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by Mark
1-4-06
If January 1st bowls were movies, The Fiesta Bowl was Rocky I and II. It included everything; intense drama, romance, action and an amazing conclusion.
The Rose Bowl was ‘Pearl Harbor’, it had a huge budget and big actors; but it didn’t really matter because we all knew the ending before the game started and we’ve already seen a variation of the same movie dozens of times.
The Cotton Bowl was ‘Airplane!’, poorly produced, uninspired, random and yet incredibly enjoyable.
Surely this took several takes.
This was the same official who ruled a touchdown made by an underused senior wide receiver, Lee “blue jeans” Guess, as too awesome to count. Poor Lee Guess – he’s a senior and most of us didn’t know who he was until midway through the season. He ends his career with an amazing touchdown pass, and it doesn’t even count.
What was the deal with the random shot of a dancer with an empty paper plate during the TV replay?
I’ve never been an NFL fan, so I’m not familiar with Pat Summerall’s work as an announcer. I was looking forward to listening to him since I heard he was a ‘legend’. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. I’ve never heard a game with so much dead audio. He knew nothing about Auburn or Nebraska; everything he said about either team was obviously read from a roster. Heck, I bet he didn’t know what state Auburn was in. Based on his slurred speech, I’d also imagine he didn’t know what state Nebraska was in.
There seems to be a trend going around of letting incredibly old people to continue doing their jobs - but at a level where they can’t do much damage. Dick Clark has been reduced to only doing the New Year’s countdown. Joe Paterno has been put in a glass cage and Summerall was sent to do the 10:00am bowl game.
You can call Brandon Cox weak, fragile, inaccurate or slow and you won’t get much of an argument from me; but he’s incredibly clutch. Last year he made insane laser passes on critical 3rd and 4th downs when they mattered the most against Georgia and LSU. This year he did it against Alabama and Nebraska. I’m assuming there’ll be a Campbellesque transformation in the off-season.
Will Herring was all over the place with a quickness. This wasn’t your grandfather’s Will Herring of 2004 by any means. During commercial breaks, he made a few tackles in the Capital One Bowl.
It’s times like these when it’s good to think back to thoughts you had concerning coaching decisions a few years ago. In 2003 after a freshman Reggie Ball destroyed Auburn’s defense, newspapers ran stories about how he wanted to go to Auburn and wasn’t given a scholarship. You and I thought “Tuberville screwed that one up – we need Ball, not Campbell or Cox”. A couple of weeks ago, CFN declared Ball the worst long term starting quarterback in college football history.
Can Auburn be considered an ‘elite’ program? I have the flu and since I’m out of commission, I’ve been visiting Auburn message boards where this has been the general question. Most people respond with something along the lines of ‘elite programs don’t lay eggs like Auburn does’ and then they site games such as Georgia Tech, Arkansas and Georgia. I think we’re an elite program BECAUSE we drop eggs at times. If we weren’t an elite program, losses to other teams would merely be called ‘losses’ not ‘laying an egg’.
In other news, Alabama hired a guy who is 0-1 against UAB and is giving him a 40 million contract. It’s a gutsy move. Alabama is putting all of the chips on the table for this one. If Auburn continues the win streak over Alabama for a few more years, Alabama may essentially be done for. They will have had top notch facilities and the highest paid coach in the country and nothing to show. If they do win some sort of championships, it’s not like anybody’s going to make a movie about a program that solves a problem by throwing an insane amount of money at the program.
Also, Muschamp has Saban’s college playbook. Saban has never won in Jordan-Hare. And is pretty obvious that he’s there for the money and won’t enjoy his job - meaning he won’t perform well. At LSU, he was bucking for a NFL job, now he just wants to cash checks which I don’t blame him for. I’m not worried.
Let’s just
hope Tuberville doesn’t go to the Dolphins. Holy cow. That would suck.
E-mail mark at
mark@theauburner.com
