Don't know if you noticed, but losing the Iron Bowl sucks.
i spent my Iron Bowl at Rogue Tavern in downtown B'ham, watching my good friend and former blogging colleague Rob Pate do his Gameday bunker show with former AU assistant Jack Crowe.
My take from the weekend? Bammers love them some trolling.
The first thing I noticed when you walk in the doors of this really nice establishment was the sign on the door advertising the Bunker and the event sponsored by the Greater Birmingham Auburn club. This apparently translates to a Bama fan: Come on in and troll. About 30 percent of the bar was crimson. They were loud early and late, but the Auburn crowd was noisy in the middle.
Midway through the third quarter, Rob asked me to put on a headset and join in. I made my usual sarcastic commentary. Pretty milquetoast, at least I thought.
I got an email Monday morning from a Bammer I've never met, trolling me about my comments. I said something about Heads exploding in Bryant-Denny Stadium over the fact that Auburn had 36 points midway through the third.
The guy whom I've never met took the time to email me on my personal email to troll. That's some high quality turding right there.
Other random thoughts...
I thought Nick Marshall played his best game as an Auburn Tiger last Saturday. I am pretty sure we'll miss him a lot. Jeremy Johnson will be great, but answer me this-Would 2013 have happened without Nick?
Auburn's defense got worse as the year went on. I thought they were pretty good early on, especially against K-State and LSU. But man oh man, do they know how to collapse. Ellis Johnson is a good football coach, but I kept asking myself if time had passed him by from a scheme standpoint. I will say this, If you score 44 points, you are supposed to win by 20. Now we all await the 'boom'.
Where to go from here? Auburn will get a decent bowl game to hopefully send its seniors out on a good note. I look for a bright future, especially if Duke and Sammie stay. Duke Williams is the real deal. He's Julio Jones with better hands. He's probably ready for the league, but a year catching passes from Jeremy Johnson in this offense, and he probably is a first round pick.
Around college football in 30 seconds...
Bo Pellini got canned after going 9-3. I'm not saying he didn't deserve it. Nebraska is a storied program, but they compete in a different world of recruiting. I doubt the ever return to the days of Tom Osborne.
Florida will make people richer. Just ask Hugh Freeze and his big fat contract extension for averaging 7 wins a year at Ole Miss. Thanks be to Jimmy Sexton.
UAB...I hold a degree from UAB as well as Auburn. I was in optometry school when the Blazers shocked Nick Saban and LSU. There was palpable excitement on campus then. Then the UAT board ran off Watson Brown, and decided they'd pass on Pat Sullivan and Jimbo Fisher for Bear Bryant protege (in alcohol) Neil Calloway. They then doubled down on bad coaches by hiring Garrick McGhee. Garrick McGhee was Bobby Petrino's offensive coordinator at Arkansas, which basically means he brought Bobby his coffee and covered for him with the wife when he went out on motorcycle rides.
My point is, the UAT board has done everything in its power to hamstring that program, including blocking them from building an on campus stadium that Birmingham and several UAB boosters had basically raised the capital to pay for. They make it so a terrible product comes out on the field, then no one comes to games, so it makes it easy to drop the program. So to Bear Jr, the board and President Ray Watts I say...