Friday lunch buffet

No turkey in this buffet.

• Harvey Updyke’s rehabilitation hasn’t exactly taken hold.
• With all the bad luck with injuries we’ve seen in Athens, I’m kind of surprised this happened with the other Bulldogs.
• Speaking of injuries, it’s hard to believe that Todd Gurley’s still got a decent shot at another 1,000-yard rushing season.
• Gene Chizik reflects.  Yawn.
• If you haven’t heard, next year Georgia plays Arkansas in Little Rock.
• One reason we always seem to hear about patience and Georgia quarterbacks is because Bobo and Richt are good at developing their starters at the position.
• Tennessee refuses to release information about whether Maurice Couch or Tyler Bray committed any NCAA violations, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law designed to protect student privacy.  Wait, what?

Sunday morning buffet

Eh, why not.

• Gregg Doyel must be in serious need of hits:  “I’m not saying Manziel has a drinking problem.”
• Anthony Dasher has a good piece on Georgia associate strength and conditioning coach Sherman Armstrong.
• Relax, gamers.  EA Sports has a new deal with CLC.
• If this is true, hopefully it’ll broadcast at night, because sometimes I have insomnia.
• Dawg fans, here’s the link to the 2013 Official Media Guide.
• Scarbinsky asks a good question, rhetorically, of course, since we all know the answer.
• There will be plenty more Return of Mett stories between now and  September 28th.

A Chiz can dream, can’t he?

How ’bout this?  “In a 27-year coaching career, Chizik had never left a job because of somebody else’s decision.”

That’s what happens when you’re the guy with the program that turned in the fourth-worst offensive and third-worst defensive showings in the SEC in the last six years.  Maybe we should be impressed that Auburn managed to win three games last year, given that.

It’s obvious Chizik wants to coach again.  That’s why he spent the time strenuously objecting to Selena Roberts’ report the other day.  (By the way, “we did it right” includes spending $77,000 to have private security enforce Auburn football player curfews during last season?  Ho-kay, fine.)

“It’s been a time of reflection. I’m not one to dwell on the past and look at all the ‘what-ifs’ and things of that nature, but naturally, you reflect,” Chizik said. “But I’ve also stayed busy. I’m in a place right now where I’m continuing to map out a plan.”

Careful with that kind of talk, Geno.  Remember what happened with the last SEC head coach who had a plan.

Okay, so now you tell us.

A couple of hindsight is always 20/20 stories for your amusement:

First, we learn that the high school coaches nearest to SOD Country never had much use for the guy, because he didn’t have much use for them.  There’s a lot of hurt feefees on display, as well as sour grapes.

“I didn’t like that staff, to be honest,” Price said. “I grew up in this state and I would go to the games about every week and wanted to support them. I’m a Tennessee fan, but we never heard anything from them. Not even a visit just to introduce who was recruiting our area or a call or anything. It was like they didn’t care whether they had any relationship with us at all, so how would we ever feel good about sending a kid there once we had one they wanted?

“I’ve been coaching a long time and dealt with a lot of coaches at every level, and those guys were the worst as far as feeling like they wanted to work with you or have any relationship at all with the high school coaches.”

Sumbitches!  And here’s the best part:  “The lack-of-communication complaint was echoed by all 37 coaches who responded to the poll, and each said the staffs under former coaches Phillip Fulmer and Lane Kiffin seemed to care more about building a working relationship.”  Hey, great!  And how did that work out for Tennessee?

But that’s mild stuff compared with Kevin Scarbinsky’s don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass farewell to Gene Chizik.  It’s a classic of the genre.  Even if just half of what’s in there is true, it’s hard to see how Jay Jacobs still has a job this morning.

My favorite part:

Newton, Fairley and the seniors received plenty of credit for the national title. So did offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn, whose attack set school and SEC records. People close to Chizik believe he felt slighted in the afterglow even though he deserved and earned praise for his steady hand as allegations of recruiting violations threatened Newton’s eligibility.

Chizik seemed to change after the national title. It’s not uncommon for coaches to write books after that kind of season, but his – “All In: What It Takes to Be the Best” – was far more about him than about the team.

I guess they should have read his book more carefully.  They can probably get a cheap copy of it now, though.

Chizik, losing his religion

I know taking advice from former Auburn offensive coordinators – amazingly enough, two of Tuberville’s former staffers are up for the Broyles Award this year – is probably the last thing Gene Chizik wants to hear right now, but something Tony Franklin said bears repeating as we enter into what very well may turn out to be Chizik’s farewell on the Plains today:

“New England is the best offense in the NFL for one reason,” Franklin said. “They play like colleges do. They play no-huddle, fast-tempo, they change tempos and they do what they have to do to win. I think Belichick would probably disagree with his buddy.”

“It’s the great equalizer,” Franklin said. “People say Baylor can’t play defense. You know what? Before Art Briles got there, they couldn’t play offense, either, and they couldn’t win games. Now all of a sudden, Baylor can beat people because they can outscore people.

“Obviously if you can line up and you’ve got better players than everybody else and play great defense and eat clock and win as many games as you can, that’s a great way of playing football, too. The problem is, 95 percent of us don’t have that type of talent to do that.

“So when they fall into that trap of saying, ‘Here’s how Alabama has won championships. Here’s what we should do,’ to me, that’s the trap that Coach Saban would want everybody to fall into because, the reality of it is, he’s going to have better players most of the time.”

Chizik walked right into that trap with eyes open when he ditched Malzahn and elected to go with a more traditional offensive scheme.  I read the other day that Chizik without Malzahn has a 2-22 record as a head coach against D-1 teams.  Choosing a course of action with the thought that Auburn would be able to go toe-to-toe with Saban’s Process, even with guys like Luper and Taylor luring recruits to Auburn, was a fool’s errand from the start and Chizik is about to be presented with the check.

It will be interesting to see where Auburn goes from here.  Does it proceed to act as if it’s part of the five percent that can line it up with Saban, or does it go the let’s try to outscore ‘em route – a path that served Texas A&M pretty well this year (and made Ole Miss a pain in the ass to play)?

Must not see TV

In an act of remarkable subtlety, the company that produces the Auburn football coaches program announces that it will not produce a program following the Iron Bowl.

Boy, are they going to regret that call if Auburn pulls off the upset.

(h/t TSK)

What I tell you three times is true.

Gene Chizik has twice told Auburn's players that he absolutely will be their coach next year (VIP/mobile)
auburn.247sports.com/Board/42/For-Y…—
Football Rumor Mill (@fbrumormill) October 19, 2012

How dreaded is a vote of confidence if you give it to yourself?

One coach’s perspective can be another’s pain in the ass.

I wonder if Brian VanGorder knows he signed up for this.

Q: Do you, as a head coach, say, ‘This is what I believe in and, you, as the coordinator this is what I want’ as opposed to saying ‘we need to run play X or play Y’?

A: “My role is to conceptually build what I think wins. That’s why I hire the guys I hire because they’re going to believe in the same things I believe in. That’s where it starts. Week to week, we always have a plan and we’re on the same page. I don’t call the games, but I’m certainly involved with suggestions at different times and can give a bird’s eye view sometimes. I’ve been a coordinator. I can say, ‘Coach, just beware that you’ve blitzed four times in a row.’ I see things that I think can be very helpful because I’ve been in that spot. Or ‘we’ve played so much base defense, we’ve got to get aggressive on this down.’ That’s where I feel like I can give a perspective.”

But at least Chizik’s gonna help a brotha out by having the offense huddle more, so there’s that.

Wednesday morning buffet

The chafing dishes have been refilled.

• Everybody’s been focusing on Gary Pinkel’s “mammoth” comment, but I think the more interesting news from Seth’s post is that the Missouri coach is still hedging his bet on whether James Franklin will be ready when Georgia comes to town.
• Chris Low thinks it would be better to base the composition of a playoff field on the BCS standings than on a selection committee, “… because it’s farfetched to think you could truly find enough qualified people, who didn’t have a dog in the fight, to serve on a selection committee.”  Did somebody have a meeting about dropping the Coaches Poll that I missed?
• The future’s so bright at Auburn, Gene Chizik has to wear shades.  Or at least he will, once he figures out exactly how bright that is.
• Not surprisingly, Mark Richt doesn’t think much of Steve Spurrier’s divisional champ proposal.
• The rejiggered SEC is trying to figure out how it meshes with the bowls.
• The BCS looks like it’s going to adopt a fan-friendly format.  Not:  One commissioner, who is against semifinal games being played on campus, said: “The NCAA [men's basketball] tournament doesn’t have campus games, do they?”
• Even if you don’t care about the NFL (I don’t), you might be interested in this article about how its metamorphosis into a pass-happy league is affecting the value it puts on certain positions, because of the impact that may have on the college game.

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UPDATE:  Regarding the likely rejection of playing the semi-finals at on-campus sites, Brian Cook offers some excellent snark here.

Tales from the recruiting trail: just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it ain’t true.

Jordan Jenkins tells a story that shows Gene Chizik to be pretty adept at negative recruiting in a lighthearted way:

“… When coach Gene Chizik was comparing Auburn and Alabama, he put up a slide that showed they had more wins, more this and that … then he started talking about Florida and how Will Muschamp follows in his shoes. I started busting out laughing. He said ‘When I was at Auburn the first time [as an assistant] and after I left, Muschamp came here. Then I was at Texas and after I left, Muschamp came there.’ He went on and on. He said ‘Muschamp just follows in my footsteps’ and it was hilarious the way he said it.”

Boom!  Jenkins qualified it by saying “This wasn’t meant to be as insulting as it sounds”, but I thought it came out just right.  In fact, he could have made an even stronger point by noting which of the two were on staffs which won national titles during that period.