This is your brain on U.S. Soccer

Brain yesterday*: Shaken, stirred.

Brain this morning, after watching my DVR of the Unites States national team taking a 2-0 lead on Brazil in the final of a (mostly) major international tournament, defending valiantly for the better part of an hour before our defenders' legs finally began to betray them, and finally losing 3-2 in devastating fashion: liquefied, minced, shredded, pureed, scattered smothered and diced.

It's OK. It hurts, but it's OK. Our day is coming**.



*No, when agreeing to drive as part of a group trip two months ago, I did not take into account the possibility of the U.S. playing Brazil in the Confederations Cup final that same Sunday. Go figure.

**If someone wants to start a collection to persuade Cuomo to record a new, more polished version with Altidore, Demerit, Feilhaber, Spector, etc. name-dropped instead of Eddie Johnson and Pat Noonan, I'll gladly chip in my $20 or so.

Presser reax

Sorry for the lateness. Real Life AAARRGGH.



Video of said presser here; something approaching a transcript here.

An introductory press conference is like the laser-light show to close the amusement park; sure, it's nice to look at all the pretty lights, but you come for the roller coasters and thrill rides and to have your kids get an autograph from a dude sweating his life away inside a wool cartoon character's costume. Likewise, I watched the presser video and read the transcripts pretty closely, but Chizik convincing a single recruit-on-the-fence to re-commit would be bigger news.

Nonetheless, here's a few impressions ...

1. I'll give Chizik some credit for finessing that "Why did you leave Auburn if you love it so much?" question as well as he did. I don't think "Because I wanted to come back to Auburn" makes a lot of sense--has Chizik been reading his Catch-22?-- but it's as good an answer as there is. Zen-clever, if you ask me.

2. Most football coaches are physically impressive and/or good public speakers, so the fact that Chizik is physically impressive and a good public speaker doesn't count for a ton at the JCCW. But man, you have to admit that's a hell of a jawline he's got. We're talking Clark Kent-square. Friend-of-the-blog Justin compared it to Tom Glavine's:



and I think that's a pretty apt comparison. So, hey, he's got that going for him.

3. As for the actual content of what Chizik said, most of it was what you'd hope to hear. Recruiting and the staff is job No. 1, great, Auburn is the bestest place ever, you bet it is, the players and coaches and administration all needs to be one big Auburn Family, I hear ya boss. But not hearing that sort of stuff would be more noteworthy than actually hearing it since, hey, what else is he gonna say? Of mild interest were his comments specifically referring to beating the bushes with Alabama high school coaches--still doesn't really mean anything, but that's a better-sounding and more focused-sounding start than "Hey, we're gonna really recruit!", I guess.

4. Not everything was peachy-keen, however, in my humble opinion. Chizik "never deviated" from his "blueprint"? So the blueprint included demoting his coordinators and firing a couple of position coaches? Really? Just tell us you made a couple of mistakes and that you learned from them, please, rather than pretending everything was going just swimmingly in Ames before you came to Auburn. We can't really argue with Jacobs' claim that Chizik was "on the path at Iowa State to turn that program around," since we didn't get too far down the path, but we can agree the blueprint wasn't entirely perfect, can't we?

5. He claims he doesn't want to "mircomanage" his coordinators, but perhaps in the case of Wayne Bolt, his ISU DC, perhaps a bit of micromanagement was needed before his team landed at 111th in the nation in total defense? Just sayin'.

6. And here's the twin lowlights of the press conference: first, Chizik saying that his offensive philosophy is "200 years old":

On offense right now, you've got to run the football. That doesn't mean we're not going to throw the football. It means that you have to be physical. That doesn't pigeonhole me into any one offense. So many offenses are not one-dimensional anymore.

So, tell, me, bigshot wide receiver and quarterback recruits whose absence have been the bane of Auburn's offense for going on three seasons now ... how excited are you to play for a "200-year-old" offense that's "got to run the football" although don't worry, even if it doesn't have to throw the football, it "doesn't mean we're not going to throw the football." Got that? You excited?

I shouldn't be so snarky, I know that--Chizik has his philosophy and his style, and I though I wish he'd just made them sound a little jazzier and innovative than he did (and possibly they are), at least he's being upfront about them. What really bothers me isn't Chizik's style. What bothers me, kills me, is that that style in and of itself, regardless of how well it was working, is apparently a big part of what got him hired. Take it away, Fail Jacobs:

He'll re-energize Auburn with his physical, smash-mouth brand of football. All Auburn people will come together.

See, in the SEC, you can't get too hung up on "moving the football" or "scoring points" or even "winning football games." The first thing you gotta do, the most important thing, is just to go out there and smash somebody in the mouth. Doesn't matter why, doesn't matter what it accomplishes. In the SEC, you just gotta smash someone in the mouth, and let everything else take care of itself. You might ask why we'd refuse to even give the time of day to a coach who went 11-1 and then hire a coach who went 2-10 while competing in the same conference, but I know our fans. They're SEC fans, and they don't really care about those silly "wins" and "losses" just so long as they can see one guy smash another guy in the mouth.



Oh well. At least Jacobs didn't mention "SEC experience" as a big selling point to the hire, I mean, I think it's been proven pretty conclusively that it doesn't mean anything. If even us pissant bloggers are smart enough to figure it out, surely someone whose job it is to know ...

"We wanted someone who was a relentless recruiter, a guy with unbelievable character and integrity, someone who has been in the SEC and had been successful, somebody who has a passion for football -- Auburn football -- and his family."

*head explodes*

The Works, Digging in the Dirt-style

OK, so my developing musical tastes back in junior high didn't exactly mark me as the second coming of Lester Bangs, but at least I can say they improved pretty quickly: the third album I ever bought was this one, and it's held up a good bit better than ... that other stuff. Partly because of this track--



--which seemed appropriate as Auburn fans dig through the dirt of speculation, rumor, doubletalk, and the occasional crumb of hard news to figure out who ought to be and who will be our next head coach. Also: the image of HELP rising out of the soil at the 3:43 mark ... I mean, if you want to know what it looks like inside Fail Jacobs's head at the moment, that's it. (Also: this video just rocks. In some cases, it really is true they don't make 'em like they used to.)

You mentioned doubletalk? Yes, as in what Jimbo Fisher was spouting left and right at his Montgomery Quarterback Club appearance last night. You have to give Jimmy Sexton some modicum of credit--his guys do weasel words better than anyone's. To wit:

(T)here's nothing to talk about. I mean, Auburn's a great place. I've always had such respect for it and I've loved my time there, but there has never been any contact from my aspect to Auburn or Auburn's aspect to me, or with my agent. And it's a moot point. I mean, I have a lot of respect for them and all that, but there's nothing … everyone kept asking me down in Tallahassee, 'Why don't you make a statement?' Well, you don't make a statement when there's nothing there. There's no statement to make. And I wish them their best on their endeavors of where they're going for a head coach, because it's an outstanding program Like I said, there's a lot of people I care about and a lot of good friends I have there. They'll make a good choice, I know ... I am very content to be at Florida State. I'm happy to be at Florida State. We're a program that's on the rise. We're recruiting well. We improved from last season. I'm really looking forward to being there next year.

Fans: Say "I'm going to be at Florida St. next season."
Fisher: OK, I'm planning on being at Florida St. next season.
Fans: That's not what we asked you to say. Why won't you say what we asked you to say?
Fisher: There'd be no point in making any other statement. You're just being silly.
Fans: But you didn't say where you would be next season!?!
Fisher: I plan on being at Florida St.
Fans: *heads explode*

For the record: my default position from here on out is that any and all clients of Jimmy Sexton's who are rumored to be in the running for Auburn's job are not actually in the running and that this is all a Sextonesque ruse--Fisher included. Particularly since Florida St. doesn't sound at all like they're worried about losing him.

Gill. He became the first (I would say) "serious" official interviewee yesterday, and given how little traction any other candidate seems to be gaining, he's not just the frontrunner, he's a clear frontrunner at this point. I don't know if he's actually the only coach capable of keeping Auburn from the abyss--the deafening silence on Paul Johnson could very well mean the opposite of what you'd think it would mean--but the stock arrow is still climbing. I guess Tony Barnhart would be surprised.

As stated previously, I'd be satisfied with a Gill hire, but not ecstatic. Mostly for the reasons expounded upon in that post, but there's something else to consider, from Mr. SEC:

(T)here’s one big question that folks would have to ask about Turner Gill: Why didn’t Tom Osborne, his old coach, hire him to run the Nebraska program last year… rather than outsider Bo Pelini?

That question's kinda answered by Pelini's popularity with the Husker faithful and substantially greater level of experience, but it doesn't explain why Gill was passed over repeatedly for the offensive coordinator's position. Remember: the reason Gill wound up with the Packers on his way to Buffalo was because he couldn't get hired as a coordinator. Why not?

My guess would be: his X's and O's are probably good--witness Buffalo's sound offenses--but not great. This won't matter much if he's able to make a knock-your-socks-off hire at OC for Auburn, but I do think it's something to consider.

Garner. Still can't imagine he's a serious candidate for the head job, but a) perhaps it's helping lay the groundwork for some position or another at Auburn under New Auburn Head Coach b) Auburn's already getting some much-welcome positive PR out of it, so I think we can give the Auburn admin a thumbs-up for this, at least.

Then again, the public interviews of candidates who would be, as War Eagle Atlanta harshly-but-fairly dubbed them, "Mike Shula hires" only enhances the perception that Auburn's set sail up a certain fecal creek without means of propulsion. It's a two-part argument: first, that there's "nobody out there" worthwhile in the coaching pool, and second, that the Auburn admin doesn't have a plan to find anyone who is.

The first part, I believe, is blatantly false. Mike Leach, Brian Kelly, Paul Johnson: all three have impeccable program-building resumes and Auburn can offer all three both more ca$h and a better, stronger potential program than the ones they currently coach. Hell, pretty much everyone believes by this point Leach wouldn't just accept the job, he asked for it. Turner Gill will come if we ask him to. So will Charlie Strong. I don't think the world of Gary Patterson, but SEC teams have settled for worse before. The candidates are out there.

The question is whether Auburn will find them, and at this stage it seems like a very fair question indeed--I like Gill, but even his stunning charisma doesn't explain why we're fixated on a coach who had to get supremely lucky to go 8-5 in the MAC while not even returning the calls of the coach who went 11-1 in the Big 12 South. To date, confidence has not been inspired.

Then again, Alabama had just been turned down by Jim Leavitt when Nick Saban showed up. Michigan was talking about living with Brady Hoke when Rich Rodriguez fell into their lap. Auburn isn't quite the draw 'Bama and Michigan are, but the point holds: the coaching search ain't over 'til it's over. I think we all--certainly yours truly included--could probably stand to remember this as this thing grinds on.

Will. On the search: read.

Sigh. Not that you needed any further confirmation that this was the Season of DEATH, but Auburn landed just one player on the All-SEC first and second teams, Antonio Coleman. I think Sen'Derrick Marks--the only other Tiger to even make honorable mention--has a gripe, but it's hard to pick out anyone else who I think was honestly wronged, particularly when the defensive competition is stout enough that Rennie Curran's on the second team and Greg Hardy's sharing time with Marks in the honorable mention category. Maybe Clinton Durst--getting Auburn to third in the conference in net punting should have been worth honorable mention, I'd argue.

Dude, they're angrier about it than you are. I would encourage you, SEC fan, to really enjoy the impending Gator and Tide beatdowns in the BCS bowls, because man, I don't see a whole lot of win elsewhere. Georgia, maybe, but Ole Miss's secondary against Texas Tech? Vandy's O against BC's D? Cratering South Carolina against rising Iowa? Ugh.

But no matter how disappointed you are with the SEC's decline this season, I guarantee you it's nowhere near as disappointed as the officials at the Independence Bowl are. Located in Shreveport as it may be, any bowl with this kind of classic in its long and respectable history--



--shouldn't have to resort to pairing up Louisiana Tech and Northern Illinois in what's obviously the worst pairing on the entire bowl slate, one so noxious even ESPN's mid-major guy admits "there isn't a whole lot of appeal for this game unless you're a Louisiana Tech or Northern Illinois fan." Just don't look at us, Independence Bowl officials--Tennessee's the team that lost to Wyoming.

UPDATE: Oops:

The Works, Viva La Revolucion-style

Auburn's offensive position coaches celebrate their successful siege of Tony Franklin's offices.

OK, so that's a bit extreme. But maybe--maybe--not as extreme as you'd think. We all know (or believe, at least) by now that there was conflict between Tony Franklin and Auburn's other offensive coaches: Hugh Nall, Steve Ensminger, Greg Knox, Eddie Gran, etc. The HOT RUMOR which is a RUMOR and is UNSUBSTANTIATED and is probably not even all that HOT any more since it's reached me, and I don't exactly sit at the cool kids' table in the cafeteria that is the Auburn Internets if you get my drift, and it's probably ALL OVER the state's talk radio that I can't listen to, is this:

You may recall that Rod Smith told everyone Franklin was running routes for his receivers at practice Tuesday. The pretty-well-universal reaction to this tidbit was "Wha? What was Knox busy doing?" The HOT RUMOR is saying that Franklin had gotten fed up with the other coaches to the point of deciding to coach his offense from top-to-bottom: coaching all aspects of the team at practice, gameplanning alone, relying on no one. As this understandably rankled the position coaches, they then went to Tubby and told him they would no longer work with Franklin. And so, on Wednesday, Tubby and Franklin had words and at that point Tony Franklin's Auburn tenure really did, in fact, =DEATH.

Again: this is naught but a HOT RUMOR you are probably ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH and you the JCCW reader are encouraged to view it skeptically. However: it jibes nicely with Smith's account of Tuesday's practice, does it not, and adds a whole new spin to Franklin's "They told me to get lost" kiss-off, no? The bottom line is this: whatever you as an Auburn fan believe about the details of Franklin's dismissal, it's obvious now that expecting Tubby's old guard to seamlessly mesh their alleged talents into Franklin's vision was madness, a fool's errand from the very beginning. (UPDATE: Dueling, far less Franklin-friendly rumor posted by a fan over at Track'Em. Wheeeeee! This is fun!)

No, I didn't see it that way to start with, but I've never met any of these people. Tommy Tuberville, however, works with them on a daily basis and this was still his expectation anyway. He was apparently willing to hinge the fate of the season, the entire direction of the program, on Tony Franklin combining with Hugh Nall, Steve Ensminger, Greg Knox, and Eddie Gran to create Oklahoma's offense. Maybe he also expected Brad Lester to anonymously participate in a top-secret government project in which a pair of wings were surgically grafted onto his back, which he would then use to fly the ball into the end zone*. I'm not sure one expectation is so much more outlandish than the other.

I know, I know, 20/20 hindsight. But hindsight is all we fans have. It's the head coaches of the world who get paid to show off their fancy foresight, and in this case it's not debatable that Tommy Tuberville didn't show any off at all. Hiring Tony Franklin was, to put it as politely as I can, a gross miscalculation, and Tubby's second in three tries when it comes to filling this particular position. At least he admits it, but what else can he do?

He can take Steve Ensminger's play-calling abilities out for another spin. Oh, right, that's what he can do. Except that this time the offense will have practiced something completely different for the last 10 months, has no starting quarterback, will allegedly have its plays called from a playbook Ensminger has no experience with, and won't have the services of Jason Campbell, Cadillac Williams, Ronnie Brown, Marcus McNeill, etc. Aside from all of that, though, it'll be just like 2003 all over again! I'm sure it's all going to work out just fine. Just ... fine.

Just.

Fine.

*head explodes*

Continue the teeth-gnashing! a Jay G. Tate reader provides us Auburn's South Park-derived long-term offensive business model:



Grotus has a request:

Auburn fans and bloggers, I implore you. I'm begging you to please, someone, anyone explain how the following scenario makes any kind of sense, whatsoever:

1. We fire our offensive coordinator late in the season and hire a new offensive who teaches a totally unfamiliar spread system.
2. We adjust recruiting strategies to fill needs for the spread, but we do not allow our new OC to run that system as it needs to be run.
3. Then we fire him - second mid-season OC firing in less than a year, mind you - for not running the offense all that good.
4. Having fired the only man who knows how to run the spread, right down to the basic receiver routes, we claim that we already understand the spread and insist that we will keep running it.

Sorry. Can't help you. TWER's Jeremy sees it as karmic backlash for abandoning the man who bailed us out of the 2003 debacle:

Despite Tuberville’s makes-sense insistence that the spread could beat back the pimps of Sabanism come signing day, the offensive woes of 2008 seem almost karmic, a seek-ye-first punishment for what we all (not so) secretly feared to be a season-too-soon bailing on Borges. Meanwhile, nice guy Al roams our nostalgia in Auburn pajamas, probably just as crushed as we are.

Oh well. At least the last time we were in this predicament we found someone to save us. I'm sure the candidates will be lining up. Right, J.M.?

(A)fter what happened yesterday (Tiger Jack on Auburn.nu called the scene of Tony Franklin loading up his SUV after this dismissal in front of the cameras “Spread Man Walking,” which is brilliant) I don’t see the decline of offensive brain trust at Auburn changing soon. Who in their right mind would accept the job, knowing that a band of jackals (or worse yet, complete dumbasses) possibly lay in wait, ready to sabotage their best efforts to change things, rattle the ol’ cage a bit and bring in some fresh air to the offensive side of the ball? A fool would accept this job under the current terms.

I wish I could disagree, but J.M.'s list of Auburn's offensive casualties makes a compelling argument. It would be a crying shame if Eddie Gran had to leave the Plains and I do think Hugh Nall's done good work at times, but after the events of the past week it seems almost impossible that Tubby's going to find any quality candidates while still demanding the current crew stays on staff.

UPDATE: Commenter Lovecrafty takes Tiger Jack's brilliant (yes, I agree, who wouldn't) assessment and converts into handy LOLFranklin form:



Lastly: If you're interested in my responses to Razorback Expats' Auburn-centric questions (and why wouldn't you be?), those are up right here.

*Note that even this wouldn't have been a long-term solution, as Lester would have suffered a sprained right wing against Southern Miss.

These are the things that drive me completely freaking insane

I don't spend too much time here, I don't think, railing against the incompetence of the mainstream media. ESPN and their craven, unholy ilk are just such a phenomenally fat, wide target that I don't think it's worth the effort for someone like your humble Auburn Blogger to even string up the bow 99 percent of the time. I'd rather leave it to the professionals.

But there are times I just have to blow off a little ESPN-derived steam, because unlike politicians or civil servants I expect some tiny, insignificant level of professionalism and competence from my college football media and it's a bit upsetting when I don't get even that. Last week's Bruce Feldman "Hey, even though USC has a long and hard-won tradition of spitting the bit against inferior Pac-10 teams and there's been one season in the last two decades where both the Big 12 and SEC champs went undefeated, let's go ahead and assume in September it's all going to play out just like that" nonsense was one such occasion, which made it all the merrier when Oregon St. blew all those ridiculous column inches to beautiful orange bits. It was so merry, in fact, I've decided to commemorate the occasion with my own 19th-century French literature-inspired LOLthing:



The joy didn't last, however, as over the weekend the Worldwide Leader handed us not one but two examples of such outrageous college football ignorance from people allegedly paid to cover college football that the bile and rage that bubbled up demands I share them with you.

Example the first: during the Louisville-UConn game Friday night, Husky quarterback Tyler Lorenzen* drops back, is swarmed under, and attempts to throw the ball away. But with no receiver in the area and the ball well short of the line-of-scrimmage, the officials flag him for intentional grounding after a brief conference.

This is when either play-by-play guy Bob Wischusen or color guy Brock Huard (yes, I looked that up just for the SHAME of it) tells viewers "Lorenzen should have just taken the sack there, rather than draw the penalty."

Goodness f'ing gracious. There is no difference between a grounding call--spot foul and loss of down--and a sack. None. This is a basic understanding of college football, the sport which you are being paid to announce. And, of course, there was no correction. How is there any freaking way neither you nor your broadcast partner nor any of the producers with their voice in your earpiece know this extremely simple fact about the rules? HOW!?! ANSWER ME.

Example the second is even more egregious: in the "Gameday Final" wrap-up, Ivan Maisel writes the following:

1. October begins with 18 undefeated teams. Vanderbilt and Northwestern are among them. USC and Georgia are not. The Big 12 has five unbeatens, all 4-0, but don't get too excited. The teams with losses have exactly one victory against a team from an automatic-bid conference among them. TCU, which is 4-1 after its 35-10 loss at No. 2 Oklahoma, has beaten Stanford.

So many questions for you here, Ivan:

1. If your point is to tell us not to get excited about those undefeated teams, wouldn't it make more sense to tell us something about them rather than the other teams in the conference?

2. What in the name of God's green earth do you mean by "automatic-bid conference"? Do you mean the BCS conference? Why the hell wouldn't you just say "BCS conference" like every single other college football writer on the planet?

3. Do you honestly not know that TCU is not in the Big 12? Do you? Where exactly have you been for the last 10 years? I thought you were covering and writing about college football, or at least that's what it's looked like with your byline appearing on all manner of columns and stories and so forth, but I guess I was wrong because there are freaking sea urchins who can tell you that TCU is not in the Big 12. And yet you, a man who allegedly makes his living by writing insightful things about college football, apparently cannot. Seriously: HOW IN THE HELL do you even have to think about this? How can none of your editors have noticed? How has this post been up ever since late Saunday night and no one's bothered to correct it? How can you ... you're being paid a paycheck to ... AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

*head explodes*

*And not husky quarterback Jared Lorenzen. Just so we're clear.