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.