After the second
week of the season, Auburn has been forced to eat a helping of humble
pie while other SEC teams have been loading up on cupcakes. It’s
not time to panic at this point, there’s plenty of time for
Tuberville to hand out their just desserts.
Oh man. I’m sending that to Reader’s Digest.
USF now has my respect. I had no knowledge of their existence before
Auburn scheduled them. How is it possible that I’ve never
heard of the country’s 9th largest university? (they have
almost 50,000 students) Most established football programs have
been around since at least the early 1900s, and thus have a ‘retro’
themes going with uniforms, logos and traditions. USF doesn’t
have this, but they did have the luxury of designing sleeker, more
modern looking logos. Here’s their football team’s logo
from 1997-2003.
It looks like they took it from the Powerpoint clipart gallery.
I think that’s awesome.
I can easily imagine it being 50 years from now and USF being the
dominate program in the state of Florida. Many other things will
be different except for things like the Iron Bowl, which will still
be the bitter football game between the two best teams in the state;
Auburn and UAB.
Speaking
of UA-Birmingham, did you know that in America, if you create a
college football team after December 29, 1994, the team’s
primary color must be dark green?
But, it’s 2007 still and we lost to a Big East team. Now what?
Do we stay the course? Do we cut and run? What was that Borges said
about being stuck with the quarterback you have and not the one
you want to have?
Is there a way we can blame this on Tre Smith?
I say stick with Brandon as our Quarterback. Quarterbacks aren’t
like other positions which can be rotated on a play by play basis,
they’re the leader of the team and if Blake Field was better
than Cox, he’d already be playing. I’d rather lose with
experience than to lose with heavy rotations (see the end of Terry
Bowden’s Auburn career). Al Borges repeatedly said before
the season started that Brandon Cox would be playing at the next
level a year from now. After these first two games, I’m really
hoping Borges was using the term ‘next level’ to infer
the NFL and not the afterlife. Luckily, the offensive line is looking
better and Brandon may make it through the season. Auburn has a
far, far, far greater chance of winning on the road with Brandon
than with anyone else.
He may be beat up and rattled, but he’s still the most clutch
quarterback in the SEC.
Should Tuberville be in the hot seat*? When I hear from people who
say yes, they basically list off every single loss since 2002 as
citations. Having to go back that far to mention bad losses proves
his job should be safe. It’s also important to remember that
nobody bounces back from despair like Tommy Tuberville. His greatest
successes come after major defeats. He somehow made 2004 happen
after 2003. In 2006, he somehow went from losing to Arkansas to
beating Florida a week later. As the Ole Miss coach, he somehow
convinced Auburn to hire him and to give him more money despite
being the only SEC coach to have been beaten by the horrible Auburn
team the preceding year.
If Auburn fired Tuberville in 2003, we would've Bobby Petrino –
the first BCS coach to lose to USF. Auburn can’t do better
than Tuberville. Heck, his foresight is better than most fan’s
hindsight.
Go back to the 2003 loss to Georgia Tech. A freshman named Reggie
Ball tore apart the Auburn defense in the season opener. Sport writers
dwelled on the fact that Reggie Ball originally wanted to attend
Auburn but Tuberville refused to offer him a scholarship. This outraged
fans. How could Tuberville have been so stupid? Four years passed
and Reggie Ball is declared the worst four year starting quarterback
in college football history. Things turned out a little better for
that Jason Campbell guy whom Tuberville stuck with. Brandon Cox
is no Jason Campbell either, but he’s much better than Reggie
Ball.
The season’s not over. We still have a shot at an SEC run,
but even if that doesn’t pan out, I can guarantee hilarious
things will happen in Tuscaloosa throughout the season.
War
Eagle!
* The Hot Seat: It’s only slightly more cliché and
stupid than using the term ‘Cinderella” in March.
