Some football people will say “college football is better when Notre Dame is good”. I’ve heard the same when talking about Michigan, Alabama and Oklahoma among others.

What if the NCAA folks took this logic seriously? It’s in the NCAA’s best interest for college football to be “good”, so what if they acted on this reasoning? Should the NCAA intervene since Notre Dame, Michigan and Alabama haven’t done well in recent years?

What if the NCAA and BCS awarded wins to losing teams with large fan bases? Wouldn’t Notre Dame fans be better off if their team won more? The NCAA wouldn’t take wins from the teams that beat Notre Dame… they’d simply update the record books to say Notre Dame won the games too.

Obviously, this would be a horrible idea. College football isn’t popular because teams win. It’s popular because of the stuff that happens that make teams win. Similarly, the economy isn’t strong because companies and people have money. The economy is strong because of the things companies and people do to get the money.

If the NCAA awarded wins to Notre Dame for games they didn’t win, Notre Dame wouldn’t gain any more fans and student athletes wouldn’t become any better students or athletes. This would do nothing for college football except devalue wins.

How is giving $700,000,000,000 to failed businesses any different?

Somehow, that analogy makes perfect sense to me which is dangerous since I’m allowed to vote. Luckily, when it comes to issues more important than economics, such as Auburn football, I need not to make any decisions at all. Tommy Tuberville is our fearless dictator and we fans are just on board for the ride. This season, I find myself questioning a few of Tuberville’s coaching practices concerning the offense. I’ll discuss below, but remember, it’s just for fun. Tubs knows best.

Tuberville mentioned after the Tennessee game that Auburn had more offensive yards than they had this time last year. I looked at the numbers and Auburn has 9 more yards offensively this year compared to last year at this time (1,638 vs. 1,647). However, a more telling stat is that Auburn’s offense scored nearly twice as many points last year compared to this year (135 vs. 69).

Auburn played different teams last year, but the quality of the matchups are pretty similar;

Kansas State, 07 = Tennessee, 08
South Florida, 07 = Southern Miss, 08 (this matchup is off – but it's in favor of '07 numbers)
Mississippi State, 07 = Mississippi State, 08
#4 Florida, 07 = #6 LSU, 08

Based on this, there’s no way someone can legitimately say Auburn’s offense is better now compared to last year. Could it have more potential? Yes – but it’s not better at this point.

I find it weird how Tuberville is treating Tony Franklin more like a consultant and less like Auburn’s offensive coordinator;

From al.com;

“We don’t run Tony Franklin’s spread offense,” Tuberville said. “This is Auburn’s offense. It’s like our defense. We’re going to run what works and what we’re going to match up better with the other team. Everybody has to do that. You can’t put a square peg in a round hole. Why would you do that?”

"I hired him to run his offense and I want him to run his offense," the head coach said Monday after meeting with the Montgomery Quarterback Club. "There have been adjustments made, but it's not something that I brought to him and made him change. There are suggestions made. He wants to run the spread on every down. We're tweaking things to fit better with what we have in terms of personnel."

The fact that Franklin wants to run the spread every down amazes me. It’s almost as if winning games isn’t his main goal – installing the spread offense is his main goal. This only furthers the ‘hired-gun’ theory.

I had much more fun watching football last year compared to this year. The joy I derived from the win vs. #4 ranked Florida last year outweighed the despair felt from losing to South Florida and Mississippi State. This year, the joy/despair ratio has been about even with every game.

Auburn fans generally consider 2005 as a better year than 2006 – even though Auburn won more games in 2006. In 2005, Auburn had the opening day loss to Georgia Tech, but ended the season with two EPIC wins over Georgia and Alabama. Those wins were so awesome that the bowl game loss to Wisconsin was easily forgotten. Despite only having two losses in 2006, the season was disappointing because Auburn climbed to #2 in the polls before being smashed by Arkansas at home. Later in the season, Auburn clawed their way back into the national title discussion only to be destroyed by Georgia.

Luckily, there’s plenty of fun left to be had this season. Alabama is actually really good this year and Auburn may have the wonderful opportunity of being the sole team that crushes all of their hopes and dreams this season instead of being forced to share Alabama’s sorrow with the rest of the SEC and Sun Belt. Also, having the chance to finally beat Georgia for the first time since 2005 will be quite awesome as well.