aucom96

"The Waffle House Diaries" Excellent stuff.

When we hired Tony Franklin, I began to worry about Auburn's future. This was a guy known for making more out of less and after him, we committed to a similar philosophy with Gus. We started recruiting projects and neglecting the trenches. We pursued football that scored off mistakes rather than dictating the game as we did with Dye and, to a lesser extent, Tuberville. With Saban in this state, it felt we were punting on holding our own with recruiting and I do feel we lost Georgia to Kirby, which led to Gus' eventual demise. What's scary is that the advantages teams like Georgia, Alabama and LSU had over us seem likely to become more pronounced and consistent now that college has become pro. Watching what Georgia did to TCU really underlined how ineffective trying to finesse your way around raw talent can be. I feel Hugh's biggest sales job is going to be to donors rather than recruits, and while not exactly a new job for a head coach, it will now be far more important. I don't like this new world of college football at all, but I hope that's just my general cynicism and not a new fixed reality for Auburn.

And NIL... how much does it change the typical curve? How much does it freeze programs at a tight floor/ceiling that's almost impossible to overcome?

Don't see many kids these days starting global thermonuclear warfare with their "smartphones", do you?

That's been an issue with me really since the TV contracts started dictating the game. Everything has been about money for some time now, which has killed any "amateur" gloss college football once had. This just makes it more ludicrous and it's only starting. Pretty soon, every starter with any stats to their name are going to need more and more money to keep on a roster year after year. How long will boosters back that constant demand for more money? How much sales will have to go into keeping an NIL fund flush? When will the divide between haves and have nots turn the game into a farce? It's professional football, but in a very chaotic sense. Without some structure, it's going to continue to devolve into a mess but at this point you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I'll enjoy what I can of it as long as I can.

Success in the SEC starts with talent...players. You can have all the wonderful schemes and philosophies you want, but in this league, raw talent will win out over them alone. Both Gus and Harsin leaned on their systems. Both said in so many words that their systems would make the players, not the other way around. Both were proven wrong. When Gus had players in the right positions, he had success. When he didn't, we lost. But as bad at roster management as Gus was, he knew he needed talent. Harsin couldn't be bothered to care. Harsin got fat at a program that was already built and thriving when he took it over. He had never found himself in a situation where the top teams always had better talent and he had to catch up. He refused to put in that work and he will go down as perhaps Auburn's worst football coach because of it. Hugh Freeze very much understands talent and he appears to be more roster aware than Gus ever was. Regardless of scheme, that's a better foundation to start from.

I suppose I should be more deliberate in what I type. I meant QBs that will be on the roster when this upcoming season kicks off and really was referencing the years prior to Freeze's arrival.

It really is a marvel how poorly the QB position has been handled. Bo Nix really seems the last time any success has been had recruiting that position. I hope the defense plays above their heads this season, because it's hard to see how we don't look like a triple option team again with the roster we have.

I miss the drill fields and the sea of tailgating you walked through on the way to the stadium. I miss the lively feel of Auburn's campus when you could easily access any part of it and park nearby. I miss the college feel of college street before it was swallowed by condos and boutique stores. I miss the simplicity of Jordan Hare stadium before they slapped that giant atrocity in the endzone. I miss burnt orange, big bruiser running backs and the I-formation. I miss feeling like you would at least get three years to watch a player grown up on the field in an Auburn uniform and the build-up with one signing day at the end of the season. I miss the complete lack of Saban and his minions from the SEC and I miss Steve Spurrier and Bobby Bowden coming to Jordan Hare.

I once read one of those rankings of most expensive trip to the ballgame and Auburn was either second or close to it. Auburn has a very loyal fanbase traditionally, but a lot of that was a very middle class bunch and Auburn has solidly pushed towards a wealthier student and fanbase. That's going to inevitably shrink numbers, especially when we've sucked at football for the better part of a decade.

Don't tell us! If that were true, college football would still be accessible, the NFL wouldn't be politically charged and ESPN wouldn't be going broke. Like most things, it's about how much money it can squeeze before it all keels over.

In other words, pro football.

Not that it's applicable anymore, but this line of argument was always crap. Look up the cost of a full-ride at Auburn with food, lodging, utilities, training, etc. thrown in. It's WELL above zero. Colleges should have never been about making money off sports and they still shouldn't. Hopefully this "highest bidder" reality will finally tip over this bloated bubble for good.

He was a bad dude.

Heard the same thing last spring. I'll believe it when he's facing a pass rush and doesn't suddently turn into a pick machine. I still have to think we don't have our starter on campus yet.

The guy is getting paid to improve. He has mostly done so, but this season was an outlier and that’s on him. The same problems will continue unless he addresses them.

I wonder if these boys have any eligibility left?

Mobility means we can't run our offense. We have spent several years now basically depending on a mobile QB to create offense and the results have been absolute inconsistency. Here, Bo Nix was running for his life and slinging the ball up in desperation for the occasional big play, but as often a turnover. He went to Oregon and is running an actual offense where his passing skills are most valuable. Ashford was basically only relevant last year when the defense missed a tackle after the play broke down. At no point at all last season did I ever feel a defense worrying about Robby Ashford, especially when he was throwing ducks on two and three yard screen passes. We hired Harsin to build an organized offense in the wake of a chaotic and hapless Malzahn mess. Harsin ran off the only QB talent we had and the results looked very Gus like. Hugh Freeze does not strike me as a guy who will make that mistake. If he can build Robby into an effective passer, than Robby will be our QB. If not, I seriously doubt Hugh Freeze came here to run the option...even given the talent limitations we have.

Don't you have your own board to whine on? Go away.

Pearl is the best thing to happen to AU basketball in my lifetime and I haven't seen many suggesting otherwise. I think it's clear that the man can put an exciting product on the court, sell his program like no other to recruits and fans and motivate the pieces he has to play strongly more often than not. Where some of the questions come in is if we can BUILD a program top to bottom built to compete at the top and that's a tough one to answer. Auburn fans are hungry to make our basketball program more than just lightning in a bottle, but that's very difficult to do. We've had some roadblocks and some misfires with recruiting that have hurt us. The next couple of years will be telling, but I think there's a long way to go before the overall confidence level on Bruce reaches anything approaching concerning.