Lunchlinks

Some meat-and-potatoes reading for your lunch hour from around the Auburn beat:

--AuburnUndercover landed an interview with Tubby last week, and fortunately for the Auburn Internets-at-large, it's not behind the paywall. Most of his responses are by-the-book--it was "time to move on," he says he resigned, he feels like he did a good job at Auburn--but I thought his gauge of the current lifespan of a coach at a school like Auburn was interesting:

The days of coaches spending long careers at one school are over, Tuberville says. Florida State’s Bobby Bowden and Penn State’s Joe Paterno are the last of a generation.

“If you do a good job at a school, you are going to be there for 7-10 years,” Tuberville said. “It’s gotten harder. The media is tougher. You have to be able to handle all the things that are coming at you, a lot of truths and a lot of untruths. That didn’t bother me. I was able to handle that pretty well, but I ran myself ragged. I tried to do too much.

Eh, maybe: Meyer and Saban both have lifetime contracts if they want them, the bottom's going to have to seriously fall out on Mark Richt for him to get the boot, Miles could end up having a nice long stay at LSU if Michigan doesn't come calling ... I think the SEC should still have its fair share of 10-plus-year tenures.

Tubby also writes his own fitting Auburn epitaph, in a sense:

“We beat a lot more people that we weren’t supposed to beat than we lost to people we were supposed to beat.”

This is true.

(One other note: it really was a rough week last week for Marshall, who apparently was unaware the name of the Ole Miss lineman who's having the movie made about him was Michael Oher, rather than Michael Orr. We all make mistakes, and I knew who he was talking about, but ... this dude was arguably the most famous offensive lineman in the SEC for the past three years or so.)

--Marquis Daniels has been carrying the torch as Auburn's only player in the NBA for a little while now. Despite the fact that Indiana didn't pick up the option on his contract, that shouldn't be changing any time soon: Daniels still has plenty of value as a back-up combo guard (particularly if he can stay healthy), but he was overpaid based on the relatively fat contract he signed with the Mavericks several seasons ago after a year under Don "Career Year" Nelson.

--Jay G. Tate's on vacation, but he's left behind some more quality stuff on Auburn's coaches. Here's a kind of follow-up to his previous look at Ted Roof--"Roof concocted a se­ries of awkward sets and cover­ages that gave the Gophers a strategic advantage; Minneso­ta's resurgence wasn't serendip­ity"--and here's a Q&A with Tommy Thigpen. Much of it centers on the importance of technology and sometimes even race in recruiting and staff-building. I thought this was particularly revealing:

"You ask somebody: Why did you choose a place? I'm talking about the 18-year-old kids. They'll tell you "it felt right." Most people say that feeling has a lot to do with people knowing your name and feeling like they have a lot in common. That's where I come in. I know people's names, the mama's name, the uncle's name, the school teacher's name."

Thus Big Cat Weekend: Auburn's staff wants Auburn to "feel right" above all else. It's worked so far.

--The OA-News previews LSU.

--Auburn rising sophomore Marcus Rowland won the 100 meters at the U.S. Junior National Championships by running a 10.02. This means that every second, he ran 10 meters. That's 32.8 feet. Every second. Marcus Rowland is fast.