Welcome, David! I'd have rolled out something a little nicer for you, but I work in the same A disturbance in the Force, but, like, in a good way. Not that it's anything resembling news, but the blAUgophere absorbed a blow to its orange-and-blue kidneys a few weeks back when our boy P-Marsh blew off his newspaper gig to become a disembodied-yet-somehow-cherubic floating head for ESPN. With said head to eventually float its way behind a paywall and Christa Turner leaving "Turner Loose" behind her as she moves to the Anniston Star, the state of MSM Auburn blogging suddenly looked a lot more "Eh, whatever" than it had a couple weeks before.
Fortunately, while whatever decaying gods the newspaper business has taketh away, they do still giveth from time to time as well. Thus the Ledger-Enquirer's David Ching, late of a widely-read Dawg blog that I know UGA fans were sad to lose, now has his own Auburn gig. And it promises to be the proverbial must-read, what with Ching's first week already giving us this solid SMQ-oriented post on recruiting and this zinger on Florida's plans for media days:
Interestingly enough, Florida's bringing two offensive players, which pretty much goes along with the 2007 Gators' philosophy that you don't actually have to play defense to win.Sweet. There's also a nice quick one-liner on the Saban hype
In short: very glad to have you aboard, David.
The blAUgosphere is, in fact, full of goodness these days. If you're reading this and aren't a blood relation of mine, it's probably not necessary to tell you about the good work being turned out recently by the Auburner boys or Jay and Co.. But if you missed it, you should also take a gander at this top-drawer post on Antonio Coleman and the 48 Laws of Power at the Pigskin Pathos, a blog co-written by Auburn and Tennessee fans I've been remiss in not pointing you towards before. (If the Auburn-Tennessee combination sounds like a strange concept, remember that it allows for twice the level of Alabama hatred. If you have any question about whether their heart is in the right place, check out the image they selected totally-at-random-I'm-sure to illustrate the Tide's uniforms). The highlight, complete with picture because the text alone isn't going to do it justice:
Go read the rest. And while you're at it, check out Grotus Acorn's update of his Iron Bowl chart: now with less Bear!
The surge is working. As discussed previously here, the success of Tubby's early-bird-gets-the-recruitin'-worm strategy hinges on how accurately he and his staff are evaluating the prospects at hand. Not that it's a surprise, but to judge by Raymond Cotton's invitation to the superduperextraspecial RISE Elite 11 QB camp, yes, they are evaluating the prospects at hand accurately. I wouldn't say my recruiting expertise has even advanced to "Varsity" level at present, but if it's true that an Elite 11 invite marks Cotton as "essentially ... one of the top 11 QB prospects in the class of 2009," then you can score one for Tubby over the current impressed-but-not-top 11-impressed guru consensus.
Two more bits of encouragement that Tubby's early commits are the (three-)stars of the future: Randy Kennedy tells us that signing a lightly-regarded player eight months ahead of Signing Day is very different from signing him eight days ahead; and while the post as a whole is less-than-relevant for our purposes, Brian's take on camp commitments at the tail end of this MGoBlog post (in response to a cranky e-mailer whose complaints are very likely shared by certain minorities in the Auburn fan base) seems useful.
Also: Tre Smith, God Bless 'im, may get a starting nod for his Canadian Football League team (HT: TWER); Kyle puts aside his Auburn hatred just long enough to name the Tigers the toughest game on Georgia's schedule; Orson points out the obvious in this silly "OMG SEC TIX SO PRICEY" discussion: namely, that to go by the economic standpoint of sky high-demand and relatively short supply, those prices could/should be even higher.
2 comments:
Much love and appreciation in your general direction.
As a Georgia fan, I assure you, you will love David's work. I (and some others) nominated him for a College Football Blogger Award last year because he became our fanbase's best source for unfiltered, uncut inseason info.The guy will literally transcribe entire 20 minute player/coach interviews on a near daily basis. To put it in a musical context, whereas other sportsbloggers (yours truly included) are the Bay City Rollers, David's work is Freebird, the uncut version.
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