The Works, tit for tats-style

"ALABAMA BRED." That's totally the tattoo I'm getting in giant script across my stomach, just as soon as I save up the cash again after getting that potato tattoo I've wanted since grade school*. Can't take credit for the idea, though, since it belongs to the one and only D-Mac (you'll have to wait 'til video end for the good stuff):



HT to Razorback Expats, who get bonus points for the Anchower reference.

The Chiznick, still speakin'. Gene Chizik was part of the press festivities at the SEC meetings in Destin; full Q&A courtesy of Jon Solomon available here, with a few more tidbits at War Eagle Extra. Reax:

--That he mentions Burns and cites his experience leads me to believe that if he and Caudle finish in a tie in practice, Burns will win the tiebreak by virtue of being the incumbent.

--Can't accuse Chizik of not being a company man with the "the schedule was already set" response when questioned about UCLA.

--The "I'm only going to talk about my team" response to the press's Kiffin-baiting was expected and appreciated, but I also liked Chizik's description of the Limo Gambit impact: "it grew to the other students, then it grew to the faculty, then it grew to the mayors." Notice there's no "then it grew to silly barbs from other coaches" addendum, which would have been very easy to have tacked on in some form there.

--In the Marshall Q&A from the other day, Chizik is quoted using the phrase "illusions of grandeur," which, yeah, it's supposed to be "delusions." Not a big deal, but Solomon quotes him yesterday as saying "delusions of grandeur," so I'm wondering: did somebody mention to Chizik that he'd made a mistake and he made a correction, or is Solomon (or Marshall, for that matter) misquoting him? Just one of those little things the English major in me has a hard time ignoring.

Anyways, both posts are worth a read.

blAUgosphere. Plainsman Parking Lot reacts to the baseball team getting the shaft from the NCAA selection committee, with a general "eh, no complaints" vibe, except that a couple of teams did get in who were no more qualified than the Tigers were:

The biggest surprise? Probably Baylor and Oklahoma State. That inclusion (and the exclusion of Rhode Island and Dallas Baptist) seems to have most CB Sportswriters up in arms ... It's one thing for an SEC school to be included, and not make the conference tournament. There are 12 Teams in SEC Baseball. So you have 4 teams who don't make it to Hoover. In the Big XII (baseball at least) there are only 10 teams (Iowa St. is a club team/Colorado doesn't play). Meaning if you don't make their Conference tournament (like Oklahoma St.), you are one of the bottom 2 teams in the league.

Mid-majors like Rhode Island and Dallas Baptist shut out while deeply unqualified Big 12 teams play on ... did they just borrow the same committee from NCAA hoops?

Elsewhere, Jonesy argues convincingly against a state of Alabama "Rooney Rule" at Section 13, etc.

More preview. TeamSpeedKills is putting together a week-long Auburn preview; Year2 and C&F already looked at the offensive decline, the schedule, the depth chart, the schedule, and, uh, Chizik's contract negotiations. The Danes call it quality, folks.

Krootin'. Lots of tidbits yesterday from Auburn by Beaver: mash here, here, and here. Probably the most interesting of them is that five-star studly stud defensive end Ronald Powell apparently grew up in Alabama and, you know, at least knows where Auburn is. The odds Auburn snatches him away from USC's clutches are somewhere between none and none, but it's not often Auburn has their hat in the ring on anyone from California.

And this may be old news, but Auburn's in receiver DeMarco Cobbs' last 10. Yay. (HT: VB.)

On the more generalized recruiting front, this article in which South Carolina's defensive line coach claims coaches like himself have mesmeric sway over the recruiting services has been making the blogospheric rounds. Too bad he's basically a liar. The song remains the same: recruiting rankings aren't gospel, but they're not birdcage-liner, either.

(And hey, while I'm linking up stuff from the Sporting Blog, what's with avowed hoops-hater Orspencerson Shwallindle writing an NBA Playoffs post?!?! Is one of the secret side effects of all those painkillers he's taking "violent changes in sports taste"? By the way, there's a killer LSUFreek gif at that link, too.)

Wrong. The coaches' poll decides to go back to anonymous balloting for 2010, because rampant bias and unaccountability isn't already a big enough problem. The poll will still play a gigantic--if not primary--role in deciding who our sport's national champion is. Unbefreakinglievable.

Well, it's something. I've never been the biggest fan of HeismanPundit's occasional anti-SEC, left-coast leanings, but not surprisingly for a guy who's always prized offensive ingenuity (sometimes a little too fervently) he sees a lot to like in Gus Malzahn. Money quotes:

At Auburn, Malzahn will have a bit more talent at his disposal. Heading into the fall, both Neil Caudle and Kodi Burns have a shot to be the quarterback. If history is any guide, one of these guys will probably lead the SEC in passing in 2009.

My point: If Gene Chizik can keep Malzahn in place for a while–and assuming Malzahn has full control of the offense–I think the Auburn quarterback could become one of the marquee positions in college football.

One might even win a Heisman Trophy.

Uh ... well ... let's hope so, shall we? (HT: an understandably skeptical Blutarsky.)

It doesn't have the same magical ring as "Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl," but then again, nothing does. This year's luxury destination for the final bowl-eligible team: your newly-dubbed Advocare V100 Independence Bowl. Advocare is a "direct sales marketer of nutritional and skincare products," V100 is 100 percent pure FDA-approved snake oil a vitamin product they sell. This will surely generate a round of guffaws once bowl season rolls around and people realize poor skeezy Shreveport has a bowl game with the poorest, skeeziest sponsor of them all ... but when the NBA Finals are on the brink of being held in an arena named for the mother-of-all-scams that is Amway, it's safe to say there's not really any shame in associating with any sponsor any more.

Etc. This SEC roundtable is about as good as the content at CFN is going to get ... today's xkcd was their best work in a while.

*I've been saying for ages that if I ever got a tattoo, it would be the Sachar potato tattoo. And there's some seriousness to that, since if I did get one, that's what it would be. (Either that, or some sort of ironic red dragon in honor of the Fountains.) But since I'm the sort who's never going to wind up inked and knows it, I'm not really serious, and I never expected anyone making the same claim would be. Thanks to the Internet, though, I now know that there are people who are, as the saying goes, serious as a heart attack about getting their potato tattoo:



Also, Yahoo Answers is gold.