Back, mostly

So it’s been a little more than two months since I posted. I’m telling myself that’s (deep breath) O ... K, certainly for a college sports blog that’s not busy compiling absurdly early and yet absurdly compelling and probably absurdly prescient football previews, and had its raison d’etre for its basketball coverage extinguished around this time last year, with its mighty phoenix-like disgruntled blue jay-esque rise from the ashes still to come.

Still, two months of unannounced hiatus doesn’t do the JCCW much good in this blog-eat-blog* world. (I suppose it could become the Auburn version of the infrequently updated but well-respected and exceedingly well-written Bama Report, though it would have to deal without the respect and good writing, of course.) So we’re back soon with regular posting, though with the eternal caveat that the JCCW’s definition of “regular,” as always, remains “as often as real-life and video games allow, without set schedule or discernible pattern, and in fact as far from the accepted definition of ‘regular’ as you can get before reaching ‘nonexistent.’”

Before moving forward, though, a few important things have occurred over the preceding months, so might as well tackle them now:

Auburn got its usual stellar-but-not-ridiculous recruiting haul. I should really pay more attention to recruiting, but it’s been the same story with Tubby for years: Tubby recruits well but not as well as the likes of LSU, Tennessee, or Florida, then Tubby turns around and beats LSU, Tennessee, or Florida with less-desirable players, then drops games to Arkansas or Georgia Tech and their even lesser less-desirable players. My point is that as long as the bottom of Tubby’s recruiting barrel doesn’t drop out (and despite Saban’s presence at UAT, it ain’t gonna), Auburn’s fate is going to be determined by what happens during the season, on the field and sidelines, and not several months before it. When Wake Forest wins the ACC and Boise St. is busy beating Oklahoma, it’s safe to say that recruiting is an overrated aspect of college coaching. At least, I said it.

Speaking of fresh meat, the Birmingham-Southern football team is developing right on schedule to help the school pay off its debts. Check it out: 122 members of the inaugural recruiting class, every one of them not on a football scholarship and ready to pay tuition. I bet the administration couldn’t be more excited!

Actually, if I can allow myself to stop being so damn snide for a moment, there’s little question amongst the folks I’ve talked to that Joey Jones is the right guy for the school and that the program will be something BSC can be proud of in time. Looking at that snazzy helmet at the top of the page and the list of recruits, I have to say the idea of cheering on a BSC football team on a fall afternoon while DVRing the Tigers and avoiding all possible human interaction in order to avoid the score doesn’t sound so bad.

Hey Jenny Slater wrote the definitive piece on the ongoing Pac-Man Jones saga. How this hasn’t burned up the Internets to a crisp, I don’t know. In other important blog news, Will Collier’s all over the scandal that no more than 99% of Alabama’s population saw coming and the good people at the Auburner blind you with science, or something that looks like science.

It’s the end of the Big South as we know it … as Gregg Marshall moves on. If there are any Missouri Valley Conference fans reading (ha!), I will send you a $10 Best Buy gift card to chant “MOP OUR FLOOR! MOP OUR FLOOR!” at him this season.

*I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with this, but as I don't recall seeing it elsewhere, I'm going to pretend I am.