iron Bowl for proof that between Chizik and Roof, the old tactical chops are still very much intact. But if for whatever reason it doesn’t happen, for all his other positive traits (and there are tons), it’ll be time to wonder if Chizik’s presence alone will ever be reason to think it will.

*If Saban ever had to face SEC defenses without either Jimbo Fisher or a lineup of mega-studs, he might have the same kind of troubles Tubby had on offense or Richt’s had on defense. Credit to him, though**, Saban has made sure both that he’s kept his preferred coordinators in his employ and that they’ve always had plenty of talent at their disposal***.

**Barf.

***It’s worth noting that he can thank Mike Shula for a lot of that recent talent, though. John Parker Wilson, Andre Smith, Greg McElroy, Mike Johnson … all Shula recruits, and that’s just the offense. I’ll offer up multiple toes if the Tide fail to win the West the next couple of years, so we can say that Saban can’t win without Shula’s players. Please please please please please.

Oh, SEC Media Days. I love you for being the last oasis before we finally leave the desert of the offseason and start real, genuine, actual football news again. I love you for letting all of God’s head coaches take the podium for their moment in the sun, even the ones from Vandy and Kentucky, because sometimes they wind up being Robbie Caldwell. I love that you’ve somehow conned the rest of the college football world into thinking this particular media event is some kind of supernova to white out all the other little lampposts of other leagues’ media days.

But I don’t love you for your information, your scoops, for your relationship to the actual football your arrival heralds. The ratio of signal-to-noise has never been very high, but the last few years there seems to be even more hot air than usual: the Fulmer subpoena nonsense, the Tebow dramatics, now Agentpalooza. What do all of these things have in common? They have nothing to do with anything that happens between the two sidelines. There was really only one question I wanted answered at Media Days–”Mr. Savage, exactly how healthy are you? We know you’ll play, but after all your injury problems, are you fully, totally one hundred percent?”–and instead we found out he’s taking bowling. (We also found out he has a killer sense of fashion, which is more important, but still wasn’t what I was looking for.)  Particularly after 2009–a season when the league’s biggest talking points were officiating blunders and Lane Kiffin’s megalomania–I worry the SEC is getting so big as a media entity it’s getting swallowed alive by sportz, and nowhere is sportz more prevalent in the SEC calendar than at Media Day. I’m glad it’s behind us, for reasons that go even deeper than how close it means football is ahead of us.

But enough griping. We Auburn fans did learn a few things. A full transcript of Chizik’s remarks and a handful of player quotes are at the AUfficial site, and if you want a shorter summation, Andy Bitter’s got you covered. Details of Chizik’s pre-conference briefing with the Auburn beat hacks, Jay Tate’s got those.  Bullets of useful information:

– Camp breaks August 4. 11 days! We can make it 11 days, right?

– Gene Chizik once again left the neutrals hoping for a little more entertainment, but of course that’s nothing new to us day-in, day-out Chizik watchers. In fact, by this point, we’d be a little disappointed if he opened up to the media hordes at an event like this, right? Chizik has shown us since his arrival that he’ll drop the mask for his players and for the fans, but not for third parties … and though I know I’ve complained about it myself from time to time, it is who he is, and knowing  that and recognizing him for it makes him ours. Here’s to hoping he never changes.

– Chizik made an excellent point that most of his team has never gone through a season with the same two coordinators in place. In fact, Auburn hasn’t had a holdover in either position since Borges and Muschamp in 2007. Staggering, really.

– The freshmen will play, but that’s hardly a surprise. More intriguing is Bynes’ roll-call of the impressive true frosh through the summer: Owens, Holland, Mincy, Whitaker, Carter. Note that none of those guys were guys who were in for spring. Maybe Bynes was restricting himself to players who had just arrived? In any case, it’s maybe not surprising that those were five of Auburn’s most decorated defensive recruits.

– “Eight ain’t it”? This year, sirs, no, no I’m afraid it is not.

– Anyone else get the impression that even Chizik was surprised that so many players–31/32, “a rarity”–qualified? Notice he didn’t say he expected similar results in the future.

– Really interesting stuff from Bynes on Etheridge:

“If he sees something I don’t see, he’ll come up to me and say, ‘Josh, do this, this and this on this play’ or ‘watch that guard,’” Bynes said. “Zac is like another linebacker out there on the field helping me out with a lot of things. He’s very intelligent, he does a great job of watching film, breaking down film. Me and him talk a lot on the field and having him come back will be better for defensive backs and linebackers.”

Having Etheridge back is about a lot more, I’d guess, than just keeping Drew Cole on the sidelines.

– Man, how awesome was Chizik and the players’ response to Agentpalooza? Even if I’m all for finding some sort of punitive measures (other than “none whatsoever”) for agents who tamper with college athletes, that’s not what I want my coach and players to say. I want them to say “It’s on us.” And they did. Because it is. (Can I also mention that it’s a little strange for Saban–who seems to preach personal responsibility above all else when it comes to football execution–wants to pass the buck to the agents on this one? He’s right that the agents involved are scum, but dude, it’s on you and your players, too.)

Also, kudos to Ziemba for just coming right out and saying “Yeah, those guys, I’ve seen ‘em.” (The discussion of his exploration of injury-insurance was a pretty fun read, too.) His forthrightness has always been appreciated, and it still is.

– I think we’ve all been hoping Auburn would enter the season well under the SEC radar, but, eh, getting picked ahead of LSU and with the third-most first-place votes (!) indicates that might not happen. At least Arkansas’s still the consensus second-best team in the West, amirite? (As an aside, I have to give some kudos to the SEC writers for not drinking the Kool-Aid on LSU. I’m not expecting the national media–they went 9-3! They’re LSU–to follow suit. Also, dude, Tennessee below Kentucky? The Vols are going to be truly terrible, but Kentucky doesn’t look like they’re going to set the world on fire, either.)

– The media got things right on Mario Fannin (2nd-team RB), Wes Byrum (2nd-team PK, finally), and even threw Zac Etheridge a 2nd-team bone. (Ziemba and Bynes were both first team, as they should be.) But you know there’s going to be gripes and here they are: no Pugh? No Stevens? (Another aside: LSU had all of two players mentioned, first or second team. That’s a third as many as Auburn, half as many as Kentucky. Wasn’t Miles supposed to be a great recruiter?)

– I do worry that by mentioning the consecutive starts record, Chizik just jinxed Ziemba in to a high-ankle sprain against Chattanooga or something.

– As far as the rest of the SEC goes, it was fun seeing Mullen call the coachbot out on this “you can’t make the NFL in a spread” hogwash. And of course, it seems like it’ll be cool having Caldwell around. That’s about it.

Photo by Van Emst.

Over/under.

So Vegas has released a big set (though not a complete one) for their season total win bets. You can find the easiest set to read here courtesy of Tomahawk Nation, another here. Blutarsky conveniently compiles just the SEC numbers here.

And yeah, even if you’ve never gambled so much as your Chips Ahoy at the school lunch table on the outcome of a college football game, you should take a look, since the win totals provide a rough view of how well Vegas expects each team to perform. The short version on the SEC: Alabama and Florida are still the cream of the conference; Arkansas, Auburn, and Georgia are all battling on the second tier; and LSU heads up the third group, with South Carolina and Tennessee (!?!?) a bit behind Miles’ bunch.

This would be news to the Bayou Bengal faithful, no doubt, and maybe to Dawg fans and Hog fans that aren’t expecting to have to rub shoulders with Auburn this season. (Or perhaps those naturally pessimistic Dawg fans who might think 7-win seasons are in danger of becoming the norm.) But remember that Vegas is Vegas for a reason–these are folks whose livelihood depends on getting these things right.

But more important than the expectations-setting is the fun of guessing how you’d bet your Monopoly money in Rich Uncle Pennybags’ Monopoly Vegas. So I thought I’d take a second annual whirl at the available lines for the eight SEC teams listed. Last year’s effort produced five winners to just one loser (damn you, 2009 Ole Miss bandwagon) and two pushes. Not bad, huh? Too bad regression to the mean dictates this year’s picks will suck like the cold, black vacuum of outer space, but here they are, anyway, ranked from those I’m most confident in to least confident in:

1. Tennessee, under 7 wins. The disclaimer on the TomahawkNation board says that this number could drop if the fallout from the Bar Knoxville fight claims too many players, and you’d almost have to expect it to, since I can’t imagine any bettor, anywhere, will look at this schedule–with every SEC “toss-up” game on the road and near-sure losses against Florida, ‘Bama, and Oregon all at home–and think there’s eight wins there. The Vols might get to 7 and the push if they sweep the six games they’re likely to be favored in (UT-Martin, UAB, and the final four) and find an upset somewhere, but with a new quarterback behind a totally green line, a gutted defense, and the most tumultuous offseason in college football, I think it’s more likely they’re the ones getting upset.

2. Auburn, over 8.5 wins (+110). WOOOOOOOO WAR DAMN EAGLE HEY and all that. A more thorough breakdown of the schedule and final prediction for Auburn’s record will have to wait until the season preview in August, but for now, suffice it to say our boys are perfectly capable of winning their first three road games (Mississippi St., Kentucky, Ole Miss) and that I don’t see them going worse than 6-2 at home with three bodybag games already in the win column.

3. LSU, under 8 wins. To lose this bet, LSU would have to hit nine wins, and as with Tennessee and eight, when two of your home games are against Alabama and North Carolina in Atlanta, where are those wins going to come from? Even if the Purple Tigers manage to grab one of the roadies at Arkansas, Auburn, and Florida (questionable), they’d still either have to beat ‘Bama or sweep the opening UNC-Miss. St.-West Virginia gauntlet … neithero f which I see happening. The odds tilt overwhelmingly in favor of 7 wins over 9. (By the by, the book with the 7.5 number lists the under at +140, i.e. bet 100 to win 140. That’s a nice little bonus that would, hypothetically, make that bet just about as appetizing, if a lot riskier.)

4. Georgia, over 8.5 wins. Dawgs will be favorites in a minimum of seven games–the two nonconference cupcakes, the three teams in the bottom half of the SEC East, the roadies at Colorado and Mississippi St.–and even if they drop one of those, there could be three wins between their dates against Carolina (who they mostly own), Arkansas (at home), Florida, Auburn, and (overrated) Tech. As long as Murray stays upright and avoids the back-breaking picks, there’s too much talent and that experience on that offense not for it to rank amongst the SEC’s best, and Grantham has to be an upgrade on Martinez. Plus, the turnover thing. The Dawgs should find nine wins this year.

5. Alabama, over 10 wins (+120). Blerrrggghhh. Do I really like the Tide to win 11 games, again? Not necessarily. But the schedule‘s too friendly to expect them to drop three. Unless Carolina or LSU take a much larger step forward than I expect them to, Arkansas’s the only truly dangerous road game, and I can’t see them losing more than once at home. Even if they split the Florida/Auburn home dates and slip up once on the road, where’s the third loss? Maybe if Dareus winds up suspended and the bottom totally falls out of the defense, but if 10 wins is what’s most likely, 11 is more likely than 9.

6. South Carolina, over 7 wins (even). It’s a tough call here, because wins over Carolina would be a big part of both Auburn and Georgia making their overs; can those two and the ‘Cocks all clear the hurdle? I think so, because there’s six really good chances on this schedule for Carolina to grab W’s: Southern Miss, Furman, and Troy in the nonconference, Kentucky, Vandy, and Tennessee in the SEC. (Normally you might not expect the ‘Cocks to sweep the back-to-back road games in Lexington and Nashville, but … I think they can this year.) From that point it’s six tough games, but they only need one win to push (a split between Arkansas and Georgia?) and just two for the win (a second somewhere on the road … Clemson?). As with Alabama, 7-5 seems the most likely outcome, but this should be a much-improved team over last year’s; 8-4 seems much more possible than a fall all the way to 6-6.

7. Florida, under 10 wins (even). If that game against Alabama was in Gainesville, I’d probably flip the predictions for both the Gators and Tide. But it’s not, so I’m going with the under for Florida. Even for the mighty Gators, there’s only a handful of sure things this year–the two paycheck games, Vandy/Kentucky. It’s not likely they lose to Tennessee, LSU, Mississippi St., or Carolina … but could I see a slip-up in there? Yep. Against one of the Gator offense took a step back without Mullen; I don’t expect them to get it back with so many question marks at receiver and running back, and now the D is poised to regress as well with the loss of Charlie Strong. It won’t surprise me in the least to see them get to 10 wins, but this doesn’t look like an 11-win squad to me at all. I don’t think.

8. Arkansas, under 8.5 wins (-130). Look, I’ve already got Georgia, Auburn, and Carolina going over; someone in the middle of the pack has to go under, right? I’ll take the Hogs, who have five rough games away from home: at Georgia, at Auburn, at Carolina, at Mississippi St., and the neutral game at Texas A&M. That already looks like three losses to me, meaning the Hogs would have to sweep their home slate to reach nine. They’re capable of that, certainly–LSU and the Tide are the only threats, the latter obviously the big one–and there’s a reason I’ve ranked this bet No. 8 on the list. But I don’t trust that defense, I don’t trust Mallett to make the easy throws in tight games, and I think when all is said and done there’s four losses here somewhere.

Haven't forgotten, have you?

There’s still 51 days to go until Auburn plays Arkansas St., maybe only 50 if my math’s off. So it’s probably smart to keep the unbridled optimism and pre-emptive 2010 hero worship on a slow burn. There’s still a ton of time to preview the team, downplay the weaknesses and celebrate the strengths, and as a blogger, writing “WE GONNA ROCK” posts now probably just means repeating one’s self later.

In fact, this post is a de facto repeat of something I’ve already written a couple of times, namely, that Ben Tate–great at he was–isn’t going to be missed. But dammit, yesterday I’m writing about Michael Dyer and watching him run for Little Rock Christian, just a couple of days after I’d watched the Auburner’s Alabama and West Virginia highlight packages and reminding myself of how hard Mario Fannin ran when he had the ball last season, right around when I was thinking about Onterio McCalebb’s road to Auburn and remembering how dynamic he was in the early part of last season … and it hits me that this running back unit is going to be good. Damn good. Not just “replace Ben Tate” good, but “one of the best units in the country” good.

A few days ago, Jay Coulter wrote of Fannin:

Look for Onterio McCallebb and freshman Michael Dyer to take some of the load off Fannin. If he stays healthy, Auburn could have a backfield that rivals that one in Tuscaloosa.

No doubt that statement would draw chortles and snickers from anyone and everyone not wearing orange-and-blue glasses. But you know what? He’s right. Last year the Tide’s top three backs ran for 2,708 yards, the top three Tiger backs for 2,212. 500 yards difference isn’t anything to sneeze at, but I’ll be surprised if Ingram, Richardson, and RB-to-be-named-later (probably Eddie Lacy) can surpass that number, or even match it; a weaker defense means more deficits, which means more passing, and there’s been noises that Jim McElwain’s going to rely more heavily on McElroy and Jones anyway. Meanwhile, Auburn’s improved D and loaded O means more playing from ahead, which means more running, and even if the D struggles again, having the kind of offensive line Auburn has at the command of the kind of offensive coordinator Auburn has (in his second season!) should yield a big increase anyway.

The point: even I’m not sure I’ll argue Fannin, McCalebb, and Dyer can match Ingram’s and Richardson’s raw talent. (Not today, at least. Maybe once we see Dyer in action.) But if they stay healthy, yeah, their production is going to easily “rival” the Tide backfield’s. They might even surpass it. That’s how good they are.

Not that anyone outside of the Plains sees it. Most of the talk regarding the Auburn backfield has focused on the negative of losing Tate over the positives of the players replacing him. Phil Steele, in a strange fit of short-sightedness, ranked Auburn’s running backs the 32nd-best in the country.

That’s nonsense. Here’s why:

They just don’t know how good Mario Fannin is, do they? They think that because he’s never carried the load before, he’s just a guy, just a running back. We know better, don’t we, Auburn fans?

We know he’s the guy who would have put that 2007 offense on his shoulders and never looked back if he’d just been able to hold on to the damn ball. He’s the guy who Tony Franklin put into cold storage and who came out just long enough to damn near win that 2008 Georgia game by himself. He’s the guy who touched the ball 76 times in 2009 and averaged a gain of 9.2 yards every time he did, 8.4 yards every time he carried it. He’s the guy who we’ve known ever since that 2007 South Florida game would just start crushing people if his health and hands and coaches would give him the opportunity.

He’s going to get it. He’s going to blow minds.

It became easy to forget how good Onterio McCalebb was. Here’s how four of the first five weeks of his Auburn career went:

vs. Louisiana Tech: 22 carries, 148 yards (6.7), 1 TD

vs. Mississippi State: 16 carries, 114 yards (7.1), 1 TD, long of 48

vs. Ball State: 8 carries, 83 yards (10.4), long of 62

vs. Tennessee: 13 carries, 51 yards; 3 receptions, 62 yards (7.1 per touch); 2 kickoff returns, 91 yards; 204 all-purpose yards

He just wasn’t the same after that, and neither, really, was the Auburn offense. He still finished the year averaging 5.4 yards per-carry, nearly 10 yards a reception.

Now he is healthy, and thanks to the weight added in spring, more likely to stay that way. The fear is that the new bulk may slow him down some. Maybe at first, but by the time the season rolls around, he’ll have been carrying it for months. He’s going to be the same player he was when he shredded Tech, flew past State, terrorized Tennessee. He’s going to be that kind of weapon. The fear should belong to Auburn’s opponents.

Michael Dyer is going to hit the ground running. Dyer is a consensus five-star running back recruit. Five stars at Rivals, five at Scout, five at ESPN. Rivals and ESPN are stingy enough with that kind of praise that that’s a pretty rare thing; in the three years ESPN’s been putting together their rankings, only seven backs have qualified as “consensus” five-stars.

Unfortunately, there’s some pretty big busts amongst those players. Darrell Scott went nowhere at Colorado. Marc Tyler can’t get off of USC’s bench. Bryce Brown wasn’t useless in his freshman season at Tennessee, but he hardly set the world on fire and now who the hell knows what’s happening to him.

But here’s the thing: a lot of the greatest running backs in college football over the past several years have also started out as a consensus five-star. Noel Devine. C.J. Spiller. Beanie Wells. Going back to 2004, Adrian Peterson. I guess the jury’s still sort of out on Trent Richardson, but when an awful lot of people (including your humble Auburn blogger) think you’re secretly better than the Heisman winner on your own team, that’s a pretty good start.

That’s the sort of company Dyer is keeping. That’s the kind of potential we’re talking about. And if Dyer lives up to it, we’ll know from Week 1. Those kinds of players didn’t wait around, and running back is the easiest position on the field to make the leap from high school to the college game.

No, we don’t know Dyer will be a superstar rather than a superbust. We don’t know he’s going to leave great swaths of destruction in his wake in his time on the Plains. But that’s the way the odds are tilted, and Auburn’s track record with backs highly-regarded by the gurus–Cadillac, Tate, even Stephen Davis back in the primordial ooze of recruiting coverage–tilts them even more. The guess here is that Dyer will one day be recognized as one of theb est backs in the SEC, and the country.

And Auburn will add him to a backfield that already includes Fannin and McCalebb. That will run behind Ziemba, Pugh, Isom, and Berry. That will face a defense worried about Newton and Adams and Zachery and Eric Smith (who could probably go for 100-plus a game his own damn self if he had to) and a host of others.

If they stay healthy, they are going to make Mr. Steele’s “No. 32″ ranking look as foolish as anything he’s ever written. They are going to incinerate people. They are going to be great. More than that–they are going to be Auburn great.

Oh yeah he does.

Unless you’ve got a real talent for it, I don’t think it’s good form, generally, for a blogger to quote, respond to, and/or mock random message board posters or thread-commenters out there on the Interwebs. There is low-hanging fruit, and then there is, say, the al.com comment threads, where the fruit positively hurls itself at you, with terrifying ferocity, as you meekly scroll by. These are not the sorts of fruit a self-respecting blogger ought to be picking.

But today I’m going to quote this Tidefans.com post* I picked up off the Twitters a while back, because it’s such a perfect example of a much, much larger and persistent trend amongst the Tide faithful:

Little Sister can’t keep Big Brother out of anything, not they’re Interviews, Practices, Speeches, etc. Can you say obsessive? I can’t recall Coach Saban ever really comparing what we do to something other schools are doing. It’s all about OUR program with Coach.

Ah yes, the age-old “Auburn is obsessed with Alabama; Alabama doesn’t care about Auburn” fallacy. A classic, one of the truly time-tested and FDA-approved methods of Tide elitism, maybe just one rung on the ladder beneath arguing that learning to save animals’ lives is a lesser calling than corporate lawyerdom. It’s a fallacy that’s taken all sorts of specific forms over the years, with the “Coach Saban doesn’t care about Auburn’s recruiting strategies/Malzahn’s high school offense/anything Auburn-related at all” variety a relatively new one.

What’s hysterical about this line of thinking is that the Tide’s resident coachbot was talking about Auburn in his very first press conference:

The second thing was, work every day to dominate your opponent. You know, we have an opponent in this state that we work every day, 365 days a year, to dominate. That’s our goal.

I’m sure he was talking about Troy. Exhibit B:

Don’t you know how much I hate these [bleeping] guys?

The defense could just rest its case here, but at the start of this month we got a piece of evidence even bigger, really, than either of the above quotes: Alabama re-scheduling its game against Georgia State to Thursday. Actions, words, the comparative loudness thereof, etc.

“But wait,” the Tide fans says. “Coach Saban’s not that concerned with Auburn. He just doesn’t want to go into any more games where the opponent has a bye week and we don’t, especially when the game’s on a Friday.” This is almost a valid point, except that Georgia St. is already a bye no matter what night it’s played on. They make last year’s date with Chattanooga** look like the Tide’s date with Texas. The Panthers are the single worst opponent Alabama could have possibly scheduled.

It’s worth repeating that: Georgia State is the single worst opponent out of all possible opponents Alabama could have scheduled. FBS teams can’t schedule D-II teams (or at least, I have yet to see them try), so the easiest possible opponent is an FCS team that’s in its first year, starting from scratch, still without its full compliment of scholarship players. We’ll see, but it’s my guess the majority of D-II squads could handle GSU this year. You tell me: would no one care if Alabama scheduled West Alabama or Tuskegee? Would no one laugh at them if they moved their game against West Alabama because they thought it would hinder their efforts the following week against Auburn?

I can accept the Tide’s argument that a game against even a run-of-the-mill FCS opponent isn’t quite the same as a bye, since there’s a certain amount of energy expended–even if it ain’t much–on going through the gameday motions, giving yourself that tiny bit of emotional spark, letting the starters get hit a time or two just to make the effort of getting to the stadium worth their while. But that doesn’t hold true for 2010 Georgia St. Alabama could literally rest their entire two-deep, play with nothing but third-stringers and walk-ons, and they’d win by 30.

So why don’t they? Well, they might anyway. But why not do it on Saturday? Because, just like Auburn, they don’t want to take any chances with the Iron Bowl. They want every advantage they can possibly get. They want to give themselves the very best chance of winning available, short of waiting ’til Week 11 to burn their bye. They picked “Georgia St. on a Thursday night” instead–the very closest match-up to “bye” out of all possible match-ups.

And yet some fans would have you believe that the coach who’s helped engineer that decision and has repeatedly made it clear how badly he wants to win against the opponent that motivated that decision harbors no particular grudge or extra desire against that opponent. Right. Sure.

BONUS Tide scheduling commentary! As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t begrudge Tide fans their complaints about so many teams having a bye the week before facing their team. I wouldn’t like it if Auburn was in the same boat. But I do begrudge them the occasional whinge I’ve seen about how no one would alter their schedule to accommodate them, seeing as how the chances Alabama would have changed their schedule this late in the day for anyone else are perfectly equivalent to Georgia St.’s chances of winning in Bryant-Denny. Take it up with the league, fellas.

Besides, it’s not like this year’s Tide are the first team to have to run through that kind of gauntlet. Will Collier wrote me an e-mail a while back:

[B]ack in 1983, Auburn played what’s generally considered the most difficult schedule in SEC history (IMO certainly the most difficult season anybody’s ever successfully navigated). The first 10 games, 7 of which featured eventual bowl teams [back when not every Tom, Dick, and Middle Tennessee State were invited to bowl games--ed.], were played without a break, and about 7 in a row of those first 10 teams had open dates before they played AU (I need to check the highlight film to confirm that number; Dye mentioned it in his post-game comments after the Georgia game).

I figured I’d double check Will’s memory. Here’s a breakdown of Auburn’s 1983 schedule:

Week 1: W 24-3 vs. Southern Miss. Finished 7-4.
Week 2: L 7-20 vs. No. 3 Texas, off bye week. Finished regular season 11-0, SWC champs, ranked No. 2, played Cotton Bowl, final ranking No. 5.
Week 3: W 37-14 at Tennessee, off bye week. Finished 8-3, t-3rd SEC (4-2), Citrus Bowl champs.
Week 4: W 27-24 vs. No. 17 Florida St., off bye week. Finished 6-5, Peach Bowl champions.
Week 5: W 49-21 at Kentucky, off bye week. Finished 6-4-1, played All-American Bowl.
Week 6: W 31-13 at Georgia Tech. Finished 3-8.
Week 7: W 28-13 vs. Mississippi St. Finished 3-8
Week 8: W 28-21 vs. No. 5 Florida. Finished 8-2-1, t-3rd SEC (4-2), No. 11, Gator Bowl champions, final ranking No. 6.
Week 9: W 35-23 vs. No. 7 Maryland. Finished 8-3, ACC champions, No. 17, played Citrus Bowl.
Week 10: W 13-7 at No. 4 Georgia. Finished 9-1-1, 2nd SEC (5-1), No. 7, Cotton Bowl champs, final ranking No. 4.
Double-bye
Week 11: W 23-20 vs. No. 19 Alabama (at Legion Field). Finished 7-4, t-3rd SEC (4-2), Sun Bowl champs, final ranking No. 15.
Sugar Bowl: W 9-7 vs. No. 8 Michigan. Finished 9-2, 2nd Big Ten (8-1)***, final ranking No. 8.

So, if you’re keeping track, Will’s memory was a touch faulty: there were only four bye-taking opponents in a row. Of course, all four of which went on to bowls, two of which were ranked, two of which were on the road, two of which finished with nine of more wins in a total 12-game schedule. As a whole over those first 10 bye-less weeks, Auburn did indeed face 7 bowl teams, as well as 5 ranked teams, half of the AP’s final top 6, two league champions and the SEC runner-up, and eight winning teams. Add in Michigan and Alabama, and the numbers rise to 9 bowl teams, 7 ranked teams, half of the AP’s final top 8 (or 4 of 7 Auburn could have played, being one of those teams themselves), two league champions and two runners-up, and 10 winning teams in 12 games.

And the defending national champions are moving Georgia State to Thursday.

*I strongly discourage Auburn fans, or really any sentient, self-aware beings, from bothering to read the thread.

**If Auburn gained the tiniest shred of a “wear-and-tear” advantage out of their bye vs. the Tide’s FCS scrimmage, it’s worth reminding the Tide faithful that they didn’t in terms of the supposedly-precious “preparation” that led to Auburn’s 14-0 lead and defensive success. Unless you think, of course, that Saban and his staff spent the week ahead of the UTC game diligently breaking down film and scout-teaming the Mocs. That makes a lot of sense.

***Just find it interesting that the Big Ten was playing three more conference games than the SEC at the time. And that since then they’ve reduced their conference games by one while the SEC has increased theirs by two.

This week’s Offseason Topic Du Jour around the Auburn-Alabama beat: Stadiums.

More specifically, the size of those stadiums. Even more specifically, the size of one stadium, viz. Tuscaloosa’s Bryant-Denny, as compared to the size of the second, viz. Auburn’s Jordan-Hare. And most specifically of all, that the size of the first has now come to outpace the size of the second in terms of total capacity by around 14,000 seats.

The odds of a fact like that going un-commented upon by the state’s columnists were always, what, 1 in 10-to-the-47th power or so? The only question was “Who?” and the answer ended up being Scarbinsky:

Can Auburn keep up without building up its own house?

The gap between Bryant-Denny and Jordan-Hare hasn’t been this large, in Alabama’s favor, since 1969. The next year, Auburn expanded its stadium to make it bigger than Alabama’s.

Both schools expanded more than once in the interim, but from 1970 until 2006, Auburn owned the largest on-campus football stadium in the state.

Clearly, those days are over.

Auburn has made some attractive cosmetic changes to Jordan-Hare in recent years, but the stadium hasn’t undergone a full-blown expansion since the upper deck and luxury suites were added to the east side for the 1987 season.

That’s 23 years and four head coaches ago.

In the last five years alone, Alabama has decked both end zones, adding close to 20,000 more seats. That’s close to 20,000 more voices raining down on opponents and, more importantly, lifting up the home team.

You don’t need the biggest and nicest house on the block to win a championship. If you did, the Duke basketball program wouldn’t have acquired yet another banner to hang in the rafters of the quaint fixer-upper known as Cameron Indoor Stadium. [That's an interesting reference. Where have we seen K-Scar and Cameron mentioned at the same time? Oh, right, here. Hmmm.--ed.]

But a bigger and nicer stadium doesn’t hurt, especially on official recruiting weekends and unofficial visits, and nobody has done more in recent years to make its stadium bigger and nicer than Alabama.

This may be true. But there’s obviously a ton more to recruiting than just being able to show off the biggest stadium possible, or it’s a good bet Gene Chizik would have asked for that $16 million to go towards a J-Hare expansion rather than the new indoor practice facility.

What’s also true is that, frankly, there’s just no need to expand Jordan-Hare at the moment. Sadly, it’s hardly a state secret that Auburn’s had trouble of late selling out Jordan-Hare’s current capacity, much less an expanded capacity. The AUfficial site has been hocking tickets to certain games right up until kickoff, more-or-less, the last couple of seasons. If there really is an arms race for the state’s largest college football stadium, it’s one Auburn’s best off simply conceding. It’s a brutal admission to have to make. But adding 10,000 seats for them to just sit empty four, five, six times out of seven or eight home games is just throwing good money after bad. We can talk again in a few years if/when Chizik and Co. have the program back in the SEC title mix, but for now … no.

So what does Auburn do to keep up the crimson Joneses? Scarbinsky’s right about one thing–we have to come up with something, if for no other reason than pure pride. We are not second-class football citizens in this state, and the stadia shouldn’t reflect that. Jay Coulter has an excellent start:

Instead of focusing on seat count, Auburn officials need to focus on skyboxes, aesthetics and amenities. Auburn currently has 70 luxury suites. For a stadium this size, it’s on the low side of adequate.

While there’s no wait for season tickets, you can expect to sit out in the elements for nearly a decade before working your way off the skybox waiting list. The University can make significantly more money adding luxury suites in each end-zone rather than focusing on seats. Jacobs has made this point many times in the past.

Most impressive about Alabama’s recent renovation is not the number of seats (101,000), but the added amenities that put the facility on par with the NFL and MLB. In addition to adding nearly 8,500 more bleacher seats, Bryant-Denny is adding eight stories to its south endzone that will include a marketplace and two floors that will house restaurants for scholarship donors. At a cost of $65 million, school officials expect to recoup their investment quickly.

In a word: Word. Auburn may not be able to have the state’s biggest stadium … but there’s no reason Jordan-Hare can’t be the nicest stadium, the most charismatic, the most welcoming. Screw it: there’s no reason it can’t be the best college football stadium in Alabama.

It’s going to take more luxury boxes, for a start. But it’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take the kind of innovation, vision, and commitment that’s already given us the Auburn Arena. Maybe my expectations are too high for that facility, but I think that’s the aim here: to have a football stadium whose concourses, amenities, and overall feel are every bit as unique and uniquely Auburn as the Auburn Arena’s. That building is going to be capital-S Special. J-Hare already is in a lot of ways, of course, but could it be more special? I think it could be. I think, sooner rather than later, it kind of has to be.

It’s all very easy for me to sit here and write this, I know. I’m not an architect and don’t know how to accomplish goals like those. I’m not an accountant privy to Auburn’s finances and don’t know exactly how much money Jay Jacobs might have to play with. But what I am is an Auburn fan who believes and believes fervently that Auburn can– and will–find a way to have a first-class college football stadium that bows to no one’s, regardless of capacity and regardless of what palaces our counterparts across the state are building.

Give me that bow, you nance: Howard Hill shows Errol Flynn how it's done, Auburn-style.

Every now and then I discover some how-could-I-not-know-that story (…Pat Sullivan’s brother Joe quarterbacking in the early 80s, Bjork cheerleading in the late 80s, one of our old Deans of Women pen-palling with Flannery O’Conner…) that makes me question my dedication to Auburn lore.

The legend of Alabama Sports Hall of Famer Howard Hill is enough to actually make me want to cry.

Howard Hill was not only a great football player for Auburn in the early 1920s, not only a great basketball player for Auburn…

Howard Hill was the greatest archer to ever live.

From the February 27, 1952 edition of The Auburn Plainsman:

Former Tiger End returns in Tembo as movie producer, archery champion

By Charles Sullivan

Howard Hill, Auburn football star in the early 1920s, returned to the plains last week end as archery champion of the world in his movie Tembo.

During Hill’s football days, Auburn was a national gridiron power under the tutelage of Head Coach Mike Donahue. “What that Howard Hill does is as unpredictable as the next leap of a scalded cat or tin-canned dog,” Coach Donahue said one afternoon during a practice scrimmage when the rangy end caught a pass then veered sharply from his path to the goal in order that he might run down the opponent’s safety man.

Donahue ‘s judgment of Hill has proved fitting. After graduating from Auburn in 1923, the drawling Wilsonville archer began using his bow and arrow talents in a series of exhibitions and movie shorts. Hill doubled for Erroll Flynn in several movies and used the Hollywood money to finance big game hunting expeditions on which he felled many animals with his arrows.

Tembo is Hill’s second full-length movie venture. He directed produced and starred in the production which is being distributed by RKO. It was filmed in the African jungles and features Hill, a native cast and feral animals in their native environments. The film sequences show the expert archer killing pythons, crocodiles, a lion, a leopard, and an elephant with his arrows.

According to Hill, the American Indians were not as good with bow and arrows as the present experts. The Indians usually operated a short range and their bows and arrows were not as well made as the ones currently used by archery experts, he points out.

Hill states that modern bows and arrows are fairly accurate up to 100 yards. They are dependably accurate at 50 yards and for a good archer are absolutely accurate at 30 yards. For most small game and target shooting he used a bow rigged for a 70 pound pull. However, the the bow with which he killed the elephant in Africa had a 105 pound pull

In reminiscing about his varied career, Hill recalls his football playing at Auburn as being more exciting than many of his hunting escapades. Hut he says the greatest thrill was knocking over the elephant in Tembo which gets its name from the native word for elephant. Hill is the only white man ever to kill either a boar or an elephant with an arrow.

Accompanying her husband on the 13,000 mile trip to Africa to film Tembo was petite Elizabeth Hodge Hill of Ashville, NC. Although she weighs only 105 pounds, Mrs. Hill has killed many animals with a bow and arrow. Currently Hill is appearing at larger theaters in the south where Tembo is being shown on personal appearance tours with his motion picture.

It still seems like too great a coincidence to be fact: after five years of perfect conference stability at the BCS level and after four years of NCAA investigation into USC athletics, not one but two Big 12 teams take off for greener pastures the exact same day that the NCAA breaks out the sledgehammer on the Trojans in epic fashion. Today is officially nuclear. Happy Nuclear Day.

Column coming tomorrow, but for now, a few scattered thoughts, first on one issue, then the other:

USC THRASHED

– Because it’s the Auburn angle, we’ll start here: as I said a little while back, the vacation of USC’s wins, including the 2004 Orange Bowl victory over Oklahoma, doesn’t mean anything more for Auburn than that they were the only undefeated team that season that mattered. It’s not an occasion to start rewriting our (perfect) history. Auburn earned a national championship that season. They deserved a national championship that season. But they weren’t awarded one, and that’s OK. It’s OK for no one to have one when one of the teams involved was cheating. As for Auburn, as commenter AubOrange said: “It was better than a national championship. It was 2004.”

More to the point, as Will Collier said at Rivals today: “I don’t care.” When it comes to that Orange Bowl, I don’t, and if you do–if you feel the AP and BCS need to bend over backwards to retroactively anoint Auburn the true champion or that something, anything is missing from that 2004 season–I’ll remind you that we wear orange-and-blue around here, and not crimson.

–  Like everyone else, I feel terrible for the USC players that are now going to be deprived of two bowl games for something that had nothing to do with them (though transfer opportunities surely beckon in many cases), and even worse for the freshmen who signed their LOIs last spring while under the illusion the NCAA was going to play nice.

But it’s nice to see the NCAA bare its fangs when it has to. (Not as nice as the startlingly vindictive Tide fans believe it to be, but nice.) The old joke here is the one from Jerry Tarkanian, the old UNLV coach, who once said that the NCAA got so mad at his crooked Runnin’ Rebels they put Cleveland State on probation. It’s a clever line, but when it comes to college football, it’s just not true. The only two programs this past decade to receive sanctions like these are the Trojans and, of course, Alabama. You can’t really get any more blueblooded in college football than those two programs. When it comes to the NCAA and football, there really is no such thing as too big a target, apparently.

– It’s going to be a long road back to respectability for USC under the yoke of these kinds of restrictions, so it’s natural that when they looked for a coach with a long history of steady, patient program-building, a coach with a clean record and respect for the NCAA rulebook, a coach who’ll be comfortable ducking below the media feeding frenzy, putting his head down, and quietly going to work. Which is why they hired Lane Kiffin.

CONFERENCE MADNESS

– Well, it’s happening. But even after the reports that Mike Slive was chatting up Texas A&M, I still don’t expect the SEC to join in the “party,” at least not this summer. Until we hear otherwise, the assumption is that Texas, A&M, and Texas Tech are coming or going as one block, and I haven’t seen any indication that the SEC is so desperate to take on the Longhorns they’ll welcome the Red Raiders. Besides, all the rumors regarding Texas have involved either the PacTexas-Sixteen or–new for this afternoon–the Big Tenwelven. The only whispers we have about how Texas feels about the SEC is the rumor Mack Brown doesn’t want to bother having to play ‘Bama, Florida, LSU, etc. And if the SEC doesn’t land Texas or A&M, what’s the point?

But the Staples report is a game-changer. Sure, as I said earlier this week, Slive doesn’t have to do a damn thing right now. But apparently he’s not taking my advice; he’s doing some damn things, right now, as we speak. At the very least, we can say this: the SEC is having its say in what’s happening. If this is Slive just taking the temperature out there, cool. If he’s bound-and-determined to invite the SEC up to as many teams as the Big Tenwelven or Pac-X, that’s rash. Patience, patience, patience, please.

– You probably also can’t rule out the SEC biting on the Texas block now that Baylor seems to have been cast adrift. Add those three for the West, add ACC School X in the East, and there’s a 16-team SEC that sort of, kind of, works. Your potential SEC West in this scenario: Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss, Miss. St., Alabama. In the East: Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, and then either Ga. Tech, Florida St., or Clemson. (Tech, please.)

Yeah, I know this scenario splits up the Iron Bowl, but Auburn’s got way more history with the Eastern schools than the Western and the Tide wouldn’t miss anyone other than Tennessee. And, uh, Auburn. It could work. Maybe.

– Rumors out there about Oklahoma joining the SEC, which, please. As in the case of Texas and its two coattail schools, no way the Sooners and Okie St. get split up, and now way the SEC–or any conference that’s not the PacTexas-16–finds room for both.

– Again, more on this tomorrow.

Hit them harder, please.

The NCAA has released its annual Academic Progress Rate report for the 2008-2009 academic year. It’s a PDF at that link. How did Auburn do? It did … something. Let’s break it down into the good and the bad.

GOOD: The football team (of course that’s where we’re starting) is still clear of the sub-925 danger zone with a four-year score–i.e. the one that matters–of 935.

BAD: This year’s one-year score was a 915, pulling the four-year version down 14 points from last year’s 949. Another year like that–or worse–and Auburn will start to edge uncomfortably close to the 925 mark. I don’t think it’s likely, since this year is where Auburn’s feeling the biggest pinch from the Tubby-to-Chizik transition, but it’s not guaranteed; there’s still been a lot of attrition over the past calendar year. No need to sound any alarms, but it’s not the direction in which we’d like to see Auburn heading.

GOOD: The basketball team avoided any immediate penalties, despite their overall score of 916, and showed improvement by putting up a 936 for ’08-’09.

BAD: They’re still below the 925 threshold and–as I understand it–will lose  a scholarship if an ineligible player leaves the program. (i.e. They won’t be able to replace him. This is what the “0-for-2″ discussion here means.) What’s particularly troubling is that we know that–barring some unforeseen academic difficulties for one of the new signees–one more player will have to transfer out of the Auburn hoops program before the start of next season, since Tony Barbee has 14 players and only 13 scholarships to give out*. Losing one scholarship off the end of the bench may not sound like a big deal, but those potential “Auburn basketball loses scholarship to academics” headlines won’t be fun. Here’s to hoping whoever departs has preserved his eligibility … and that Auburn continues to get its men’s hoops grades in full working order.

GOOD: All 11 women’s teams were above the 925 mark and none will be penalized. The women’s hoops team posted a 991, in the top 20 percent of all D-I schools.

BAD: Volleyball scored a hideous 882. Their four-year score is still at a comfortable 949, but what the hell happened this year? With an 885, women’s track wasn’t much better.

GOOD: Baseball’s overall score is at 932, above the punishment line.

BAD: It was a 906 this year. Baseball has it tougher than most sports because of the flood of draft departures, but still–this in the 10th-20th percentile for D-I, and I don’t think the NCAA will care all that much how tough they’ve got it if another rough couple of years drop the score blow 925.

GOOD: Knowing that a one-year penalty was coming (despite a strong ’08-’09 score that couldn’t lift it past the 925 mark), the men’s track team left one of its scholarships open this year and the NCAA considers the punishment already served. Though the cross-country team is also below 925, at 917, they also showed improvement and missed penalties thanks to the small size of the squad.

BAD: Auburn took an APR scholarship penalty in men’s track.

GOOD: After losing a scholarship last year, the men’s swim team posted a 973 to get their four-year average up to exactly 925.

BAD: We’re ending on a good note. There is no bad in this situation.

Overall, I know this post makes it sound like the bad far outweighs the good, and that’s not really the case this year. Only one program suffered any kind of penalty, and they’ve already served it. Two of the three revenue sports are still above the 925 mark, and the other made significant strides back towards it. Women’s hoops, women’s golf, and a few other programs put together sterling scores.

However, I think it’s fair to say things aren’t trending in the right direction. The two revenue sports that are above the 925 threshold posted scores beneath it. The other still isn’t out of danger. Swimming got out of the hole, but men’s track scored a 990 and still couldn’t. The horrible scores posted by volleyball and women’s track are going to haunt their average for years.

It’s not the end of the world. I know that some of these cases are bad luck, the natural vagaries of college students trying to maintain the ridiculously difficult balance between being a scholarship athlete and a full-time college student. But I don’t think I’m way out of line in suggesting that Auburn can do better. Our athletes’ academics are too important to settle for “not the end of the world.”

*Two things: first, I hate this. I hate this. I’m willing to give Barbee a modicum of leeway here–for now–because he may know already that one of his holdovers isn’t interested in sticking around. But dammit, we need to be trying to keep the kids that are already on Auburn rosters in school, not hoping that one of them just happens to want out before we give them the boot, Saban-style. That kind of professional-style perform-or-get-cut ruthlessness is not right for Auburn, and I’m desperately hoping this is the first-and-only time Barbee puts himself in this position.

Second: usually a team that might get stuck with this penalty will simply retroactively serve the one-scholarship punishment the year it happens–Auburn just did this with the track team–since the scholarship goes unused after the transfer. But Auburn hoops might not be able to do that, since all 13 scholarships would be filled even after the transfer. Auburn could still conceivably get around the issue with a waiver, which the NCAA has hardly seemed shy about giving out to teams–like Auburn–that are on their way up in the APR. But again: it’s embarrassing. Please, future transferee, don’t be ineligible.

Remember this first.

It was a maddening, frustrating night. And I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was a night equally important night to all the other nights. It was much, much more important.

But still: one night only, one game only. Auburn had played 63 games before last night, and they’d won 43 of them. That’s a lot. It was enough to return to Hoover for the first time in seven years. It was enough to win the SEC West. It was enough to bring a Regional to Plainsman Park and pack it to the absolute gills. It was enough to bring Creede Simpson to the plate with two on and two out in the ninth inning. One night changes none of that.

I’d write more–some kind of halting attempt at gratitude–but commenter Brad wrote about it yesterday better than I could:

Just had to say this. I have been to easily 150+ games at Plainsman Park and more than 1,500 baseball games in my life (I’m only 26). That the best game I can remember seeing if you include the magnitude of what it meant, and I’ve seen Eric Brandon’s perfect game, Ubaldo Jimenez’s no-hitter this year, several big league cycles, and major league playoff games. Plus, that was the absolute loudest I have EVER heard Plainsman Park. It makes me wish that crowd was there all the time, not just for playoff baseball.

Baseball is the sport I follow most closely at Auburn after the boys on the gridiron, and quite honestly is my favorite b/c I met my best friends at the park during undergrad. Three of us have been to every home game this year and traveled to Oxford for the West Division championship series a few weeks ago and I can tell you that tears were shed between us, if only because I haven’t lived here in several years and this was our first season back together. It feels like “our” team, since everyone goes to football, but not as many follow baseball religiously. I’m rarely speechless (hell, I used to get paid to talk about baseball for a living) but last night left me so. Thank you Creede, Austin, Slade, Freddy, JB, Hunter, KP, and the many others I’m leaving off of this for this season. It means more than you will ever know.

I don’t know if Auburn will sell out a regular season series next year the way they did this Regional. But they will sell more tickets and they will run onto the field to louder cheers and they will have more of us–like me–following them and rooting for them even when they are far away. I would bet anything.

Going to a super regional would have been nice. But what this team had to do was nothing less than revive the Auburn baseball program, which in some ways is a much harder thing to do. But that’s what they did anyway.

Other thoughts:

– By my count, Auburn had 22 at-bats with runners in scoring positions. Those 22 at-bats produced six hits, and only four 0f those hits produced an RBI. 22 opportuinities to drive in a run; four of them taken. That’s not gonna cut it. The Auburn pitching could have been a little better, I guess, but at this stage you knew Clemson was going to put up a ton of runs. This team has lived and died with its offense all season, and this once it couldn’t quite rise to the occasion.

– It rankles, sure, to see 5 of the 8 SEC teams in the tournament advance to Super Regionals and Auburn not be among them. And I cling to my long-held belief that experience, in sports, is globally overrated. But in college sports, particularly, I do think experience matters. Those five teams–and Clemson–have all played multiple Regionals in recent years. They’ve already gone through the work of learning how to approach the most important games of the season the same way they approached the random, routine conference games they’ve played all spring. Auburn hadn’t. I don’t think that made all the difference, but I’ve seen the team-comes-out-of-nowhere-to-win-league-then-struggles-in-postseason narrative way too many times in college hoops to think it didn’t make some difference.

I mean, this is a team that went 8-1 over its final 9 SEC games, won its final five and six of its last seven SEC series, and did it all without any real benefit from random chance. In the postseason, they go 4-4 overall, win three of those games by a total  of five runs, and are outscored in their six games against non-mid-major competition by 15 runs. That shift didn’t happen just by coincidence.

– In that same vein, congratulations to Clemson. They were the best team at the Regional, hands down, no argument.

– This was fun. What say we do it again next year?

Photo by Van Emst.