The following are my first decrees as Auburn’s athletic director;

The biggest change I’ll try to implement is to convince Auburn to create the nation’s first ‘College of Athletics’ which would allow students, particularly football players, to choose majors like Football and Basketball. I’ve addressed this before, but I will again. Why are football players forced to attend Sociology classes when their professional interests are in football? This is not fair to the student, the teacher, or the rest of the class. So why is it done? It’s done to please people who have very specific ideals for the “student athlete” as someone who plays for the love of the game and not for the love of money. Incredibly, when it comes to football, people think if someone’s working towards a profession, they’re doing it for the love of money and not for enjoyment.

This is ridiculous. What percentage of accountants do their job for the love of accounting? I bet it’s lower than the percentage of highly paid NFL players who love their jobs.

The obvious argument against my idea is that a football major isn’t very scholarly or academic. It’s true, but in my mind, these athletic degrees would be just as academically valid as dance, music or theater performance degrees.

I think this would benefit everybody. Players would be happy because they’d have an option to learn more about subjects they enjoy (they would still be required to put up with all the boring core classes we all have to go through). Teachers wouldn’t have to deal with football players who don’t want to be in their class. Everyone’s happy. On a more selfish level, I wonder if having a ‘College of Athletics’ would allow Auburn to ignore NCAA scholarship limits since we could just call the entire team’s scholarships “academic”.

Computer generated image of proposed goal posts.

I realize the ‘College of Athletics’ idea can’t be a good idea since I’ve never heard it before – I just can’t figure out why. I’ve noticed dogs on the sidelines before, but never had given them much attention before one bit Jerraud Powers at the Iron Bowl. Obviously, they’re not bomb sniffing dogs since they were stationary the whole game. They definitely aren’t drug dogs since they didn’t bother [insert favorite Alabama player name here]. So what’s the purpose? According to Auburn, they’re there to discouraging students from rushing the field. There’s nothing wrong with the administration wanting people stay off the field after the game - but to use the threat of dog maulings is wrong. As Athletic Director here’s my idea for a better deterrent - flaming goal posts. Special goal posts will be made and installed with tiny holes spread throughout which will shoot out orange and blue flames after Auburn wins a game. Nobody’s going to touch a flaming goal post. Furthermore, a flaming goal post looks way more awesome than a snarling police dog.

A big topic recently has been Tuberville’s contract. Most contracts give the coach a bonus for taking the team to a conference championship game or winning a championship. These bonuses are practically worthless. The money other schools are willing to pay to lure away a recent SEC championship coach is worth far more than the fifty grand bonus given by the coach’s current employer. Making the championship bonus larger than 50,000 is worthless because coaches are already motivated to do their best because they want better deals in the future.

Just because you pay a coach $4,000,000 a year doesn’t mean he’s worth $4,000,000 a year.

For Tuberville, I’d offer a two million dollar base salary with a bonus along with each win. Each win’s bonus will increase exponentially and wins don’t have to be consecutive. If Tuberville goes 0-11 he just makes the base two million. If he goes undefeated, he gets $3,999,999 (we’d need some room to keep making fun of Saban). Unlike the championship bonuses, these would not be an incentive for Tuberville to win – instead, it would give the people who complain about Tuberville not caring about certain games less to complain about.

If I were athletic director during the 2004 season, many things would’ve been handled differently. Auburn had a pretty good opportunity to weaken the credibility of the BCS by simply declaring themselves the 2004 National Champions. I’m not talking about accepting trophies from kids with websites or the Eufaula Tribune. I think Auburn should’ve simply declared themselves national champions.

Auburn caught some flack for having giving rings to the team with “National Champions” printed on them. Auburn’s problem was in doing this quietly. Auburn should’ve been much more public about how they had the rings made and should’ve mentioned that the rings were bigger than the ones USC team members received. It’d all be done with our tongue in our cheek, basically trying to devalue the BCS system, not by fighting it, but ignoring it.

I’d also have banners placed in the stadium and had all the local shirt companies produces “2004 National Champions” shirts. Keep in mind this is not using the Alabama strategy of retroactively declaring one or two loss teams champions, but declaring the current undefeated SEC team champions. Considering the teams who made it to the championship game the past two years, it’s weird to think that people told Auburn they didn’t make it to the game because they beat The Citadel.

My plan would come full circle in the hopefully near future when Tuberville leads Auburn to a legitimate BCS championship. After he wins the big game, I’ll have him accept the crystal trophy and then spike it into the ground shattering it into thousands of pieces on live television. I imagine shattering the crystal football will have an effect similar to when Frodo threw that ring into that volcano – all BCS evil will magically vanish.

Once the evil BCS spirits are killed off, a new championship declaring system will be put into place.

That’s the idea anyways….

A better title for this article might have been “Why the Auburn family should make sure I NEVER ever become Auburn’s athletic director.”

War Eagle.

E-mail Mark at mark@theauburner.com

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