The Works, very, very country roads-style

You got to raise a little hell. Auburn plays West Virginia this Thursday, and contrary to popular belief, not every resident of the "Mountain State" is a beer-swilling Appalachian hillbilly with a fondness for the occasional prison stay and mindless redneckery.

Of course, a few of them are, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a week of West Virginia talk go by without either introducing you to (or reminding you of, quite likely) Jesco White, the original Dancing Outlaw of Boone County, WV:



Parts 2, 3, and 4 are here, here, and here, and one day when you've got some time to kill I do highly recommend you watch the whole of the documentary. Yes, it's a vicious and exploitative piece of stereotyping that anyone who grew up in Alabama should really be more sensitive towards. But sensitivity only goes so far when every single thing Jesco says puts me in hysterics, and as this is likely the only time he'll ever be slightly relevant to developments on the JCCW ... here you go.

It's over, as in over over. Tubby on Chris Todd:

"I saw what he could do at 80-85 percent, but it's just not good enough," Tuberville said. "I told him that he's had his chance, but right now it's time for Kodi Burns to have his opportunity and let him play -- along, maybe, with someone else. I don't have any doubts that if Chris Todd got 100 percent healthy, he could be the quarterback here. It's not fair to him to keep going out there throwing 150-200 balls during practice and not making any headway in terms of his arm getting stronger."

Totally unsurprising and weeks too late, but better late, etc. The Trotter situation is still in the "Maybe we'll just stick with Burns and even if we don't maybe we'll go with Caudle but maybe we'll actually bust out Trotter we don't really know any better than you do" stage it's 99 percent likely to stay in until game-time Thursday. Which means the most relevant bit of info from that link is this on the running backs:

Tate and Lester combined for 1,500 yards last season. Burns had a few yards as a backup, but the other quarterbacks didn't even play. Auburn doesn't want to tip its hand before the game, but everybody has talked about going to a more basic approach.

``I think we're going to give our offensive linemen a chance to get in the three-point stance and fire off the ball a little bit more, and I think that will get them fired up and help out the running game a lot," Burns said.

Ace set and I-formation, ahoy! Tez Doolittle is happy to hear it, for paradoxical reasons:

They get to put their hand down on the ground and they come off the ball a little harder. I always heard Tyronne Green crying about being in the two-point stance about how he can't get push and stuff like that. Yesterday, went against the offense the last couple periods of practice and I saw Tyrone get down in a three-point stance so I was thinking 'I know they ain't about to pass' so I came off hard and I kind of jacked him up a little bit and he got mad yesterday so we were laughing about that. So I guess they like having their hand down in the dirt and stuff.

Auburn loves company. Uh ... was anyone else as surprised as I was to find out from this week's This Week in Schadenfreude that respectable, clean-cut Virginia Tech is hiding out down here in the 100s of total offense rankings with losers like Auburn and Michigan? I decided it was high time to check and see if there were any other major teams that might make us feel good about ourselves by checking out those rankings firsthand and those teams include ...

Well, no one, actually. Pretty much just Virginia Tech. Though both Missisippi St. and Vandy are behind us, and holy hell look how far Vandy's slipped--they're 119th, next-to-last, and a spot behind put-them-out-of-their-misery Washington St.

Simplify, simplify. Auburn is sure to move up those offensive rankings, though, now that Burns and Davis say the playbook has been even further simplified from what Franklin had been using. Seeing as how Auburn has simplified the playbook after every single game they've played this season, I'm surprised there even still is a playbook. Maybe Ensminger doesn't actually use one?

Don't do that! Has no one told womens' hoops coach Nell Fortner what happens when you raise your own expectations?

Our goals are very high. On paper, this is the best team I have had since I've been at Auburn because we do have the experience and we do have the depth this year.

I have no doubt you do, awesome Auburn Lady Tigers, but this football fan is a loyal member of the Lou Holtz school of poor-mouthing. Hearing "This is our best team yet!" gives me the willies. (Speaking of hoops, Auburn's men's team is picked fifth in the worst basketball division currently known to man.)

Taste our pain. I think discussing BCS doomsday scenarios is premature even now, what with Texas needing to clear some giant hurdles and Alabama just not looking like the sort of team that's going to survive a season's worth of the close calls they've been insisting on against the likes of Kentucky and Ole Miss, but at least we can agree that if the Tide really do manage to go undefeated SHOOT ME WAIT DON'T SHOOT ME WELL OK maybe it could go towards a good cause, namely an undefeated Penn St. getting the title-game shaft:

(T)he Big Ten and Pac Ten need to be punished for being the primary roadblocks against a plus-one playoff. Those two conferences will change their minds when there is sufficient pressure from their member institutions to do so. An unbeaten Penn State team sitting on the sidelines in January while Texas and Alabama duke it out for the national title would be exactly the tonic to cause the stodgy Big Ten to stop opposing evolution.

Unlike Michael I'm not rooting for this particular scenario--obviously, I'd prefer 'Bama to finish the season with one especially Tide-galling loss--but it would have its positives, two specifically:

1. More support for a playoff of some fashion
2. Finally, we Auburn fans would be joined by a second fanbase who would share our residual anger and bitterness towards the foul gods who suffered our undefeated (BCS-era) team to, uh, suffer such an injustice ... not that Penn St. fans probably need much encouraging to join the outrage bandwagon, what with the former undefeated-and-uncrowned teams Michale mentions in '69 and '73 and the '94 version he doesn't.

Lastly, yes, the even more delicious scenario would be Penn St. leapfrogging an undefeated Tide team--the karma of the legions of crimson supporters who have told Auburn fans to "quit whining" and "let it go" since 2004 would be unbelievably tasy--but as I (rather randomly) argued at RBR this week, that's not happening, even if Penn St. does beat its opponents to death with their own limbs.

Glory, glory to ole Auburn, A-U-B-U-Go-Vote! As always, linking to anything already spotlighted by EDSBS is an exercise in redundancy and repetitiveness, but nonetheless you really should check out this Time.com piece on a study done in Auburn's econ department on the voting patterns of dedicated Auburn football fans. As in "inflatable Aubie" dedicated. And that voting pattern was? Unsurprisingly, "dedicated":

(R)esidents that show overt support for their favorite college football team, in the form of displays like flags on the front yard, are nearly twice as likely as non-fanatics to hit the polls on Election Day.

There's some reasonable dissent in the EDSBS comments on whether Auburn's demographics (i.e. 99 percent students and staff) make the study's findings worthwhile, but it seems to me (as it did to Orson) there's some grains of sociological truth here: if you're the sort who gets so excited about being part of your bigger-than-me team that you're all, like, INFLATABLE FRONT YARD AUBIE, YEAH!*, it's hardly a stretch to see that devotion stretch over to another "team" who can actually "play" for. GO BLUE! Or, wait, we're talking about Alabama, aren't we? GO RED! (Pointless aside: One of the reasons I was excited about this election was that, living in Michigan rather than Alabama or Georgia, I would finally be able to see my vote help decide a "battleground" state that might sway the election, as opposed to knowing for an absolute fact my state was going red even if I cloned myself and voted 1,000 times. Now Obama's up freaking double digits and the thrill is already gone. If it wasn't for the fact that it's Ohio, I'd move to Ohio.)

Etc. Scarbinsky's column on Tubby's Monday presser is worth a read; he sez Tubby's laying down the gauntlet for the powers-that-be that supposedly want him out ... Ole Miss is an 11:30 start, hooray ... Powers practiced Sunday but still may not be a go Thursday ... LD offers a compelling post about why I'm well within my rights to rank Texas Tech second-lowest of any BlogPoll voter.

Aaaaaand lastly: Kid, I know you've got it tough. Real tough. But I'm not going to lie to you: you can find better heroes than Ryan Perriloux.

*Once the Mrs. JCCW and I learn the joys of property ownership, yes, I'm getting one of these. Of course.