Auburn’s grassy knoll

I love conspiracy talk, especially in college football.  Crooked refs, conference commissioners with agendas, head coaches’ secret plans to do something totally against their own vested interests – it’s all great.  Even though I don’t believe a word of it, it’s always fun to get some insight into how certain unbalanced parts of certain fan bases tend to… well, think may not exactly be the operative term here… let’s go with “internalize visual data which does not accord with their accepted world view”.

So, in that light, I present to you a viral e-mail that’s making the rounds on the Plains and was forwarded to me today.  I doubt it all, but it’s a hilarious read nonetheless.

from a player in my lab…i had befriended one of the senior lineman…he was responsible for signaling in plays…he said that this past week was the hardest preparation week they have had all year…the reason…all of the signs that are used had to be changed…apparantly after the utm game, one of the utm coaches came up to tubbs and told him that his signs had been known by every team he’s played since franklin left…not only that, but mark richt called tubbs the week before the uga game (btw mark richt may be my new favorite coach because of this) and told tubberville it was in his best interest to change all of his signs because he knew all of them…wonder why we started going to a huddle now???…from everything i gather, coach tony franklin put those bad boys out there for the world to know…it can be traced back to arkansas is what coach richt said…so for the past however many weeks, every team we played either knew our signs, or had the opportunity to know them…i’m not saying that that’s an excuse for our offensive woes, but it could explain how we looked so predictable and how kodi makes a majority of his completions after the play has broken down…i knew franklin was a snake, but if this is true, i hope he never coaches again…i hope he has to go door to door selling his books and video’s…he’s dead to me…

Two questions about this:  (1)  Didn’t Auburn’s offense suck before Franklin was let go?  (2) Richt couldn’t wait until after the game to let Tuberville know?  Sheesh.

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UPDATE: Jeebus. Maybe we’re supposed to detect the faint whiff of smoke from this after all.  Jerry at The Joe Cribbs Car Wash links to this article where Tubby kind of hints around the edges about… something:

… in football, having your signs stolen shouldn’t really be an issue. But it’s one of the numerous reasons coach Tommy Tuberville ditched the arm-flailing method of communication brought to the Tigers by Tony Franklin for the old-fashioned huddle technique for Saturday’s game against Georgia.

“You just take too many things for granted that if you’re signaling and people are seeing what you’re doing,” Tuberville said. “When you’re huddling, only 11 people in that huddle know what you’re going to do.”

Tuberville couldn’t pinpoint any examples of supposed sign-stealing.

“As coaches, you’re always wondering why are they slanting this way or doing that,” Tuberville said. “It’s probably not happening, but it gives you peace of mind for your players and coaches.”

Methinks this is still crap, but there you go…