The Works, Hail Britannia-style

God Save the Queen. OK, so the JCCW doesn't usually go in for the whole "arbitrary pictures of attractive ladies in their underthings" thing, but when said arbitrary pictures include a British television personality posing for a major magazine cover with a shirt that reads like so ...



... certain exceptions can be made. Tip of the hat to TWER, who also offer up a must-read write-up of Jimmy Buffett's brief time at Auburn, just ahead of the Tigers' match-up against the head Parrothead's eventual alma mater.

His Spirit lives on. David Ching's time as an Auburn beat writer proved to be unmercifully short, but obviously somebody's keeping the flame burning at his old blog stomping grounds, 'cause there's a full transcript there of Tubby's post-Tuesday practice press conference. It's surprisingly enlightening for being, well, just a typical Tuesday press conference, maybe never moreso than in Tubby's frank appraisal of why the running game worked so well:

We went back and looked at the running game the last couple of years and our best running game have come out of one-back; whether it’s underneath the center or in shotgun. So, really the best thing that we do with our offensive line is that we’re very athletic. We run laterally, which is zone-blocking. We have not ever been a power team where everybody blocks down and one guy kicks out. ... We have been a more finesse running team; creating running lanes with zone blocking, handing off and let the running back use his ability in the running lane. That’s what we did Saturday and after going back and evaluating what we’ve done in our running game for the past four or five years, that’s been our bread and butter.

Quick, someone build me a time machine so I can go back three weeks and put $10,000 down on Tubby using the word "finesse" to describe his team's rush attack.

I appreciate the candor, but I have to say I'm less enthralled with Tubby's general attitude of "We'll keep sorta just trying stuff out to see what works until we get to the SEC game the week after," which, while I would agree that SEC play is the thing, doesn't seem to yours truly to quite take Southern Miss as seriously as 633 yards of offense deserve to be taken. And per our discussion yesterday, here's your money quote:

Chris Todd will be our starter this week and he may play the whole game. (Emphasis mine.)

This despite the fact that Burns practiced yesterday and should be good to go. So it goes. (It's all going to work out and I should shut my gripin' hole right now, I know, I know.)

I suppose I should address this. Meaning this:



And you know, whatevs. Magazines with Alabama on the cover sell. They're a "big deal," their coach is a "big deal." No point in pretending they're not. Assuming things go as they should in November, it's just one more thing we'll pull out of the weather-beaten trunk in the attic of August like a priceless family heirloom, to hold and let the warm fuzzy feeling of HA-ha wash over us.

Also worth reading in the world of 'Bama hype fatigue is Erik at DeepSouthSports' breakdown of how Julio wuz robbed of the SEC's Freshman of the Week award, which was given to Rebel back Brandon Bolden. "Who?" you ask. Erik "agrees":

Is "Brandon Bolden" some pseudo name for The Julio? Cause the only "Brandon Bolden" I know of was some non-dreamy three-star "athlete." What could he possibly know about outstandingness?

"Outstandingness" = post tag.

Wrong. More on the SEC-ESPN TV deal: Pete Fiutak thinks the House of Mouse is about to give the league the Arena Football/NASCAR unjustified coverage bum rush. He somehow overlooks the fact that with CBS still holding the first pick in the SEC Game O' the Week draft, ABC's late-afternoon and primetime games (i.e. their most valuable ones) are still going to get selected from the Big 10/Pac-10/Big 12/technically the ACC pool. Somehow I don't see them suddenly taking Gameday out of Columbus the day of the Michigan game because they're going to be showing Tennessee-Kentucky on ESPN2 that night.

Apparently, delusion is a virus Fran carried with him west from Tuscaloosa. The best part about Texas A&M's loss to Arkansas St. is that they still have a shot at the national title. Though I suppose those are just random nutso message-board types; you can expect bloggers to have a much more sane view of the situation, like dropping A&M all the way to fourth in a Big 12 power poll. Much more sensible.

Etc. That Rob Stone's a funny guy ... the good Senator keep us up to date on how the clock rules are (sorta) affecting game times ... the Syracuse SIDs run an awesome end-around past "reality."