The Works, Orangeout!-style

Number of reasons not to do this against Furman: -3. If there's any blog that's possibly more intrigued by Auburn uniform possibilities than the JCCW, it's Auburntron, and they proved it once again this week with a sweet series of NCAA '10-created alternate football unis. Well, most of the designs are more "sweet" in the "whoa, so that's what that would look like" sense more than the actual "sweet" sense, since the navy helmets and pants just don't quite work. But this look?



Money. Auburntron's posted a Photoshop preview of what it might sort of look like on a real-life Auburn player before ...



... and though this one would look a lot better with a navy stripe on the sleeve instead of more orange, either way you can see how much potential there is here. I don't it's the sort of gimmickry we'd want trotted out for a big game--the Dawgs kind of have the patent on that as far as the SEC goes, and even Tennessee knows it--but is there any reason not to give a walk-over past a I-AA patsy this kind of extra juice?

(One more brief uni-related link, for any long-time Birmingham residents out there: Uniwatch recently took a look at the CFL's brief expansion into the U.S., and have a couple of links to old pics of the Birmingham Barracudas' rather-hilarious outfits. I like a lot of things about the '90s, but professional sports uniforms aren't one of them.)

Tate, doin' work. The Auburn news is slow, but Jay G. Tate's handling that by making his own damn news at the HABOTN. That's perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it's not at all to say his profiles this week of Trooper Taylor and Kodi Burns are must-reads all the same. On Taylor:

I've said before that Auburn has the sellers and the truthers when it comes to recruiting. Taylor is the No. 1 seller. He's the guy who's laughing, shaking hands, dropping references, patting people on the back and creating a party atmosphere.

He is the best seller I've seen at Auburn. He can seem trendy to a 17-year-old kid and seem genuine to his 70-year-old grandmother in the same sitting. Taylor is a politician ...

At the same time, he doesn't strike me as being all that cavalier when the curtain drops. I don't think he's as happy-go-lucky as he seems. He is task-oriented. Taylor works through a list each day because things can get away from him. His conversational style, by definition, can lead him into tangential enterprises. He's a guy who can engage and disengage quickly. It has to be that way.

"Politician" is of course a word as loaded as they come, but since we've all known a pol or two in our time that we could only shake our heads at in terms of how well they worked a crowd or made you believe in whatever plan they were backing, I don't mind hearing Taylor described that way. Auburn needs those guys.

Tate also mentions that he hasn't seen enough from Taylor to visualize him as an offensive coordinator, but I have to think that's just been an effect of Taylor's current role. The dude's spent the last few years hanging around David Cutcliffe, Mike Gundy, and now Gus Malzahn. You'd have to be pretty thick not to have learned enough from guys like that to competently run an offense, and I don't think anyone's going to accuse Taylor of being thick any time soon.

As for the Burns piece, Tate makes the point that it's not Burns's ability to graps an offense that's been his problem--it's his ability to grasp the fundamentals of throwing a football at the college level. Tate's final prediction:

Burns again plays second fiddle.

I'm more optimistic, but Tate's obviously seen a hell of a lot more of Burns the last couple of years than I have.

BlAUgosphere. I didn't really think it was possible for me to get excited about a new baseball assistant, but PPL does the trick for new hire Link Jarrett:

1. Yes, the is an awesome baseball name. Continuing to prove the point that Baseball Players, and former players, always have the coolest names. Seriously, the name Link Jarrett sounds like either a) a 70’s Porn Star b) an 80’s Cop show or c) Awesome Baseball player name.

3. He comes from East Carolina. A team that went to a Super Regional and ended ranked #16 last year.

Elsewhere, JRS's most recent update from the land of Auburn players' Facebooks finds new roommates Clint Moseley and Tyrik Rollison in less-than-chipper moods ... though, you know, not about rooming together.

Sigh. By now I'm sure you've read Orson's highly enjoyable fisk of the latest Schmaul Schmineschmaum "column," so there's not much more to say about that. But I do have to point out this post at ESPN's SEC blog which not only links up the Schmineschmaum column at face value but adds a second link where readers can find the SEC-related opinions of none other than ... Colin Cowherd.

Those two links were posted on the same day Smart Football expertly broke down why offensive diversity is so rare in the NFL, Gate 21 beautifully eulogized the career of former Vol radio play-by-play man John Ward (complete with soundboard!), and Blutarsky's continuing coverage of the BCS fooferaw that, thankfully, means I don't have to waste my time with it. But no: the people whose opinions you really need to be reading, visitor to ESPN's SEC blog, are Schmineschmaum and Colin freaking Cowherd. I feel like I ought to be wearing a $5,000 suit when I say this, but seriously: Come on.

McNair. Don't want to take up too much of your time with media whining, but the coverage of this story--whether it be from blogs (as Orson Spencer illustrates) or mainstream columnists (ATVS on Whitlock: "Oh, dear Lord")--has been abominable.

Etc. Mike Herndon combines SEC football and Michael Jackson with surprising cleverness ... once again proving why Auburn would never want to be associated with it, this year's Chick-Fil-A kickoff game has sold out ... A Syracuse kicker commit comments on the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Hey, I LOL'd.