The Works, awesome-style

It's Friday. I need something awesome, you need something awesome. Jeremy of TWER has a new blog, fearless and true, and he helps us all out by indeed bringing the awesome:


That picture--post tag "outstandingness," please--is part of Jeremy's tale of visiting Dean Foy's home to discuss, amongst other matters, streaking at Auburn. Glomerata boobies, the phrase "panty raid," and Dean Foy are all prominently involved. Awesome quota: filled.

That 'undefeated in so many games wearing white' thing is over, remember? But Auburn will wear white on homecoming anyway, which I'm fine with, since UT-Martin's orange jerseys should give us a nice preview of what Auburn would look like wearing orange. Maybe this is why we scheduled them in the first place?

I wish I had your confidence, but I'm unsure I wish you had your confidence. Greg Knox on if he believes he'll be returning to coach Auburn's receivers in '09:

I do. I have no doubt.

False bravado or an actual assurance from the current-and-possibly-future head man? I'd very much like it to be the former, please. But either way you slice it, Reason No. 4,137 the Season of DEATH blows: feeling it necessary to parse six-word quotes from the wide receivers coach. You suck, 2008.

United in misery. Mike Herndon brings the irony:

The assessment was frank and insightful. It was given by a beleaguered SEC coach who had brought in a new offensive coordinator this season, changed the makeup of his offense and then watched it flounder: "We had a personality that obviously fit us well and we won a lot of football games. I made a conscious effort to look around and make a decision and I had no idea it'd be this hard in transforming systems. Our coaches here are good coaches and they're knowledgeable and everything. We just kind of lost our personality offensively and it's been a struggle and complicated because we haven't played particularly well at quarterback."

That could have been Auburn's Tommy Tuberville speaking, but it wasn't. It was Tennessee's Phillip Fulmer.

I'm honestly surprised more hasn't been made of the similarities between the Vols and Tigers this year. I mean, yeah, it's been noted a handful of places ... but as the Fulmer quote illustrates, it kind of goes beyond "similar" to "yeah, more than a bit on the eerie side." (Read the rest of the column; some good stuff from Fulmer about why he felt the need to shake things up at OC.)

Caution: Jimmy Sexton at work. Give the man credit: it can't be easy trying to bump up a coaching stock as flagging as Tubby's, but he's still just as committed to it as ever, unless you think the blow-up of idle Tony Barnhart speculation into full-blown rumor is just happenstance.

YES. "Red zone efficiency" is one of the dumbest football stats around, seeing as how it operates under the basic assumption that 3=7. (How many hundreds of times better would "points-per-red zone possession" be? Seriously.) Still, this remains pretty mindblowing:

STAT OF THE WEEK: Auburn's offensive performance in the red zone is tied for the worst in the nation. The Tigers have scored on 18 of their 29 possessions inside the opponents' 20-yard line, a 62 percent rate that is tied with Tulane for 118th in the country.

Meaning that the Auburn offense is neither capable of sustaining drives nor opportunistic! What a combo! It's like the roast beef combo at Arby's, but instead of thin-sliced roast beef you get moldy sardines and instead of savory curly fries--damn, could I go for some curly fries--you get fried twigs.

Really? Tristan Davis on his nagging foot issues:

Davis has had chronic foot and toe problems for much of his career, necessitating a special kind of shoe. To get the extra-wide cleats, Davis had to do battle with Under Armour, the company that has the exclusive contract for Auburn apparel.

"That was a big issue," Davis said last month. "They didn't want me to go back to New Balance because we made all these (contractual) promises. When it was all said and done, I had to get back into a New Balance shoe. My foot problems are pretty much gone."

So you're saying we could have had the 2006 Tristan Davis, Kickoff Return Terror, back several games earlier if Under Armor hadn't gotten their panties in a wad about one Auburn player wearing someone else's cleats? Really? Is that what we're saying? Beccause if so, that's just that's just ... well, it's just 2008, is what it is.

Byrumwatch. He's back. At least until he misses a 36-yarder on Saturday.

Sigh. WEA on Tubby's postgame responses:

I record the Auburn Football Review each week, but admittingly, I don't watch the whole show if we lose. I can't bear to. I only watch the beginning when Tuberville addresses the team. At first, his speeches after losses were very motivational. The one after LSU was top-notch. He had me wanting to go suit up for the next one. But gradually, the length of the speech and it's message has diminished after each successive loss. Granted, a lot of these have been on the road and the only thing you want to do after a road loss is get cleaned up and get on the bus, but I think I see the competitive fire waning quite a bit. It has to filter down to the players.

Is there anything to add? No, there is not.

Etc. Tommy Hicks gets spared his weekly browbeating despite ranking Texas behind Oklahoma, since he does have Pitt ranked on the back end ... Georgia readers debate moving the Cocktail Party out of Jacksonville, which, like, dude, you don't throw your sacred traditions overboard just because Florida's hired a couple of really good coaches ... Auburn paintball shines at Paintball World Cup, so that's cool ... Evan Woodberry has a concise summary of how Tubby's buyout wound up so costly.