In Tubby news ...

Even before he hooked up with a trucking company, Nall had experience in transporting expensive cargo.

"Mutual"? We touched on Jay Tate's interview with Hugh Nall yesterday, but Tate's full story for the paper had a few more tidbits worth taking a look at. For me, this is the money quote:

"It's a tough business competing against Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee and everyone else in the league. Everybody has to be on the same team and thinking the same way for you to even have a chance. Tommy realized that wasn't going to happen. It probably was more of a mutual thing." (emphasis added--ed.)

This is someone who's about as close to the situation as you're going to get who doesn't have an ax to grind--well, actually, Nall does have an ax to grind, as we'll see in a sec--stating that it wasn't 100 percent the administration's decision nor 100 percent Tubby's decision. As I've stated repeatedly: the truth is somewhere in the middle. It probably was more of a mutual thing. As Tate writes in the story, the 100 minutes in which Tubby went from expecting to return to leaving the program for good aren't going to be understood any time soon.

However: I'm still not arguing that the administration should be blindly let off the hook, certainly not if this is the truth:

His contract -- and those of all Tigers assistants -- are predicated on Tuberville's employment with the program. Once he leaves, the school no longer is obligated to any coach lacking a multiyear deal. Administrators offered each assistant a 1-month contract to help bide time while Jacobs searches for a new coach.

Nall rejected the offer. He didn't like the terms.

"They wanted me to agree to give them a month, then they told me I couldn't pursue another job," Nall said. "They wanted to know why I didn't want to keep recruiting these kids. I told them that I'm not an employee there anymore. They didn't have to wait on me -- my locker was cleaned out and my stuff was packed up and out of there by the time we met the next morning."

Asking the Auburn coaches to continue recruiting certainly isn't out of order--several assistants have continued doing just that, of course--but demanding that Nall couldn't pursue another job? Why? Love him or hate him, Nall's given Auburn 10 years of service. We couldn't have let him make a few phone calls or spend a day or two looking into what he's going to do next while he's pounding the recruiting trail? Especially when the recruiting class hangs by a thread already? And now Nall is long gone, the opportunity to have him help keep the class together--for whatever that's worth--is lost. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, dumbasses.

No help here. Contrary to what Charles Goldberg declares at the top of this post reproducing Tubby's letter of resignation to Jacobs isn't going to come close to ending the firing vs. resigning "speculation" tug-of-war. I mean, does it get any more contradictory than this?

After long consideration, I have decided to resign. I understand that, notwithstanding my resignation, the University will make a total payment of $5,083,334 as outlined in Section 21 of my contract.

No, no it doesn't. This is the debate in a perfect nutshell, Tubby writing I have resigned in one sentence and in the next writing, essentially, I have been fired. Until Tubby actually decides to speak, we're not getting any closer to resolving this thing, and I doubt Tubby's going to speak any time soon. $5.08 million will buy a lot of silence.

Because I forgot to mention it in the last post. Offensively, Auburn's an out-and-out rebuilding project, but Tubby's at leas left the cupboard stocked elsewhere: Durst, Pybus, and Thorpe were selected to the SEC All-Freshman team. And here's where he make another testament to Tubby's eye for talent: Durst was a walk-on who'd never punted competitively in his life, Pybus and Thorpe lightly-regarded prospects who nobody expected on Signing Day to even see the field as freshmen, much less make the SEC's All-Freshman team. I hope you've already raised your glass to Tubby a couple of times since he left; it's time again.