Monday, November 05, 2007

Homecoming

As per my usual, I'm not going to go into any kind of detail about Auburn's Homecoming game against Tennessee Tech. It was what it was: a breather and a chance to clear the bench on a beautiful fall day. The only notable thing to come out of the afternoon was Blake Field's supplanting Kodi Burns as the second-team quarterback, but even that is a footnote; Burns will retain his job as a situational replacement for Brandon Cox, while Field will be the back-up should Cox have to leave the game. You could tell from the stands that Burns was hyped-up and over-excited, and putting too much on the ball as a result. That's going to happen sometimes--the guy's eighteen. Burns threw for nearly 9,000 yards in high school. He hasn't forgotten how in the last 10 months.

Oh, Auburn's kick coverage was terrible. Again.

Elsewhere, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the score updates from Lawrence, Kansas on Saturday. If there's any team in college football that deserves to have the score run up on them, it's Nebraska, and if any individual deserved to have to sit there and watch it happen, his name is Tom Osbourne. As any corn farmer can tell you, you reap what you sow. Along similar lines, if you can't enjoy the continuing implosion of Notre Dame and the fraud named Charlie Weis, you probably need a schadenfreude transplant.

We listened to LSU's radio network courtesy of XM during the drive home, and I nearly drove off the road laughing when color man Doug Moureau said, "The quarterback sometimes referred to as Sarah Jessica Parker Wilson is getting the kid-gloves treatment from the officials today." Yet another sign that the message board and blog cultures are just saturating college football.

Speaking of LSU, watching the Bengals make every attempt to self-destruct in Tuscaloosa made me think that the program is slowly reverting to the "old LSU," meaning a hugely talented team that's completely lacking in discipline either on or off the field. So far they're been more-or-less able to get away with it, but these things tend to snowball over time. If the trend of off-the-field incidents and on-the-field buffoonery continues, don't be surprised of LSU's results start to look a lot more like the DiNardo years before too much longer.

Oh, and regarding the Ivan Maisel Plan for a six-way tie in the SEC East? Still on track. It'll stay that way after this Saturday if: Auburn beats Georgia, Tennessee beats Arkansas, South Carolina beats Florida, and Kentucky beats Vanderbilt. All of those results are well within the realm of possibility.

1 comment:

Maestroh said...

Will,

I find myself in agreement with much of what you said. The fraud known as Les Miles will be exposed next year when he actually has to play with the guys he recruited. We'll be back in Hallman-DiNardoville for a few years (until Les gets canned).

Speaking of delusional, there were some LSU fans actually saying on the board that Nick Saban's emotional reaction 'proves' he'd jump back to LSU in a heartbeat if Miles goes to Michigan.

And Nebraska? Is there a more deserving team of a spanking than the cornfed bullies? It'll be fun to watch again if Turner Gill does get the job since he oversaw so many of those routs himself.

I wouldn't jump on Weis too bad just yet. He's not the worst football coach out there; heck, that guy had the job before Charlie did and managed to parlay it into millions in Washington.

But the worst just got his walking papers from that agricultural school in College Station. Looks like Fran'll be looking for a sideline commentator's job. Then he can give out 'secret' info on national TV.