Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Works likes saying "yule log"

Who doesn't love a good holiday tradition? Decorating Easter eggs around the kitchen table, champagne and kisses on New Year's Eve, taking the smallest amount of cranberry sauce possible while still being polite on Thanksgiving ... and, of course, new Auburner valentine's cards for Valentine's Day! The first batch for 2009 is up, and they're classics, as always. A personal favorite:



Never, ever change, fellas.

News! Tons of it! Just kidding. There is no news. Poor Andy Bitter's been reduced to rebutting various ESPN articles. Jay Tate's getting ready for his furlough and taking a stab at an offensive line two-deep. Evan Woodberry's using the Bryce Brown saga to pretend there's movement on the David Oku front, and Charles Goldberg--this has got to be a first--is reporting not only on women's basketball recruiting, but 2010 women's basketball recruiting.

Suffice it to say, it's a little quiet, which is surprising given that Auburn still has two more staff vacancies to fill. Chizik probably made a run at Ole Miss's Chris Vaughn to fill the secondary position and whiffed, but prying away the likes of Taylor and Rocker, I'm not going to sweat a mulligan or two this far down the staffing roster.

The rumors are getting Lowder. Surely, surely, the Dark Lord of the Plains has steeled himself against even eventualities like the current financial collapse ... but the folks at Track'Em have highlighted an OA-News column that says that might not be the case:
During the years he was screwing up things at Auburn, he and his bankers were screwing up what was once a thriving financial institution.

He led the march into the sub-prime mortgage market, making loans he shouldn’t have made to people who had no chance of repaying. The losses are staggering.

Lowder was seeking another federal bailout recently. The feds said that for Lowder to get another $553 million in taxpayer funds, he needed to raise from investors a match of $300 million. He couldn’t do that and the stock tanked.

Tony Plath, a University of North Carolina banking professor, said failure to get the federal cash “is the Good Housekeeping kiss of death” for Colonial.

A spokesman for Morgan Keegan & Co. in New York said “(Colonial) Shareholder value has already been destroyed…”
The column's a must-read not only for the take on Colonial's financial situation--which is truly, truly dire--but for the seething anger the writer (Paul Davis) holds against Lowder. I'll certainly join him in wishing Lowder gone, but I can't say I'm ever going to believe it's happened until ... well, until he's dead. Even if he leaves the Board, he's still going to have his methods of having his voice heard. I'm afraid we're stuck with the bastard.

No more, please, I beg you. Thinking about 2010 recruiting makes me so sad I could cry. Nonetheless, you'll probably enjoy this map of where Auburn's already sent out offers--apparently, Luper and Taylor aren't vacating Texas entirely--and it's probably worth noting (via Tate) that the last-minute Josh Jackson grayshirt offer may have been motivated in part by a 2010 recruit at the same school. Oh, and if you want to know why succeeding within state borders is important, some random diarist at MGBlog demonstrates via spreadsheet that the Heart of Dixie ranks second in most NFL players per-capita, trailing only Louisiana. Beat those bushes, Chiz.

In recruiting news that doesn't make me fear for the future of civilization--wait, nevermind, this does too, actually--Tyrik Rollison changed his Facebook status to something positive about his qualification status. Yay? Still believe when I see it.

One last recruiting link: I would fully support any recruit who makes his announcement using any of the scenarios detailed in this post at the Hog Tale. A favorite:
It would even be fun to have two boxes on a table with money in them and tell everyone that whichever team sent him the most cash is where he will go play and then proceed to have your accountant count out the money in front of everyone.
This wins.

BlAUgosphere. Fields of Donahue pulls apart Tony Franklin's latest "douche-tastic" interview; the Pigskin Pathos puts Tolkien to use in responding to the big hoops win over Tennessee; and Jay Coulter clearly feels for Jeff Lebo, but ultimately decides that "time has run out."

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