A numbered series of true stories from an Auburn road trip, part 1 (pregame)

1. It's last Friday morning, about an hour before our little motley crew is due to depart Ann Arbor for the 700-plus-mile trip to my brother's place in Birmingham, and I'm carrying my backpack, camping chairs, and a couple grocery bags' worth of chips and other assorted tailgating supplies out to my car.

Man, I think to myself. If after all this, we show up and Todd throws two first-quarter picks and Auburn loses 35-3 and we only don't walk out of J-Hare in the fourth quarter because we've gone to this kind of effort to be there, it's going to seriously suck. It could happen. We looked like 99.4 percent pure crap last weekend. This whole trip is a kind of gamble, a roll of the dice, the best shot we've got but still just a shot in the dark. Maybe not the dark. A shot in the twilight.

So it's with a low-level ripple of butterflies in the stomach that I crank my car and pull out on my way to my buddy's place, where we're meeting up. The radio automatically picks back up where I'd left it off, on track 8 of the Hold Steady's CD Stay Positive, a track also titled "Stay Positive." A few seconds go by, and the chorus blasts in:

Whoa-a-ho-ho! Who-a-ho-ho! We gotta stay positive!
Whoa-a-ho-ho! Who-a-ho-ho! We gotta stay positive!

I turn it up, roll down the window, notice there is quite literally not a cloud in the sky, and remember that the alternative to this weekend is not going to watch the Auburn-LSU game at my favorite sporting venue in one of my favorite cities on Earth. And that Tommy Tuberville will be coaching my team as an underdog against the No. 6 team in the country.

Hell yeah, I'm gonna stay positive.

2. Every single summer as a kid and well into my teens, my family would make at least one trip down AL-highway 59 to Gulf Shores, where we'd spend a week or possibly just a long weekend hunting intact sand dollars and making housechore-centric wagers over games of putt-putt. But the best part of those trips was always, always spotting the little signs that you were getting close, that the beach was just a few short miles away and waiting: the Bay Minette water tower; palm or palm-like trees growing beside roadside seafood shacks; and my favorite, the driveways paved with bleached seashells instead of gravel.

So it's the little things that get the weird nostalgia/anticipation mix going as we head south, past Dayton, past Cincinnati, past Louisville and Nashville and on into the Heart of Dixie: the Chick-Fil-A logo and the still-disappointing "Closed Sunday" warning on the blue exit signs; the cardboard cut-out of Dolly Parton alongside the Dollywood display in the Tennessee Welcome Center, which prompts a few seconds of failed brainstorming in the men's room on how we might successfully steal her away with us; and of course the giant roadside rocket just after crossing over the Alabama border, so any visitors to our fair state immediately know better than to question the manhood of the residents therein.

We find our collective favorite mile marker in Louisville, though, at a bar called the Grandville Inn just off the U-of-L campus (where, the Interwebs tell us, we can find good burgers). We're waiting for a plate of jalapeno poppers when out of the kitchen pops a young woman with copious tattoos along her arms, wearing a wife-beater, black jeans, and--in the capper--a Tennessee Vols hat. (EDIT: I cannot, cannot believe I forgot to mention this the first go-round, but she was also stunningly pregnant. Like, eight months' worth. I swear.) She would be an Internet legend already if my friend--who I'll call "Dave"--had succeeded in snapping a cell-phone pic rather than fumbling around as she wrapped up her conversation with the bartender and walked out.

And even as we mocked Dave for the lost opportunity and have our cruel chuckle at Anonymous Female Vol Fan living up every inch to the nation's preconceived notions of Anonymous Female Vol Fans, the Southern SEC fan in me can't help but think: Yeaaaaaaaah, these are my people.

3. We get into Birmingham just early enough to head out with my brother to the Hoover On Tap, where it's Sweetwater 420 all around ... except for me, because I got hooked on the On Tap's "Snakebites" (1/2 Guinness, 1/2 Woodchuck) back in the day and need my nostalgia fix. (I'm lame. I know this already.) Eventually we have a round of Alabama Slammers and upon finding out three of us are from just a bit out of town, the bartender tells us a joke.

"How do you know they invented the toothbrush in Mississippi?" he says. "Because if it had been invented anywhere else, it would be the teethbrush."

I'd wager I've heard it before, but still: jokes about Mississippi, a cloud of cigarette smoke in the On Tap, a round of Southern Comfort mixed with something sweet, and of course a brother who's ready and willing to help breakdown what we can expect from Auburn the next day. It's damn good to be back.

4. Tempting as it is to tote a WAR BLOG EAGLE.com sign down to Gameday and elbow my way into the camera angle (just think of the hits! oh, the glorious traffic!), no one including me is interested in waking up that abominably early. We leave around 9:30ish, taking Highway 280 down because, well, we wouldn't be able to stop at the Chelsea Winn-Dixie for our beer and tailgating food otherwise. And seeing as how the first thing that comes to one of my friend's minds when I mention Winn-Dixie is the dog movie, this is obviously a necessary move.

We buy our burgers and sausage and Miller Lite and plastic cups and plates and Winn-Dixie-brand buns and we're set, though as a group three of us make a collective mistake when we overdo the joshing of friend No. 4 when he grabs a four-pack of the fascinatingly horrific-looking Bud Chelada. He puts it back. Nuts. That would have been entertaining, almost as much as the Tide fan in crimson Crocs and camouflage pants.

Don't think that's not to say I'm not happy to see him, though. I missed the Tide fans in crimson Crocs and camo pants, just as I missed the cashier's far-side-of-Shelby County drawl, so thick I almost hug her.

5. Unless I'm mistaken, I've never mentioned my hometown by name before on the blog. It won't matter for anyone not already familiar with East Alabama/Lake Martin geography, but it's Dadeville. I'm from Dadeville, DHS class of 1997.

So naturally we turn off the highway. We drive past the house I grew up in, past the county courthouse where I failed my first driving test, past the Piggly Wiggly and the old Hardee's (long since having suffered the same fate as the empty KFC out on 280, soon to be a Mexican joint according to the sign) and the high school, where I see they've named the band room for an old family friend who taught both my brothers and whose daughter I graduated with. Good for him.

A lot of little things like that have changed, and maybe it doesn't appear quite as vibrant, shall we say, as during the proverbial good old days. But at a glance the city still looks more-or-less the same as when I left it--not that in rural Alabama this is the least bit surprising. It's reassuring. I've come back to enjoy the same game day, the same Auburn, the same 10-9 sort of victory I enjoyed the last time I watched these two teams play in person. Change would be a bad omen.

6. As Paul Simon once sang, truly "these are the days of miracle and wonder." He was sort of being ironic, but I'm not, not with the set up we've got going at our tailgate (at the lot on Donahue next to the railroad tracks). True, it's not nearly as sweet as one of the 42-inch HDs we see scattered across the tailgating landscape on our walkabout later, but as I mentioned Friday, we do have a fancypants portable WiFi router and a buddy with a Slingbox--so we wind up watching Troy battle Ohio State over the Internet as we grill, drink, etc. Miracle and wonder indeed. (Here's some irony for you: because the Slingbox is connected to a cable box back in Ann Arbor, we're sitting smack in the heart of JP/Lincoln Financial/Raycom country and can't get the Alabama game. Not that after the halftime score we'd want to.)

As the game goes to commercial, a voice intones that "This ... is the Big Ten Network." We feel 99.9999 percent certain this is the first time those words have ever reached human ears within the city limits of Auburn, and very likely the first time in the entire history of the state of Alabama.

7. Appropriately full of beer and grease and assorted other food-like substances (Mmmmm ... Ranch Wavy Lay's), we head off for the obligatory tour of Auburn, and the tour--if you are me and you haven't stomped around the ol' stomping grounds for a couple of years--is wonderful. Toomer's. Samford Hall. Haley Center. The mandatory photo op alongside the Auburn University sign on College. There's also a quick peek at the Gameday set, where the cordoned-off area for sign-carriers that looks an acre wide on TV turns out to be no more than about 25 yards square. Huh. Squeezing in there would probably feel like going to a sold-out show at the Variety Playhouse, but with the band weirdly facing away from you the whole time.

Although outfitted with shakers so as to prevent any confusion about where their allegiances for the weekend lie, my buddies are each wearing Michigan shirts. This results in a handful of "Go Blue!-War Eagle!" cross-conference exchanges and welcomes, some (mostly) good-natured ribbing along "Hey, you guys at the wrong game!" lines, and unfortunately a couple of chants of "O-H!" in their direction, which is understandable because of the longstanding beef between Auburn fans and Michigan fans. Oh, wait. Scratch that. It's understandable because tools are going to be tools whether you're in Auburn, Ann Arbor, or anywhere else.

The majority of Auburn folks we meet are friendly, though (of course). And it could certainly be worse: as we sit down to plow through a couple of combos at the Chick-Fil-A (because they are closed on Sundays, after all, and this our Last Chance) there's a couple of LSU fans calmly eating their own meal in the restaurant. "If you're a Michigan fan in Columbus," one my friends says, "you can't do that. You just wouldn't want to." O-H!

On our way out of the Chick-Fil-A a conversation strikes up with an Auburn fan who asks why my friends would wear Michigan gear to an Auburn game. It's a fair question, but: wouldn't you wear your Auburn gear to a Michigan game? (I would. And have.)

8. On our way over to Tiger Walk we find the ESPN Radio stage, complete with Scouts, Inc.'s Todd McShay and Chris Fowler his own self:



who's definitely rocking the dressed-for-radio look. Which I can totally dig--who wants to spend their entire college football Saturday in a starched shirt and tie?

9. I've been to Tiger Walks that resembled a mob scene before, but Saturday's proves to be the mobbiest one of them all, so mobby the most I can see of the players as they go by is the very tops of their heads. I miss Tubby completely.

I couldn't care less. There's a guy in a tree with a hanged stuffed tiger (an LSU tiger, as it clearly states in marker on its side) leading cheers. There's the band. There's a thousand other screaming fans in orange t-shirts and Bo jerseys and gameday buttons. I've got my shaker going and I'm yelling Give 'em hell! and Kick 'em in the butt Big Blue! and A-U-B-U-R-N! at the tops of my lungs, and it's not an exaggeration to say that after three years away, it feels like some small puzzle piece of my soul has been pressed back into place. War Damn Eagle.

Seriously: War. Damn. Eagle. As we chant our way through "War Eagle" one more time (GO GO GO!), I'm still not ready to guarantee an Auburn victory. But I know it's not going to be an LSU blowout. It can't be. Impossible. Not today. Not after this. Glory, glory.

10. As Tiger Walk breaks up, we pass a guy wearing a t-shirt that reads "LSUCKS." That's OK. Maybe even cool if I'd had more to drink. What's not OK is that this t-shirt is purple and printed in gold letters. Dude. No one cares what the t-shirt says if it's printed in the enemy's colors. Come on.

11. After Tiger Walk breaks up we meet up with none other than the esteemed Will Collier, who's been kind enough to provide a couple of our tickets to the game. Even if I'm stuffed already, I have to help myself to a quick helping of the Colliers' bucket of Guthrie's. Outside of the likes of Applebee's and such, there's no such thing as chicken fingers in Ann Arbor, so I feel a bit like a bear readying for hibernation: I've got to stock up before the long, cold, harsh chicken-finglerless Michigan winter.

12. The sun is fading and finally, finally, it's time to start heading towards Jordan-Hare Stadium, that giant looming Christmas present I've had to wait all day to unwrap. We're probably about 50 yards from the west entrance when we fall in behind some dude in his 50s wearing an orange collared shirt and screaming weirdly at what appear to be random Auburn passersby.

"Get fired up! Fire up!" he yells at some guy who gives him an odd look and keeps moving. "We need you! We need you!"

Part of me goes: Whoa. Dude. But as I hand over my ticket, and start walking up the ramp to our seats, and feel that old anxious thump of the heart that only comes in the last few minutes before kickoff of a big Auburn game in the Loveliest Village, and walk out of the little tunnel and take in the sea of orange and the green of Pat Dye Field stretched below us, echoing with the saber-rattling noises of warm-ups and half-overrun with my heroes in navy blue, I think: This is it. He's right. Fire up, Auburn. Fire up. We're here. We've made it. Let's do this. Come on, Auburn. Come on, Tigers.

War Eagle.

(Part 2 coming later today.)

Double-barreled blogpollery

No "SECond Look" this week as I didn't watch anything televised and the only halfway interesting development outside of Auburn-LSU was Vandy's continued Annus mirabilis that I covered in increasingly stupid-looking fashion last week.

So, without further ado, here's the JCCW's Week 4 ballot in the ...




1.Georgia. The Dawgs went from posting a minus-37 total yardage deficit at Carolina to a plus-249 surplus at Arizona St. Given that the Sun Devils look like an upper-echelon Pac-10 team and that the 'Cocks are expected to now finish behind Vandy, I think it's fair to say Georgia's doing its part in making the SEC look good.

2. Florida. Man, remember when Sports Illustrated was putting the Florida-Tennessee preview on the cover? This year it was kinda the third-most anticipated SEC match-up of the day ... and somehow still lived down to that billing.

3. LSU. If Jarrett Lee's second half on the Plains isn't a fluke, the rest of the West can start heading for the exits. Everything is, infuriatingly, in place.

4. Alabama. Utter domination of Hogs along both lines way more encouraging (or discouraging, as the Auburn fan's case may be) than the final score, fueled in part by Casey Dick contracting the Christmas spirit three months too early.

5. Auburn. As with the LSU game last year, Tubby had his guys more than ready to play. As with the LSU game last year, it just wasn't enough against a team that was just a little-bit-better across the board, plain and simple.

6. Vanderbilt. This is a public call for the Elias Sports Bureau to figure out if there's ever been an SEC team that had been outgained by 8.15 yards a game, on average, and still wound up at 4-0. It's like the 'Dores saved up all their luck over the last 20 years just for this season.

7. South Carolina. Hard to say the letdown against a decent (for I-AA) Wofford team was all that unsurprising after the kidney punch of the Georgia game.

8. Ole Miss. This is what the Vanderbilt secondary does to people: 12-25, 184 yards, four picks. Somehow I don't think Jevan Snead was expecting his "Welcome to the SEC" moment to come at home against the 'Dores.

9. Tennessee. The one thing Vol fans have always been able to count on with Fulmer is his team bouncing back after they'd been embarrassed, the Vols fighting ther way out of a tough spot. You would think those conditions would have applied after the UCLA loss and Fat Phil's alleged fury in its wake, but, you know, 30-6. Oh well.

10. Kentucky. Louisville looking as good as they did against Kansas St. might have been the biggest development in Kentucky's yawner of a season-to-date since the 'Cats beat the Cards in the first place.

11. Arkansas. If the SEC was a sandlot baseball game and I'm picking teams, at this point I'm probably turning to the other kid and saying "You know what? You can have both those guys."

12. Mississippi St. Please pay no attention to how badly Georgia Tech beat the Bulldogs as opposed to how badly Auburn defeated this same team. It's none of your concern. Please, for the safety of others, keep moving. Nothing to see here.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE, as in the JCCW's Week 4 Blogpoll ballot, which I'm going to go ahead and get out of the way now. Behold:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Georgia	1
2	Southern Cal	1
3	Florida	1
4	LSU	10
5	Oklahoma	2
6	Missouri	1
7	Penn State	4
8	Alabama	1
9	South Florida	2
10	Wisconsin	2
11	Texas	1
12	Brigham Young	3
13	Wake Forest	3
14	Vanderbilt	5
15	Utah	2
16	Boise State	10
17	Oklahoma State	4
18	Texas Tech	4
19	Virginia Tech	4
20	Ohio State	5
21	Auburn	8
22	Kansas	4
23	East Carolina	17
24	Oregon	14
25	California	1

Dropped Out: TCU (#18), North Carolina (#20), Georgia Tech (#24).

The breakdown:

1-7: The cream o' the crop, now featuring LSU after as tough a road win as any team has posted yet this year. Georgia goes back on top after sorta matching USC's home obliteration of Ohio St. with the road domination of the Sun Devils. Mizzou is held back by the defense, Oklahoma and Penn St. by having still played no one of true consequence.

8-11: BCS teams dealing with the weight of not disposing of their schedule's cupcakery in the fashion of the teams above. 'Bama's Clemson win and USF's over Kansas keep them a step ahead of Texas and Wisky--the Badgers are hurt by Fresno's reputation suffering under the weight of both their escape from Toledo and Rutgers' collapse.

12-16: Non-traditional powers still rocking the undefeated record against a worthy slate of foes or, in Boise's case, a single exquisite scalp. BYU's domination puts them out in front, though there's almost no separation in this group behind them.

17-18: The Red Raiders and Cowboys are the last teams I'm willing to put into the poll based on reputation alone; with the best victory between them either road wins over pitiful Washington St. or Nevada, they've accomplished next-to-nothing as of yet.

19-25: One-loss teams fill out the poll, with Virginia Tech leading the way by virtue of two decent wins (Ga. Tech, North Carolina) the other contenders here can't match. OSU, Auburn, and Kansas squeeze in based on their future potential and the quality of their losses--something ECU, Oregon, and Cal can't quite match, though each of those three still have better wins on the toteboard than the remaining competitors for these slots, which include ...

Waitlist: ... one-loss teams Clemson (not that good?), Michigan St. (ND = ???), and Georgia Tech, who I had in last week before deciding the win over Boston College wasn't enough. Undefeated teams in the mix are Ball St., Tulsa, Kentucky, Northwestern, UConn, and TCU, the last of which I let drop out when their New Mexico win started looking less impressive.

WAIT! IF YOU READ THE JCCW WITHIN THE NEXT 30 MINUTES, YOU'LL ALSO RECEIVE THIS PROGRAMMING NOTE: Posting will be light tomorrow as I work on the LSU travel post and perhaps the site redesign. Just FYI.

No.

Tony Franklin in the wake of the LSU loss:

The biggest mistake I made is not throwing the ball enough. We threw it 30-something times I think, 32, but if I went back and had to do it over again I would have thrown it 10 or 15 more times. The things that we struggled with in running the football, we probably couldn't fix that night. I should have thrown the ball more.

I speak on behalf what I'm sure is nearly every Auburn fan in existence* when I tell you, Tony: No. While perhaps in this very specific situation throwing the ball more might have helped, that is not why the offense was not more successful Saturday night. Throwing the ball more is not a long-term solution.

The reason the offense struggled was not because it didn't pass more often. It was because it could not run the ball. It ran for 1.9 yards a carry. The solution to the offense's struggles, then, is not--as you seem to suggest here--to simply abandon the run. It's to make sure that next time the "things that we struggled with" in the running game are less of an issue. The solution is to ensure that when the offense tries to run, it succeeds.

Because you will have to keep running. Have to. All the chatter you and everyone else has heard from birth about running the ball and stopping the run "to win in this league" is chattered for a reason. One-dimensional offenses do not survive the SEC. Let a secondary and pass rush like Georgia's, Tennessee's, or even Vandy's go into a given down knowing there's a 80 percent chance the play call will be a pass, and the offense will have substantially less success than it even had against LSU.

I don't have a problem with your apologies, Tony, as frequent as they have become. Just apologize for the right thing, please. Not calling as many passes is the wrong thing. Not figuring out a way to make the Auburn running game consistent--specifically, consistent enough that it could grind out a first down or two and end the game on Auburn's next-to-last possession--is the right thing.

Because I refuse to believe it was impossible to run the ball Saturday night, even against the best defensive line in the country. We have an outstanding offensive line. We have a stable of talented running backs. We have willing and capable blockers in our receiving corps. In you, we allegedly have a creative and intelligent offensive coordinator willing to think outside of the box when he needs to attack a problem.

We saw this Saturday in the passing game. With the area near the line of scrimmage jammed and LSU attacking the run and passes into the flat so aggressively, you called more deep passes and--even more importantly--moved the pocket to help buy Chris Todd the time to complete them. After three games of general inefficiency, the passing game showed marked improvement, against a substantially better opponent.

So why has the same relative ingenuity not been applied to the running game? Over and over and over again you called for the same zone read play to one side or the other. The zone read is a terrific play--there's a reason Pat White and Steve Slaton rode it to a Sugar Bowl win, a reason Dennis Dixon's Oregon team was in position to play for a national title until his knee fell apart.

But that reason is that the quarterback is a threat to keep the ball and pick up major yardage without having to hand the ball off. When he's not, the backside defensive end (usually unblocked in this scheme) is free to crash down towards the running back, confident that even if the QB keeps, either he or his teammates can recover.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I say that Chris Todd, try as he might, is not a threat to pick up major yardage. And that Kodi Burns is. I don't doubt that Burns may not be as precise a passer, don't doubt that he may not have as firm a grasp of the offense as you may prefer. But to build the running game around a play that hinges on the quarterback's running ability and then select as the quarterback to run that play the quarterback who doesn't have that ability as opposed to the one that has gobs of it is madness. What were the chances of Auburn running on three consecutive downs to pick up a first at the end of the game with Todd in the game? What were they with Burns? Without a doubt, without any kind of argument or question, they were exponentially better with the latter. So why--in a situation where the best result for Auburn, also without question is three consecutive runs for a first down--was Burns not in the game? The only possible answer is because he had not been in the game to that point. But whose lack of foresight is that?

The running game's struggles go far beyond that, however. Mario Fannin has shown on multiple occasions he can accomplish things with the ball in his hands; why did he never touch it on an end-around or reverse? Brad Lester's slashing ability makes him a better fit for this offense than Ben Tate, rugged as he might be, evidenced not only by Lester's 3.7-to-2.4 yards-per-carry advantage against LSU but that Tate has lost 29 yards this year to Lester's 9 (even per-carry, Tate has lost yardage at twice the rate Lester has); so why after the game's first carry did Tate carry nine consecutive times? Aside from personnel issues, why was there never any misdirection plays? Why no screens to the running backs as a kind of long handoff when the short handoffs weren't working? Why no handoffs to Robert Dunn? Why has a second, blocking back not made an appearance all season? Where is the commitment to finding a way to making the running game work rather than sending Ben Tate headfirst into a mob of defenders for the 16th time?

Unlike the multitude of Auburn fans surrounding me at the LSU game who seem convinced the Spread Eagle is doomed to fail as a matter of consequence, I believe your offense can succeed, Tony. But only if it is balanced. And right now, I don't see balance. I see one aspect of the offense developing and growing, and one aspect that appears--to me--sacrificed at the altars of 1) quelling any hint of a quarterback controversy (good luck) 2) an unwillingness to use every available option for reasons I don't understand.

Tubby has always seemed to grasp how important this is and he still seems to. Let's hope he can pass that understanding down a notch on the coaching ladder this week, or Tennessee's secondary--much, much better than LSU's--might make it much, much clearer for you.

Pointless aside: on what planet has Charles Goldberg found Auburn fans willing to award Franklin "brownie points" for airing it out 50 times a game? The hell?

*The parents of the wide receivers count too, right?

"Anybody care what this guy thinks?"

Dr. James Gundlach, in a Pete Thamel-penned post titled "Former Professor Disagrees with Auburn Ruling":

The problem is that many people, including myself before I got involved in trying to protect academic standards at Auburn, believe that the N.C.A.A. does enforce academic standards among athletes,” Gundlach said. “The truth is that they are only interested in increasing the cash flow to the business of big-time college athletics.

Cue the Simpsons sound clip:

HOMER: Anybody care what this guy thinks?

CROWD: NO!

Worst. "Journalism." Ever.

Monday knee-jerk: Human after all

This is going to come off as beyond trite, a statement from a strange fifth dimension of trite where we all walk around sounding like NBC's Olympic sideline reporters dithering about "guts" and "heart" as they cover a sport they understand nothing about, but it's true and I'm saying it anyway: One of the great things about college football is that makes you feel like a kid again.

The overwhelming majority of the time, this is a Good Thing. When you are a kid, every single thing you encounter or do is worth getting WAY EXCITED or WAY SAD about. A quarter's worth of rubber bouncy ball you can throw hard enough so that it bounces from the floor to the ceiling and back is a week's worth of entertainment. A dead bird beneath the sill of the window it crashed into will start the waterworks up not only for an immediate half-hour, but again at dinner, and again as your Mom tucks you in for the night. We can't help but eventually grow into thinking of the ball as just a piece of rubber and the bird as just one dead bird in a flock of hundreds, but it's an awfully dull life you lay out for yourself if you don't feel that way about something on a regular basis. Every week for 14 weeks in August, September, October, and November--and, with luck, one day in late December or early January--college football gives us all a reason to either dance with joy or cry in frustration.

This is important. Auburn-LSU is important. We don't follow college football because we want to bring back the repeated thumping of the heart and swoop in the guts that come with being nine; we follow college football because when the next-biggest thrill of the week is a particularly good rerun of House on USA you hadn't seen before, we freaking need them.

Of course, there's a flip side. Having access to the emotion of a nine-year-old also means putting away the rational thought processes of the 29-year-old, which is how a bunch of college-age kids dressed up in plastic armor become your heroes. There's no point in pretending that's not what they are. They are gifted in ways that allow them to win battles we could never even compete in, to defeat the villains we hate but can do nothing about. They're the ones who will prevent the crushing sadness of defeat and give us all the euphoria of victory. They'll Save the Day. And so despite the fact you are 29, you spend all last week believing the same things about Auburn's defense you believed about Dad growing up. They can fix anything. Everything will be OK as long as they're around. There's nothing they can't do.

There is always a point, however--when he gets the family hopelessly lost on vacation, say, or slices his hand wide open carving the Thanksgiving turkey, or something like that--at which you realize that as much as you love and respect your Dad, he's not Superman. He can make mistakes, however forgivable. It's a realization that's inevitable, and even necessary--but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like bloody hell itself.

And so we finally come to halftime of Auburn against LSU, the stadium still buzzing the buzz of thousands with Gabe McKenzie's pick-six and the Good Tigers' 14-3 lead. I had no illusions about the game casually ending with Auburn two possessions in front--it's simply not the way this series works anymore--but I had a hard, hard time imagining at that point that Auburn would lose the game. Not only would LSU have to score at least 11 points after a half in which they'd gained barely more than 100 yards, they'd probably have to put up 14, since I figured Auburn's offense had moved it just well enough to be worth a field goal at least. That was two touchdowns, and there was no way--just no way--Auburn would let LSU into the end zone twice, not in a home stadium this crazed, not with so much on the line. LSU would have the ball last and as they had in 2004, as they had in 2006, Auburn would stop them. I believed this with as much fervor as I have anything that wasn't gravity or God, with a faith I have no problem calling childlike.

So the most painful moment of the game for yours truly was not the 15-yard sack of Chris Todd on Auburn's final desperate possession that for all intents and purposes ended the game, not the LSU touchdown that snatched away in decisive fashion the lead Auburn's offense had so thrillingly scratched out for itself, not even the long silent walk out of the Jordan-Hare upper deck, a walk that after a loss always feels like leaving a giant birthday party where one of the guests accidentally ran over the birthday kid's dog.

No, the most painful moment was LSU's fourth possession of the second half, when after watching the 14-3 lead somehow become a 17-14 deficit, Auburn's defense at least had the good fortune of seeing LSU pinned back at their own nine with the chance to reclaim a modicum of field position. Instead, Charles Scott burst through a gigantic hole for 12 yards. The next play Scott ran untouched into the secondary for nine more. A quick screen to a wide-open Brandon Lafell gained 18. And then, for your coup-de-grace, Scott dashed footloose and fancy-free through the heart of Auburn's defense for 31 more yards. In four plays, LSU had gone from their own 9 to Auburn's 21.

Each one of those plays felt like having a nice clean hole in the pit of my stomach carve out with an ice cream scoop. I'd been wrong. There weren't any capes after all. None of them could fly. Antonio Coleman? Human. Tray Blackmon? Human. Jerraud Powers and Zac Etheridge and Merrill Johnson and Antoine Carter and Chris Evans? Human, every one of them. Even Sen'Derrick Marks, terror of terrors, who for all his blindingly-obvious brilliance was one of our two defensive tackles on a drive where the middle of the line parted in a fashion the Red Sea would be ashamed of? Achingly, heartbreakingly human. The Auburn defense is not, as it turns out, composed of an unending chain of demons. It's just made up of very, very good football players.

That's not meant as an insult. I mean it: these guys are very, very good. But they also gave up 293 yards in that second half to a team with a completely untested freshman quarterback who'd finished off the first half throwing what might be the single dumbest interception I've ever seen. They gave up 23 second-half points. Most damningly, for the second straight year they needed one stop to defeat LSU and put Auburn firmly on the road to Atlanta; for the second straight year LSU drove the ball all the way into the end zone. Very good, yes. Heroes, no. The truth, as it so often does, hurts.

In their defense, let me say several things, this first: at times they did not receive help from their defensive coordinator. Paul Rhoads dialed up a seven-man delayed blitz against Southern Miss and had it result in a simple completion for a first down on 4th-and-10, but for some reason neither this nor LSU's far-superior offensive line nor that this call would leave a freshman corner one-on-one with one of LSU's freaks stopped him from calling a virtually identical play with the Bad Tigers facing 3rd-and-10 from Auburn's 39. The result is what you see pictured above: a simple touchdown catch despite the fact that Lee was clobbered by Spencer Pybus as he released the ball. This one is not on them.

Also not on them: a special teams performance I might call comical if it didn't make me want to grind my teeth into dust in frustration every time I start to think about it. LSU out-punted Auburn by a net of 48.3 to 35.7 and with the game on the line, our pre-season All-SEC punter shanked it all of 25 yards--without Trindon Holliday even on the field. Comical? No, after seeing Auburn's last three defeats to LSU all come down in massive part to easily fixable special teams blunders, I have to say it strikes me as something closer to tragic.

But particularly in this series, I wasn't expecting too much more out of Auburn's special teams. The defense, obviously, is another matter. Let there be no faulting their effort--they played as hard as they possibly could for as long as they possibly could. Let there be no questioning their outstanding, even amazing abilities--they will flat stuff several teams between now and the end of the season, I have no doubt. Let there also be no illusions about how good a team they faced Saturday--I suspect Scott and that offensive line will flatten virtually anyone who dares oppose them.

But let us also go forward with the understanding that as much as we love them, as much as we respect them, neither our fathers nor our defense are going to make everything perfect just by the snap of their fingers. Growing up is never easy. I just wish I hadn't had to have been reminded of that Saturday night.

Three Stars

Robert Dunn. Caught everything thrown his way, in the process becoming the first Auburn wide receiver since Aromashadu was running around I feel confident in calling a difference maker. Would have been nice to see him take an end-around or two on a night when Auburn was having so much trouble running the ball, yes/no?

Sen'Derrick Marks. Despite the second-half troubles containing Scott, Marks nonetheless was his usual wave-of-destruction self for most of the evening, racking up seven tackles from DT including 1.5 of them loss. I hesitate to think how bad things might have been if we didn't have him.

Chris Todd. Watching in person, it becomes painfully obvious: Todd's got nothing on his fastball. Given the condition of his shoulder and his positively Leardian and/or Coxesque mobility, I can't imagine there's a less physically gifted quarterbacking starting in the SEC today. Hard to say his decision-making was perfect, either, considering the two picks and the multiple sacks-out-of-field-goal-range. But on a night when Auburn got less than nothing from its running game, he still managed to get Auburn into the end zone twice against what's probably the best defense they'll face outside of Georgia's. I'll take it.

Three opportunities for improvement

Punting. [/obvs] Durst better not just have had the flu, he'd have better been in the critical care ward hooked up to about four IVs. That Shoemaker continued to see the field after that seven-yard shank is, well, let's just say "deeply unfortunate."

Finishing drives. Speaking of that seven-yard shank, consider: Auburn drove to the LSU 19 on that drive and eventually handed the visitors the ball on the 27. It would have been better if they'd simply turned the ball over. With the two TD's I'm not going to gripe too much about red zone execution per se, but Auburn has to at least get a field goal out of a drive like that one--which is why I'd have had no problem with the 4th-and-1 play-action call the next time down against, say, an offensively-oriented team like Ole Miss or Arkansas. (Or if Auburn had been behind by a score or two.) But in this game, in that situation? Take the first down and hope Byrum can do his thing.

Conditioning? No question about it, Auburn looked tired at the end of the game and--more importantly--a lot more gassed than LSU was. I'm sure LSU's rotations along each line (not to mention their size) and in the receiving corps may have had something to do with it, but come on: Auburn ran one more play than LSU did, the game was on ESPN (not CBS, but still), and the defense had something likely approaching 35 minutes of rest between halftime and Auburn's six-minute drive to open the second half. Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about--someone correct me if I'm wrong in the comments--but seems to me that under those conditions, there shouldn't be so much difference in fatigue as to make that a viable excuse.

Numbers of importance

7.8, 14.7.; 7.6, 15.7. Yards-per-attempt and yards-per-completion for Auburn's quarterbacks and LSU's, respectively. Given the dramatic increase in competition, those numbers mean this was far and away Todd's best performance of the season, even considering the two interceptions. The problem is that the same could easily be said for LSU's quarterbacks, too.

1.9. Auburn's average yards-per-carry. Ewwwwww. More on this, Auburn's quarterback situation, and Tony Franklin in a second post.

0. Combined number of offensive touches for Mario Fannin, Tristan Davis, and Kodi Burns in a game in which Auburn rushed for--again--1.9 yards-a-carry.

Your bottom line

A lot of this post has been on the negative side, I know. A large part of me wants to say that's only appropriate; Auburn lost a potentially season-defining game, at home, they could have easily won. We're not supposed to be happy, particularly when this isn't a case of Auburn outplaying LSU and coming undone by a series of bad breaks.

But I'm well aware there were several positives to come out of the game. Heroes or not, the defense is still hellacious. Chris Todd kept his pants pristine and excrement-free in the biggest game of his life and against one of the best defenses he'll ever face. Look past the devastating sack to close the game, and you realize pass protection was fantastic--allowing just two sacks against a line as ferocious as LSU's with a quarterback as statuesque as Todd is a tremendous accomplishment. (Run blocking was obviously meh, but made much more difficult in-my-humble-opinion by Auburn's peculiar insistence on running the same play over and over again. More on this later.) I was surprised to see Acid Reign chastise the receivers for drops; aside from Trott's early bobble I don't recall any, and that would be the first time in a long time for Auburn's wideouts as a whole. Add all the positives together and this is still a team whose goals--win SEC West, win 10 games, BEAT BAMA--are still more than attainable. There remains no reason to think Auburn will be outmatched in any game on their schedule--yes, even Georgia--and no reason to think our Tigers won't continue to play very well in big games. You have to admit that much: Auburn played very well Saturday night, against a damn strong football team*.

But that's thing: against the LSU's of the world, Auburn just isn't talented enough right now--especially on offense--to win these games merely by playing well. Todd isn't Campbell. Tate isn't Ronnie Brown. The receivers aren't Aromashadu, Obamanu, Taylor, etc. As good as the defense is, its nickel and dime backs are still true freshmen. There is no margin for error when facing a team a dripping with talent as LSU.

It's not the end of the world; it's been this way ever since 2005. Since that point, Auburn's had to play not just very well but damn near out of their minds and catch a couple of breaks to beat the other upper-echelon teams in the SEC. They've done that several times, of course, and it won't surprise me much if against Georgia and 'Bama they do it again. Against teams in the second tier like Tennessee, Ole Miss, and Vandy, Auburn's more than capable of making enough plays to pull out a victory, a la Arkansas last year and 'Bama the last couple.

That's the good news: after the LSU game, it's safe to say Auburn's just as good as they were in 2006 and 2007. Unfortunately, that's also the bad news.

*You try resisting writing that sentence when trying to quantify how good LSU is. Impossible.

Back

Yes, we got in.

After approximately 1,700 miles of drivin' time, a three-day caloric intake Michael Phelps would be proud of (it's so nice to see you again, Chick-Fil-A/Guthrie's/barbecued ribs/copious amounts of beer), a frighteningly narrow escape from Nashville Gasoline Apocalypse 2008, and yet another Auburn-LSU epiclassic, your humble Auburn Blogger is safely--and somewhat sadly--back in Ann Arbor.

I don't know if it's good to be back, exactly--spending scarcely more than a day back in the Heart of Dixie felt way too brief, like a hurried lunch at the airport with the friend you haven't seen in years--but I'm glad I can get to work writing about yet another one of those college footbaw experiences I'll bore the tears out my grandchildren with someday. When you've just watched your first Auburn game in years and it happened to be a game like that one, it won't surprise you I feel like I could sit down and write 1,001 Auburnian Nights if I needed to.

The resumption of regular JCCW service will begin this afternoon, though, with the weekly knee-jerk's assessment of the game itself, and we'll get into the travellin' and emotin' later on. Whether I get around to the "well-written calls for coaches' heads" or not, you'll have to wait and see, but I'll get around to something fiarly shortly. Stay tuned.

Still begging

Those of you who have read this blog for longer than, oh, two days, know that I am headed to Auburn for my first Tiger game in person in three seasons. I'm coming down from Ann Arbor with three friends who are Michigan fans and have never been to an SEC game in their lives, but this is OK because one of them has fancy wireless internet thingy that works in the car. Which is where I'm typing this from. Look, there goes Troy, but the Ohio version!

But no, this isn't going to be a travel liveblog, which would be about as interesting as your parents' friends' slides from their trip to Myrtle Beach. It's a second request: I've got two tickets, but I still need two more. If you happen to read this, happen to have two LSU tickets you'd be interested in selling us, and can happen to e-mail me at jerry - at- warblogeagle.com sometime this afternoon or evening, that would happen to be freaking fantastic.

This will be the last post here before the game. See you on the other side.

War Eagle.

Friday preview: LSU

Auburn this Saturday: a slightly less cushier job for Andrew Hatch than the BCS title game.

Before this really gets going, is there already a lengthy LSU preview at this website with less analytical substance than this one, one that might remind me of an air-puffed, unnaturally-colored nutritionally-valueless snack food? Indeed, there is.

At stake: If you have arrived at the Joe Cribbs Car Wash and you're unaware of what's at stake when Auburn faces LSU on Saturday, you've probably stumbled here accidentally while looking for actual car wash information. I suggest you try these nice-looking people here.

As for the rest of us, we can recite it line (yadda six out of eight years yadda winner yadda SEC West) and verse (blah blah sets the tone for the season blah decided by a touchdown or less blah blah) by now. Though thanks to the wheezing Auburn offense there's a new wrinkle for Tommy Tuberville and his still-fresh-out-of-the-box offensive wingman: prove there's some hope for this offense in bareknuckle SEC games like this one, or those whispers that Franklin's out of his depth and that Tubby's lost his coordinator-hirin' knack* are going to grow perhaps uncomfortably loud.

Just so's we're all totally clear, though, about both how critical this game really is and how damn good the two teams playing in it are likely to be when all the 2008 dust settles, allow me to quote from the Cheese Puff Preview linked above:

Consider, for instance, that of late the winner of this game has generally done more than simply win the SEC West. Since 2001, the Auburn-LSU winner has won two national titles and *cough* finished an additional undefeated season; is a perfect 7-0 in bowl games, including four wins in BCS bowls, two more victories on New Year's Day, and one 40-3 whipping of Miami in the Peach (none of which even counts the Sugar Bowl demolition of Notre Dame by 2006 loser LSU); has won four of seven SEC titles; has won no fewer than nine games; and has averaged a final AP ranking of 5.7th.

Consider also that since 2004 neither team, winner or loser, has finished with fewer than nine wins. In that four-season span, Auburn and LSU have combined to post an 85-18 overall record, for a winning percentage of .825. The only two rivalries in the country that come within even a handful of games of matching that particular record of quality are Texas-Oklahoma, a half-game better at 86-18 (.827), and Louisville-West Virginia, at 79-20 (.798) and declining.

Lose, and you can still have a good season. Win, though, and greatness awaits.

When LSU has the ball: Charles Scott is going to become very, very familiar with it. Why?

Before we get to that: Trivia Time! Which team got both more yards-per-attempt and yards-per-completion out of the quarterback position during Saturday's action: Auburn, with Chris "Enemy of the People" Todd at the helm of Tony "Scourge of All That is Good and Beautiful in This World" Franklin's Spread Eagle? Or LSU, with the "Eh, whatever" tag-team of Andrew Hatch and Jarrett Lee? Before you answer, remember that Auburn played on the road at the home of one of the SEC's top secondaries while LSU was in Baton Rouge facing North Texas, the 113th-ranked defense in Division I in 2007.

Do you have an answer?

Time's up! The answer is Auburn, 5.9-5.8 in YPA, 11.0-10.4 in YPC. (Hatch also threw a pick; Todd did not.) Yes, that's right: Chris Todd in the 3-2 atrocity Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda called "an occasion for sadness and mourning, for all peoples, everywhere" was still a better quarterback than Hatch and Lee managed to be against North Texas.

If you are an Auburn fan, this is an exciting development. Logic would seem to dictate that if Hatch and Lee are incapable of producing decent numbers against the Mean Green, you may as well ask them to climb Mount Everest in bunny slippers as to ask them to take it up a notch, in Jordan-Hare, in their first road game, at night, against an Auburn defense Stephen King has already optioned for his next screenplay.

So, quite frankly, I doubt Gary Crowton--having proved to skeptics like yours truly that the loss of Jimbo Fisher was not, in fact, really that much of a loss at all--will be dumb enough to make that request. We're going to see a lot of Scott, who to this point is averaging an eye-popping (regardless of the Sisters of the Poor slate-to-date) 11.4 yards-per-carry to date. We'll probably see some Richard Murphy, and a dash of Keiland Williams, and maybe even some designed runs for Hatch, who's moved along at 6.1 a carry and is, for the moment, the team's second-leading rusher. I firmly believe the LSU passing game will be almost-strictly an If All Else Fails measure.

Which begs the $64,000 question: will All Else fail? The Bayou Bengals are positively Godzillan across their offensive line, going 314-351-283-284-315 left to right, and as much as I love me some Michael Goggans and Antoine Carter, some Tray Blackmon and Zac Etheridge (yes, Etheridge, you on'tthink they'll have the strong saftey in run support?), it's going to be hard as all get out for ever-so-slightly-undersized guys like them to handle that kind of beef. There will be holes here and there. And Scott's emergence means LSU will take advantage of them when they appear.

But the Auburn defense I've watched over the first three games is simply too crafty, too well-coached, too damn good to get beaten by a one-dimensional team. Some yards will come via the ground game alone, yes. (More than ULM, USM, or MSU managed, anyway.) But Hatch and Lee will have to throw the ball to maintain any kind of actual drive. To be fair, when he does, he's got an impressive array of targets: Demetrius Byrd and Brandon LaFell are prototypical LSU size-n'-speed receivers, tight end Richard Dickson might be just about as good as Southern Miss's Shawn Nelson and might tear Auburn to just about as many shreds, and the second-string is littered with more studs. Given how much trouble Auburn had with Nelson and that a three-receiver set will likely** put good-freshman-but-still-a-freshman Neiko Thorpe on one of the thoroughbreds. Hatch and Lee will have open receivers; while we know Scott can hit a hole in the line, can the LSU QBs hit a hole in the coverage?

Looking at the North Texas results and knowing how far down Jordan-Hare would be on Miles's list of "Best Places for First Road Game of New Quarterback Starter's Career," I have to say I'll believe it when I see it. Even Jamarcus Russell could only get LSU to three points last time they were here; forgive me if I don't see the combination of Hatch and Lee managing a whole lot more.

When Auburn has the ball: Like I did watching scary movies when I was little, I'm going to hold my hands over my eyes the whole time, peek through my fingers if it seems quiet and safe, and keep 'em closed shut when I hear things breaking and those monsters growling. I doubt I'll be able to watch a third down the whole game.

OK, so that's not entirely true. Auburn's offense isn't without its hopes, however meager. This game was Kenny Irons's coming-out party three years ago; I'm holding onto a silly wish it might be something similar for Tristan Davis, who's looked studly in his limited time. (When he hasn't been dropping pitches, anyway.) The offensive line looked a bit of a train wreck last week, but there's too much talent, too much experience there to look that bad two weeks in a row. Tate, Lester, Dunn, Fannin, Smith, maybe even Billings ... these are all worthwhile pieces with which to put an offense together.

That's what we assumed Tony Franklin spent the offseason doing: putting together an offense. What we saw against Mississippi State, however, was not an offense. It was just 11 guys running plays. There was no philosophy, no attitude, no feel to what Auburn was doing Saturday, and it turned the Bulldog defense into the unit that was doing the attacking. If Franklin has indeed not been keeping some of his better tricks and treats in mothballs--if the Spread Eagle's "philosophy" really does amount to little more than spreading the field and then running almost nothing but the most basic plays available to that formation--LSU will grind the Auburn offense into a fine orange-and-blue substance they can call "Tiger Powder" and market as an aphrodisiac in the Far East.

For both the Wu-Tang Clan and the LSU defense are, indeed, nothing to [mess] with. The loss of Darry Beckwith in the middle of the linebacking unit might give Tate/Lester/Davis a touch more room to work with, but even before that comes into play they'll have to get past what might be the best defensive line in the country and is certainly the deepest. (I'd like to think Auburn might have a claim on the former depending on what we see tomorrow. The latter, though, forget it.) I'd wager there are NFL teams that don't have a foursome at DT as effective as Ricky-Jean Francois, Marlon Favorite, Al Woods, and Charles Alexander. Tyson Jackson and Kirston Pittman haven't set the world on fire yet this year, but c'mon, they're Tyson Jackson and Kirston Pittman. (Though I have to say, even if he's probably going to nab 11 sacks tomorrow just to spite me, that Jackson may be a hair overrated. He's been very good-not-great the times I've seen him. Then again, look who he's playing beside--it's hard to keep a viewer's attention that way.)

The rest of the defense is made up of guys who are good enough to play defense for LSU. That says an awful lot about them just by itself, but particularly with Beckwith's absence it's also fair to say that, on paper, they don't quite match some of the LSU defenders of recent vintage. There's no Ali Highsmith in the somewhat anonymous (by Tiger standards) linebacking crew. There's no LaRon Landry or Craig Steltz patrolling the secondary, where LSU's breaking in three new starters. There aren't a ton of yards to made out here beyond the d-line, but there's more than there are battling the likes of Jean-Francois and Woods.

This is the challenge presented to Tony Franklin: find a way, by hook or crook (though not in our own end zone this week, thanks) to force LSU's linebackers and secondary members to make plays instead of the defensive line. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But it seems like the only shot we've got, and it's a shot that's going to rely awfully heavy on the execution of Chris Todd and the creativity of Tony Franklin.

I'm not confident, no. But that doesn't mean there's not hope.

When special teams are on the field: Trindon Holliday's going to do something I probably won't enjoy. He's fielded four punts thus far this season and averaged returning them 40.8 yards. He and Keiland Williams have likewise fielded four kickoffs and averaged a respectable 24 and 27.5 yards a return, respectively. I feel like the kickoffs are almost a lost cause: if we can keep LSU anywhere on the right side of their 40-yard line, that's going to be quite a success. (With Byrum unable to stick in the end zone, might we see more squibbing? And if we do, could someone please reassure me Byrum's been practicing this?) As for punts, "Saturn V" Durst's mission, should he choose to accept it, is to kick the ball into the waiting arms of the ESPN sound guy. There's no point in kicking to Holliday. None.

The other key figures on special teams are the placekickers. The way both these teams play defense (and offense), it's entirely possible that after all the titanic struggles in the trenches, all the deathblows delivered by linebackers on the running backs, all the sweat and blood and hoarse fans and entire lives lived out on the field, over the course of the 60 minutes the whole ball of wax will boil down to what amounts to a soccer shootout: Wes Byrum gets his shots from 46, 40, and 29, the usual two-headed LSU kicker of Colt Davis and Josh Jasper get theirs from 31, 38, and 45. Whoever hits the most, his team wins. The way Byrum kicked last week, I don't like this scenarios; the way Byrum has kicked with the weight of the world on his shoulders the rest of his career, I'm fine with it. Who knows.

If Dunn and Davis break off a return or two, yes, that would be a very, very big deal in a game in which every yard is hyuuuuuuge. That there's legitimate hope of that only reinforces my feeling that this is, top-to-bottom, the best Auburn special teams units in quite a while. But after the special teams debacles of '05 and '07, even if they just wind up breaking even with LSU, I'll be pleased as punch.

Intangible reason for worry: Ever since Georgia left the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry's "Road team always wins!" meme in tiny, white-jerseyed tatters last fall, I've felt apprehensive about ascribing too much weight to the Auburn-LSU win "Home team always wins!" meme. When we're talking about a series that's been as razor-thin as this one has been over the past four years, I'm not sure it's home-field advantage as much as it is just good ol'-fashioned luck. Move V****n's kick six inches inside the upright, make Campell's fourth-down pass to Taylor a fraction of a second later, have Matt Flynn throw that last-second ball a foot behind where he did, and maybe we're talking about why the home team always loses this game rather than vice versa.

All of which makes me think: at some point the other shoe is going to drop. At some point the home team isn't going to catch the break they need. And as supremely likely as this game is to come down to that one single break (yet again) and with the specter of Georgia rearranging the momentum of that rivalry still hanging over us, it worries me like hell.

Intangible reason for confidence: If the continued success of home teams in this particular series has reached at-least-a-little-fluky status, Tommy Tuberville's continued success in capital-B capital G Big Games like this one has not. The track record is too long, the difference in Auburn's execution, focus, and intensity when the "smart money" is on the opponent just too great to attribute it to anything but Tubby. I'm wouldn't claim to have any insight on how he does it (or how coaches like Tommy Bowden and--yeah, let's go ahead and toss him in here--Jim Tressel fail so miserably at it) but his teams play their best games against the best teams they have to face, over and over and over again.

Even if Auburn came into this game with North Texas's defense and Auburn's UAB's offense, as long as they came in arm-in-arm through the Fog of Intimidation with Tommy Tuberville, I'd have hope. That they'll do so with what may prove to be one of the greatest defenses I'll ever see and with 85,000-plus Auburn fans behind them gives me something that might even be called confidence.

Three Wishes. 1. Like everyone else: could Kodi Burns play in the red zone plz ok thx. 2. That the Auburn defense force a turnover or two in LSU territory; you shouldn't have any complaints at all about Auburn's defense, but if you're the sort who just has to make one, they haven't been responsible for any points of their own (either via returns or a deliciously short field for the offense) since Coleman mauled the ULM QB on the D's first snap of the season. It would be a fine, fine time for the defense to produce something similar. 3. That our second-string defenders play like first-string defenders; as good as Marks, Blackmon, Coleman, Stevens, etc. are, they can't play an entire game's worth of snaps throwing themselves at the behemoths on LSU's offensive line. Doolittle, Carter, Bynes, whichever of Johnson or Evans comes off the bench: the defense's margin-for-error in this game is almost nothing, and so the same applies to you.

Success is / Failure is: A win / a loss.

Your bottom line: In some ways, we know exactly what's going to happen in this game. Both defenses are going to strangle the lifeblood out of these offenses. Both teams are going to deliver enough body blows to make the Thrila in Manila proud. The game is going to be more taut and more tense than any you can remember right at that moment, partially becuase it is so taut and tense you have hard time remembering your own middle name. And eventually, it's going to come down to one drive, one play, maybe one single yard. The possibility of a blowout exists, but these past four years have taught me that it is a possibility so remote it's not even worth discussing. We know what will happen, and it will take our breath away.

But we also have no clue what will happen. Anyone who will tell you they can do more than take a blind guess at which team will win this game is either a liar or, more likely, hasn't done his or her homework on how lopsided the Auburn defense vs. Hatch and Lee match-up truly is. Once again, fate is going to look at Auburn and LSU, toss a coin, and it's going to come down in the palms of a new set of heroes on one side or the other.

That doesn't mean I can't envision how certain parts of this game will play out. I think Auburn finds a way to get the ball to their running backs in space, against LSU's linebackers and secondary, and has some success with it. I think LSU generally wins the field position battle via the grinding of Scott and flicks to Dickson. I think Hatch and Lee bring almost nothing but that Auburn's straight-ahead running game brings almost as little against that line. I think a huge special teams play causes a major momentum swing, quite possibly via one punt returner or the other. I think both placekickers have at least two crucial opportunities.

But how does it all add up? I don't know. Neither do you. What I do know is that as the miles go by and the minutes tick off the clock towards kickoff, my ability to wait to find out what happens in this game slips away as well. These precious hours before a college football game like this, when the whole world seems to buzz and there's an omen around every corner and you feel like you would give anything not to face the pain of defeat at this same time tomorrow ... this is why we follow the sport. This is why we care. This is Auburn-LSU, folks. Let's see how it goes.

War Eagle.

And so, in one final attempt to look spectacularly wrong ...



Auburn 3, LSU 2






*This sort of view ignores that Rhoads has been a revelation, but then again, the question's never been about whether Tubby could find a decent DC, has it?

**Rhoads sorta ignored this and went with a base 4-3 at times even against USM's spread, expecting the Auburn 'backers to be good enough in zone. At least, I think I remember this happening. So we'll see.

The Works, Bounces off me, sticks to you-style

One of the truly great things about being an Auburn fan during the Tuberville era is that the more Auburn gets ripped in the press, the more Auburn's mocked by opposing fans, the less and less people expect out of the team ... the more confident I get. So particularly when the soundtrack is as mighty fine as it is here, I have no problem with posting the EDSBS video that's made the rounds:



even if I think the Auburner's version is a little more accurate portrayal of the game:



Plus, it has Queen, so music-wise, you can't really go wrong either way here.

Even when the HA-ha's directed in Auburn's, uh, direction have been a little more mean-spirited than Orson's, you have to laugh when they're done up right, as Gump4Heisman's most certainly are. Behold:



Also, your money quote:

This instructional series features the same techniques that produced back-to-back-to-back A.U. punting situations!!!

At our expense or not, this is the good stuff. Substantially simpler (and with a misquote I've taken the liberty of correcting) but also amusing was JRS's take at Lifetime of Defeats:




Coming from an Auburn fan that's not quite exactly a diss, but if you need any more Auburn-centric slapdowns for your bulletin board TWER has you covered.

Hey, this is fun. Remember when we were promised that Auburn would keep a two-back set handy for red zone situations? So does Evan Woodberry:

During the offseason rubber-chicken circuit, a staple of Tommy Tuberville's stump speech was the promise that Auburn would not abandon its two-back offense entirely and that the Tigers could line up and punch the ball into the end zone when necessary.

So what happened?

"I lied," Tuberville said with a smile.

Great. But at least now that we've seen how totally ill-equipped the spread is at powering in against a quality defense like Miss. St.'s, we'll look at getting something new installed, right, Tubby?

"What you do is you look at what (opponents) are doing on defense. (Saturday), even out in the open field, that wouldn't have helped any. The best thing you can do, and most teams do on the goal line, is keep it spread out - try to take another guy out of the box instead of having to try to block him."

#%@&! Well, even if they've got it spread out, as long as Burns is at the controls we can expect to see some improvement. Anniston Star beat writer Luke Brietzke, your thoughts?

Everyone still wants to know about the QB situation, so here's the story: Chris Todd is the starter. He will be the starter unless coaches see a reason for change. If I had to bet, and thankfully I don't, I would bet Todd plays every offensive snap barring injury.

*head explodes*

All right, some good news. Apparently Lester's going to play, which can't hurt, assuming of course he's going to stop slathering his hands with bacon grease during warm-ups. Auburntron points out the parallels between 2004 and 2008 seem to be growing stronger, though I wish "Offense includes Cadillac Williams, Ronnie Brown, Jason Campbell, and Marcus McNeill" was one of them. And more importantly, LSU's quarterback situation remains, well, a situation. Richard Pittman at ATVS:

In watching the videos, I was struck by something troubling. Andrew Hatch's body language is terrible. He slouches. He shrugs his shoulders. He shakes his head a lot. If you're a believer in body language, it betrays a certain lack of comfort and lack of confidence.

Pittman admits it may be a "mirage," but you look at the Evil Brandon-esque pick he throws in the highlight near the end of this clip:
you have to wonder.

Intriguing. Tulane head coach Bob Toledo on the two teams his Green Wave has faced thus far:

(He) didn't hesitate to call East Carolina a better team than Alabama, the Green Wave's season opening opponent. Toledo justified his assertion by saying that East Carolina is a more seasoned team that Alabama, which is playing with a lot of younger players. "In my mind they're better than Alabama," Toledo said.

ECU's a top-notch football team, so this is hardly a slap-in-the-face. But I still figured you'd want to know.

Is it ever not a good time for random Dameyune Craig links? The reference to Craig in the Q&A below sent me on a quick dash to find his stats from the game Poseur was referring to, but I found something probably even more interesting: a fawning Dameyune fan page put together by a supporters' group of the since-dissolved Scottish Claymores of NFL Europe. Amongst the lists of various Craig accomplishments with the Claymores, there's this pic:



which is kind of awesome.

Dude. Come on. A quick follow-up on my recent little run-in with Matt Zemek, the CFN writer who told anyone who believed the Ohio game boded ill for Ohio St. they "know nothing about college football." This week, Zemek attempted to "re-explain" (awesome) his position by pointing out that OSU did, in fact, play with a lot more intensity during the first half vs. USC than they had against Ohio, a brilliant revelation that apparently was all he was really trying to predict in the first place. He writes:

Ohio State didn't get crushed by USC because of anything that happened in the Ohio game. OSU lost because USC had a better team; because Beanie Wells didn't return; because OSU didn't play up to its talent level and because OSU made untimely mistakes.(emphasis added)

Gee, do you think the reason so many people seemed to know ahead of time that USC was the better team and that Ohio State had a tendency to make untimely mistakes might have been that they paid attention to the Ohio game that supposedly you'd only pay attention to if you knew nothing about football? Cripes, even Stewart Mandel was able to admit he was wrong about this game.

Etc. Will previews the Tiger Bowl with his usual panache ... the Pigskin Pathos needs sign suggestions ... the shotgun pitch should probably be scrapped ... War Eagle Extra is back in business ... Rodney Scott might not be as soft a verbal as you've heard, though he will check out USF ... and anyone who boos Saturday should immediately be handed a crimson jersey and escorted back to Tuscaloosa, where they take their booing seriously--as in "We resent our athletic director telling us not to boo a team that's just had to flee a hurricane" seriously.

And finally, a programming note. You'll notice there hasn't been any recapping this week; this is because I am a coward and could not bring myself to watch that game a second time when there were other things I could be doing/writing. Hopefully, this will be a one-time thing.

Special Guest Enemy: And the Valley Shook

It's another round of Special Guest Enemy, this time with Poseur of new-and-improved for 2008 LSU blog And the Valley Shook. No, I don't know what the name means, either. Something about some game, I think. Haven't the foggiest. Despite that confusion, Poseur was kind enough to answer some questions of mine about the most mysterious sixth-ranked team ever, and in the spirit of goodwill I tackled a set of questions about Auburn for ATVS; you can read those responses here. As always, my Q's are in bold with Poseur's A's in quotations. Enjoy.



1. Through the first three weeks of the season LSU's faced an FCS team (albeit a good one), had a hurricane-induced bye week, and taken on a could-very-well-be-an-FCS team in North Texas. How much, if at all, do you feel LSU's soft and chaotic schedule will hamper their preparations for Auburn?

"A lot. Right now, we just have no idea how good (or how bad) LSU really is. The team has simply sleepwalked through its first two games and there’s been almost no intensity. And now we’re about to have the most intense game of the season. I’m not sure if the team can just turn it on. The gap between North Texas and Auburn is massive (see, this is the insightful analysis you were looking for). (Don't sell yourself short, you're ahead of Corso already.--ed.) I’m treating this like it’s the first game of the season. Those first two games were scrimmages. We know almost nothing about this team."

2. With Gameday coming to our fair citaaaaaay, America's finest humorous poster-makers (along with some tool from Washington St.) will be descending on the Loveliest Village to display their wares. If you were going to construct an LSU-Auburn-related sign for Gameday, what would it be?

"Man, I suck at slogans. Probably something along the lines of 'The Refs Won’t Bail You Out Again' or LSWho? The National Champs. That’s Who.'"

3. Fill us in on the quarterback situation: I assume Hatch is going to continue to be the starter, but do you expect Miles to continue to give Lee snaps? Could we see true freshman Jordan Jefferson as a change-of-pace? And lastly: how would you evaluate LSU's performance at the QB position as a whole so far?

"This goes back to the lack of intensity thing, but the quarterbacks have looked just short of awful. I mean, I’m almost wishing we had South Carolina’s quarterbacks (almost). Hatch’s arm strength is questionable and while arm strength is overrated, it seems you could clock some of his swing passes with a sundial (I’ve already used that joke at ATVS, but it’s new to your readers, so if you’re an ATVS reader, just ignore that line). Lee’s got more talent, but he looks nowhere near ready to be the starting quarterback. And the coaching staff has favored Hatch at every turn, so while I expect Lee to get some snaps, I think LSU will live and die with Hatch.

"Miles lifted the redshirt off of Jefferson to take three meaningless snaps against North Texas. I’m thinking it’s because the two nominal starters have shown next to nothing. Jefferson isn’t a sure thing to play but I wouldn’t be surprised if he saw some action if Hatch and Lee continue to play like they have.

"Final evaluation? I’d give our quarterbacks a D. Maybe a C-. Here’s the combined line against North Texas: 20-36, 209 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT. That’s against North Texas’ vaunted defense. Adjust accordingly for facing a defense with a pulse. Then adjust again for Auburn’s defense."

4. As well as freshman CB Neiko Thorpe has played for Auburn thus far this season, some of us Auburn fans ... well, maybe just me ... are worried about him matching up with various members of LSU's deep receiving corps. Assuming Brandon LaFell and Demetrius Byrd are LSU's top 2 receivers, who's the No. 3 and the No. 4 and how concerned do you think we ought to be?

"[Terance] Tolliver should be the #3 guy as he’s built like a prototype NFL receiver. He’s a big target, he’s fast, and when he is on, he’s unstoppable. Problem is, he’s never on. He’s probably dropped in the depth chart behind the Mitchells, Jared and Chris, who have both been more productive. Simply put, we’ve got a lot of guys with a lot of talent, which makes the QB play even more inexcusable.

And don’t forget Richard Dickson, our tight end, who is our QB’s security blanket. Hatch always looks to Dickson when he’s in trouble, which is a pretty good plan. He’s Mr. Reliable."

5. I can admit it: I like watching Trindon Holliday play. But I noticed that outside of his special teams work, he only carried the ball twice and didn't have a reception against UNT. Do you expect Crowton to get him more involved with the offense now that we're into SEC play?

"He’s been trying, but I think everyone has figured out that sweep play. LSU might have too many running backs, and it’s just hard to get Trindon the football. Every carry he gets is a carry Scott, Murphy, or Williams can’t get. And each has proven to be a more reliable runner from the line of scrimmage, though Keiland has played very tentatively in the first two games.

"Trindon’s more exciting, but Charles Scott is the key to the offense. Holliday will get one or two carries only as a change of pace, but expect to see a lot of Scott and Murphy. Even better, every carry they have is a play our quartebacks don't throw a pass."

6. How much of a beat, if any, do you think the LSU defense will skip with Jacob Cutrera filling in for the injured Darry Beckwith at MLB?

"Nothing against Cutrera, who is a favorite punching bag of Tiger fans, but he’s not Darry Beckwith. Beckwith is probably the player LSU could least afford to lose to injury. Cutrera played very well against North Texas, but that was North Texas. He’s not a great tackler and he lacks closing speed. He’s solid, but we went from an all-SEC guy to an adequate fill in. That’s a huge hit."

7. I try not to think about LSU's defensive line more often than I have to--I don't need the shakes--but I have to ask: how close have they come to living up to the preseason "best DL in the country" talk over the first two games? Any potential dropoff from 2007? (Please say yes.)

"The defense has been pretty vanilla the first two games, but to get at least a glimpse of the DL’s ability, consider the way it completely manhandled Armanti Edwards. I thought someone was gonna kill that poor guy during that game. Opposing offenses are averaging 2.3 yards per rush (I know, look at the offenses). Still, that’s pretty good, and we haven’t started blitzing yet, so the sacks haven't come.

"The defensive line is just so deep. The strength isn’t just the starters, it’s that LSU is two-deep at every position without much dropoff, so they keep coming at you all game long without any relief. Sweet dreams."

8. Where, on either side of the ball, are the matchups with Auburn you feel less confident in? If you were Auburn, where would you look to attack LSU, both offensively and defensively?

"Stack eight in the box and make our quarterbacks beat you. LSU’s offense is loaded at every position except quarterback. The offensive line is terrific, the running back corps is deep and talented, and the receivers are all physical freaks. Then we have a transfer from Harvard’s JV squad running things. This isn’t rocket science. The weakness kind of pops out at you.

"On offense, if the spread doesn’t work against LSU, it’s time to scrap the experiment. The big question mark (other than Cutrera), are the cornerbacks. Chris Hawkins gave up the underneath routes all night against North Texas, though he was playing deep and never gave up the big play. LSU is vulnerable to the Chinese water torture of a dink and dunk attack of lots of short passes. I’m not sold on our secondary. Also, LSU has always had problems with running quarterbacks. You can probably guess who I hope gets the start at QB for Auburn."

9. Over the past several years the "Tiger Bowl" has grown in importance (and, uh, bitterness) to fans on both sides of the rivalry. Speaking of the LSU fanbase in general, where does the Auburn game rank in terms of how badly they want it? Are there fans who see it as the biggest game of LSU's year?

"We hate you. I mean, absolute deep-seated loathing. I hate you so much it makes me want to root for 'Bama, which only makes me hate you more.

"We don’t have a traditional rival, really. The Arkansas thing is cute, but I’m yet to meet an LSU fan who really cares about the Boot. My parents hate Ole Miss, but they haven’t been relevant in years (Ole Miss, not my parents). So we can pretty much focus all of our hatred on you, saving a little bit for 'Bama. The Tiger Bowl sets the tone for the whole season, as it’s a must win game for both teams.

"Here’s just a brief list of things we hate about you (cue the Ugly Kid Joe!--ed.): the Cigar Game, Damon Duval fighting the band, Dameyune Craig or however he spells his name (that's correct, actually--ed.) having the game of his life against us, the Jamie Howard Game, stomping the Tiger eye, 'Corndogs' (probably the most mystifying insult ever, we’re not upset about it, it’s like someone yelling 'umbrella!' at us. It just makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like being heckled by Dadaists), the way your fans sucked up to USC on the message boards in 2003, every story about how LSU fans raped and killed Auburn fans or whatever (most stories have reached urban legend proportions – I’m surprised a guy with a hook hand hasn’t attacked an Auburn fan yet), Refgate, Refgate II, pretty much anything Tommy Tuberville has ever said or done in his entire life, and most importantly, the way the Auburn game is always close or something freakish happens. Usually both.

"If you’re a Tiger fan 35 or under, you probably hate Auburn more than any other team by a wide margin. In the last 10 years, we’ve been the dominant powers of the West. And that comes on the heels of 1994-1997, which was simply a terrific stretch of games in this rivalry, or any rivalry. So as we became a power, the biggest roadblock has always been Auburn."

10. Lastly, do you think this Saturday's game will live up to the dramatic standard set by the last four years of this series? Why or why not?

"If LSU or Auburn wins the game on a late score, that wouldn’t even rate in this rivalry. You need a close game, a late score, something controversial, AND a disaster of some sort and then you’d just have the 1996 game. The bar is set so impossibly high it can’t help but not live up to it. We’re reaching the point where the only place left for this rivalry to go is a sword fight between the coaching staffs. I’d bet on Miles to win that. (Actually, every summer Tubby travels to a small chalet outside of Nantes to take fencing lessons from the great French sabre master Francois Mimeaux, so I wouldn't be so sure.--ed.)

Both offenses have struggled, and you don’t want to be a struggling offense going up against either of these defenses. So I expect a low-scoring affair because I just don’t think either offense is capable of breaking it open. So it’ll likely come down to the last drive again. Which means a great finish is likely. Though asking for a last second touchdown might be a bit much. Asking for an earthquake or a fire is asking way too much."

Probably, though I wouldn't count it out. Vitriol aside--actually, why put the vitriol aside when it's part of what's made this such a zesty rivalry this decade?--I do recommend getting the lowdown on LSU at And the Valley Shook and thank Poseur for his time. See you umbrellas Saturday.