The Works, bumper sticker-style

Hate Week doesn't officially kick off until Sunday, and it's not like everyone with an interest hasn't seen the images on the following video a thousand times. But dammit, it's Friday, and sometimes you need that extra push to get through Friday, and I swear, I could watch the following clip every day of the remainder of my life and on that final day--stand back, nurse!--I'll still feel like running myself through a wall:



That is the good stuff, ladies and gents.

Enough. Jay G. Tate recently wrote a blog post in which he quoted Tubby thusly:

"(Fannin) made two very good plays, but I think those oth­er guys could have done the same thing being in that situa­tion," Tuberville said. "There's not a lot of difference in any of those guys."

Tate followed this with the following comment:

I have no idea why he said that or even what that means.

Really, Jay G. Tate? Because I feel like I have a pretty good idea of both why he said that and what it means. What it means is that just because Fannin made the two huge plays against the Dawgs doesn't mean he's automatically better than Tate or maybe even Lester, any more than Tate's big run against Ole Miss made him better than Fannin. The reason he said it is because that's exactly what nearly everyone (in particular the Jay G. Tates of the world) said after the game anyway, with the conjoining question as to why the better tailback wasn't on the field on those final two drives. Tubby feels like his coaching is in question. So he's responding. It's not that tough to figure out and frankly, I'd be stunned if Tubby reacted in any other way. Saying "Oh, well, now that we've gone back and looked at it, everyone was right, Mario should have been in there and Tate's sorry ass is going to be glued to the bench against Alabama" isn't an option.

So why the faux confusion and mockery, Jay G. Tate? Why lead off your news article on the subject in the same cynical, sarcastic fashion--

Mario Fannin's two touchdowns against Geor­gia did little to intrigue his head coach.

The sophomore moved Au­burn ahead during the fourth quarter last week with a 35-yard score, break­ing two tack­les along the way and simply running away from other de­fenders. He looked like the kind of playmaker that could galva­nize the Tigers' offense.

Then he disappeared.

--when there's actually some very good arguments for why Fannin was riding the pine late in that game? It's one thing to have a healthy dose of skepticism; Tate's bluntness was always a necessary counterpoint to Phillip Marshall's unyielding positivism back in Marshall's blogging days for the Huntsville Times, and the HABOTN continues to be a go-to source for information. But it's one thing for a beat reporter to make honest assessments of Auburn's coaching staff and players, and another to descend to the level of a common message board poster by pretending that Tubby's speaking nonsense or writing "Estimated number of fade-route passes Kodi Burns can complete out of 100: 0." That's not analysis; that's mockery. And it makes it harder and harder to take Tate seriously as a rational journalist when it seems more and more the only thing separating him from the boo bird rabble in his comment section is his press pass.

Speaking to the enemy of my enemy who's also our enemy. Cool little gimmick for a notebook bit from the Press-Register's Mike Herndon this week--he speaks to the five SEC head coaches that have faced both the Tide and Tigers already this season for a brief scouting report of the Iron Bowl. There's nothing terribly juicy there (big surprise ... maybe Herndon should have tried to get an anonymous breakdown?) but reading between the lines, it seems like Nutt and Miles maybe give Auburn a little more of a chance than Fulmer or Croom and Petrino's probably as blunt as any of them:

"Alabama's a great football team. They've been playing in a lot of close, hard-fought games. They play very good defense, can run the ball as well as anybody and have a quarterback who can throw the ball down the field, so they've probably just got to play their game."

"Just got to play their game," eh, Bobby? I should be a bigger man than this, but whatever, it's the Iron Bowl we're talking about: Screw you, buddy.

NEWS! Not really. Other than the occasional injury update, the big development during the bye week seesm to have been that Auburn picked up a commitment from the nation's top-ranked kicker in the class of 2010. I predict he goes 15-of-17 with an overtime game-winner as a freshman, then develops turf toe in his first game as a sophomore and retires the following week to become a Zen monk as a method of dealing with the pain.

In other non-news, Coleman said he hasn't thought about his possible draft future. I guess that's good; woulda been better if he'd said he wasn't interested, of course, but oh well.

Correlation. Auburn bloggers are finding it between Auburn and all sorts of interesting places. The Auburner, for example, finds it in the world's declining stock markets. J.M. at TWER sees it in the Coen Brothers' classic The Big Lebowski. (By the by, the Bear wore panties.) And the Pigskin Pathos does that literary thing they do so well, finding in the works of various stoic philosophers ways to deal with that aggravating Tide fan you know:

From Meditations by Marcus Aurelius:

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.
--Book 2.1

Sounds about right.

Tommy Hicks provides you your weekly dose of poll hatred. My favorite Harris poll voter has an admission to make:

Last week's games didn't produce any changes on my ballot among the top 18 picks, with the exception of an oversight that I corrected. Based on Texas' win over Oklahoma earlier this season on a neutral field I have flip-flopped those two teams on my ballot.

You've voted three times since then and you're just now figuring this out? Despite the fact that the Oklahoma-Texas game was the Game of the Century of the Year the week it was played? How can you ... why do you .... aaaaarrrrrrgggGGGGGGHHHHH *head explodes*

No one asked, but ... I'm less than thrilled that Tennessee is apparently seriously considering Brian Kelly. The dude has three important stops on his head-coaching resume: 1. turning Grand Valley St. into an unstoppable D-II powerhouse 2. turning Central Michigan into the class of the MAC overnight 3. turning Cincinnati into a serious Big East contender--and quite possibly Big East champion--in two years with a revolving door at QB to rival Oregon's or UCLA's. The track record may not quite be Meyeresque, but it's not far off, either. I don't want him in the SEC.