The gripes get Lowder

ESPN throws up a front-page story naming Bobby Lowder the most powerful booster in college sports and essentially places blame for the SACS probation fiasco at his feet.

To be honest, not much of this is going to be new news to Auburn fans. It was Lowder who threw Terry Bowden under the bus? What a shock! Lowder exerts massive influence over the other trustees on the board? I can't believe it!

But it was nice for some of these things--most notably, for my money, an Auburn trustee being directly responsible for dumping manure all over the school's academic good name and, instead of resigning, fighting tooth-and-nail to keep his position--to be in-state news and rumor than national headlines.

Thanks, Bobby, you jackass.

(Fun fact: Cliff Williams, the Opelika-Auburn News photographer who took some of the photos accompanying the story, graduated from the same high school I did.)

And while I'm here, two more Auburn links to toss at ya: First, Auburn's Kiddie Corps basketball team (eight members of Lebo's nine-man rotation are freshmen or sophomores) lost at home to a Bama team that is, first, not very good, and was also playing their first game without Chuck Davis. I was expecting to have to wait a year for another AU tournament berth, and as it turns out, we're going to have to wait another year for another men's tournament berth.

Also, to no one's surprise, Marcus McNeill is a consensus All-American. Years from now--or hell, right now--when people remember the 2004 team they'll talk about Cadillac and Campbell and Brown on offense and Rogers and the ends on defense. But McNeill was just about as big a part of that offense as anyone, and if you were going to single out any one person besides Al Borges responsible for the 22-3 two-year span, it's him. Thanks, Marcus. You're not a jackass.