The Old Mailbag

Gotta love the Sports Guy.

The Hob Knobbin'

For Love of the Game

You either have to be crazy or really love your sport...no wait, this is just f'n crazy.

SEC Picks - Week 3

Let's start a little fun weekly picks feature. We'll go SU and ATS. Submit two picks for each game and we'll do 2 bonus points on the over/under for one game:

Ball St. (+36.5) AUBURN
Ole Miss (+3) VANDERBILT
UL-Monroe (+38.5) GEORGIA
Alabama (-3) SOUTH CAROLINA
Kentucky (+3) INDIANA
Tennessee (+4.5) FLORIDA
Mississippi St. (-2.5) TULANE (Game played in Shreveport - Tulane is "home" team)
Arkansas (+31) USC

Over/under for UT vs. UF: 49

On the Market

Well, the condo (aka The Sharp B&B aka James' former second home) is officially on the market and for sale. If any of you know a prospective intown condo buyer in the ATL hook a brother up. Geez dude, real estate is where it's at. These agents make beacoup bucks. Six percent of a sale is a lot of dough. I realize the buying agent and selling agent each only get three percent but still...that's six percent of our sale price. So in the end this three year investment is going to come out pretty much a wash. We're going to be lucky to get $215K for the joint which after commission and potential closing costs (we're really hoping for someone with a corporate relocation package so the closing costs are covered) leaves us with around $200K...ouch. That's a whopping $2000 increase over the purchase price. If we have to go below $215K to sell I think Cece's head might explode. And that's not a good thing. So keep us in your thoughts and if you want to visit the pad one last time you better hurry on over (we hope).

Auburn ranked in the Top 10

Unfortunately it's for the wrong reason. Ok, on more than one occasion I may have been a slacker. I just think as an Auburn grad I'm well rounded.

Thoughts on Auburn and the SEC

A win is a win and I'll definitely take it, but I wasn't really encouraged by the offensive effort on Saturday against State. I was working over at Turner and only got to watch about 45-50% of the game so I may be talking a little bit out of my ass on some of these points. I know the coaches were trying to prove a point and just run the ball even if Mississippi State was going to put 8 or 9 guys in the box (kinda like a normal Saturday for Frankie), but it seems like the offense is still very sluggish and way behind last year. Granted that's going to happen when you lose a fifth year Senior QB, a Senior RB and a fifth year Senior RB, but we have SO MUCH talent at wide receiver it is hard to believe we could play a conference game and only complete two passes to starting wideouts and four overall. I read a couple of stories from today's paper and Borges was saying he probably shouldn't have gotten so conservative in the second half but he just wanted to keep Brandon confident and didn't want him to force any plays and make a couple of turnovers. That's all good, but he isn't going to get any meaningful snaps in the next two weeks against Ball State and Western Kentucky. At least he was playing against SEC athletes Saturday. If he's going to lead wins over South Carolina (their defense looked pretty solid against the pass versus Georgia...not so much against the run though) and at Arkansas (more on this in a minute...Vandy????) he needs to work on some passing plays in pressure situations. The running backs look pretty pathetic at times. Kenny ripped a couple of decent runs but he lost a fumble and he had a ton of rushes for no or minimal gain. Carl is a bruiser but he kind of plods through the line. He doesn't look like he has an extra gear or a good burst. Brad Lester may end up being the best of the bunch. He looked fast, fresh, and ready to rumble out there. But he doesn't have any game experience and he hasn't been getting a lot of reps in practice against the first or second team D so I have no idea if he can handle pass protection at all. Larry's statement about Tre not sniffing the field after the fourth game might be prophetic after all (let's add psychic to Larry's already long and distinguished list of accomplishments). I just feel for the wideouts. Courtney was garnering all sorts of All America and All SEC accolades before the season and now he has a grand total of 80 receiving yards and no touchdowns after two games. I'd be willing to bet we don't throw the ball a lot the next two weeks so he's not going to produce numbers until the meat of the SEC schedule. On the bright side, if his numbers aren't out of this world maybe he'll stick around for his senior year. Ben and Devin are borderline middle round draft picks and need to make some plays so they'll get noticed by the scouts. If we ain't throwin', they ain't catchin', and the NFL ain't lookin', and they ain't gettin' drafted. Tight ends looked good though:)

Defense looked pretty hungry out there. I think they were a bit embarassed after the Tech game. LBs were flying around and the linemen were holding their own against a bigger O-line. Groves looks like he might be the real deal at DE, supplanting McClover as the best defensive player. The secondary looked pretty solid. Montae made some nice plays in coverage as did David Irons. They're just not causing enough big plays. Picky I know, considering the D scored a touchdown and notched their first SEC shutout since 2000 (that would be the Vandy game where Vince kicked me out of the camper at 6:00 AM and I cracked my engine block trying to back my car over the curb so we could listen to my stereo...good times). I just want to see them shut down a good offensive team before I start looking at them the same way we could look at last year's D.

Kicking game remains sporadic. Bliss is a freaking stud punter (James I don't think you got to watch the game so let me clue you in on the best sequence of the day: Bliss knocks the holy hell out of a punt, 61 yards in the air. The MSU punt returner is going back so far he loses track of where he is and calls for a fair catch on the five yard line. AU stuffs a run on first down. MSU completes a short pass on 2nd down. The corner stands the receiver up and a gang tackle ensues during which someone knocks the ball away and Herring runs it into the end zone for a touchdown. Without Kody's huge punt the defense doesn't score a touchdown right there) but neither Vaughn nore Kutch are impressing me at all. Vaughn seems to have gone backward in his development. The coaches didn't have enough faith in him to try a 47 yarder against Tech and he missed a thirty-something yarder against State. Kutch's kickoffs either go out of bounds or end up at the ten, leading to good field position for the opponent.

Overall, I'm kind of blah on the team right now. We're probably not going to learn a lot about them over the next couple of games and I'll be in Paris for the South Carolina game (oui, oui). So I won't get to see a decent game until mid October when we head to Arkansas. I'm just not seeing anything more than 8-3 out of this team...which is a shame because they are loaded with talent. It's just inexperienced talent. I don't see how we can match scores with LSU and Georgia. The South Carolina and Arkansas games are going to be tougher than they should be and I hate to admit it but the Bama game is going to be huge.

SEC thoughts: how in the hell can Arkansas lose in Fayetteville to Vandy?? Well the answer is probably Vandy's Senior four year starter QB versus Arky's Redshirt freshman second game starter QB. But still. It's Vandy. In Fayettenam. The SEC West is far behind the East right now and the gap is only going to get bigger. I think Les Miles is a good coach but unless he goes 10-1 or 11-0 this year he's not going to recruit as well as Saban did. Orgeron at Ole Miss is a fraud and they'll be exposed as the year goes on. The only reason they beat Memphis is because Memphis' QB got injured on the first play of the game. The Rebs are heading for 4-7 again. Arky is talented but they won't win six games. We saw State's offense in rare form Saturday. Bama is one injury away from going back to sub-.500 ball, and it doesn't matter if it is Crodie or Darby. Either one of them goes down and their season is toast. We obviously aren't looking too hot on offense. Just based on the talent gap between us and most of the teams on the schedule we should have no problem winning seven games at the bare minimum, but I think more than eight would be a mini-miracle at this point. I'll be more than happy to be proven wrong though. LSU is the clear class of the West and probably shouldn't lose a game to a West Division opponent. I think they'll handle UT next week and their only conference loss might come against Florida. But that game is in Baton Rouge so you never know. They might be good enough to go undefeated. We'll see how much has changed if they go undefeated, and USC and Texas stay unbeaten as well. But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. The East is just better this year. I think UT is overrated but Florida and Georgia are pretty solid. Carolina is going to beat some people and UK and Vandy are obviously better than they were last year. Neither one of them is going to a bowl game but they're still better than last year.

This week: I like Florida over UT in a close one, Carolina to put a decent sized smack down on Bama, and Vandy to continue the dream season with a win over Ole Miss. AU 36 - Ball State 9.

The King is Dead...Long Live the King

Well, that was a short-lived stay at the top for Dr. Lowe. They say a football team makes it's greatest improvements between the first and second games. This doesn't speak all that well for Larry's (or Auburn for that matter...but we'll discuss that later) JLM 2005 prospects. As can be expected from a brilliant scientist Larry made logical picks that made great sense on paper but due to unforeseen circumstances (South Carolina growing a defense, Brandon Cox forgetting his wide receivers are allowed to touch the ball, a holding call negating a touchdown catch) and a typical engineer oversight (if you didn't spend so much time working and you goofed off a little and ready SEC scouting reports you would know that Alley Broussard tore his ACL in practice and is gone for the year) his final score looked like he had a retarded monkey (not his dog, the hyperactive Monkey) make his picks. While Larry did manage to have three players score in double figures (compared to James and Matt with four) his high scorer only accumulated 17 (again compared to James' 35 and Matt's 30). Combine this fact with his two 0's (the aforementioned gooseegg for Courtney Taylor and streetclothes for Alley Broussard) and it adds up to a paltry 54.

So the battle waged once again between the North and the South for fantasy gridiron primacy. Of course James does live in southern Wisconsin and I live in North Georgia, so I don't really know if the whole directional thing matters or if it cancels itself out. James took his usual week two modus operandi and stole from the previous winner's playbook. This time it meant choosing Chris Leak, who appears to be the early frontrunner for JLM 2005 MVFP. Leak didn't put up huge passing numbers like he did last week, but he was able to get into the end zone twice with his legs, pushing his touchdown total to four for the week and eight on the season. James then jumped on the Peyton Hillis bandwagon (that would be Arky's back up RB, a 220 lb. white guy who I thought had hands of stone) for a solid 15 points. Hillis didn't light up the world rushing but he did haul in sixty passing yards and a touchdown in a losing effort to Vandy (Vandy for crying out loud...a losing effort to Vandy. So much for the West closing the gap and passing the East for conference bragging rigths. We'll address this a little later when I go through the rest of Auburn's schedule and examine our chances at reaching a decent bowl game). James' other forays into the land of double figures included a wide receiver from Kentucky named Burton and Auburn's defense, which recorded the first JLM shutout of the year. Unfortunately for James he chose the wrong starting wide receiver for Auburn (Taylor caught zero passes, Obamanu caught one pass for nine yards, and Aramashadou caught one pass for five yards, but a precious touchdown), the wrong receiver for LSU (Early Doucet would have been the pick there), and bama couldn't run the ball against Southern Miss (Darby only got seven points). That all adds up to a respectable 86 points.

This brings us to...well, to me actually. In a marked improvement from last week (see second sentence in first paragraph above) Team IGottaGetOuttatheHouseMore dropped a solid 104 points on its JLM opponents. D'shawn Wynn made a big splash in his debut with the Gator's Urban Renewal Project (he was suspended last week), getting to the end zone three times. Wynn's 30 points coupled with the consistent numbers of Brandon Cox (got tight ends and running backs involved in the passing game) brought me to 53 points (or one less than all of Larry's team) with my top two guys. Wynn was also joined in the All Apostrophe backfield by De'arrius Howard who churned out 19 points for the pigs in, say it with me, A LOSING EFFORT TO VANDY. My team pod picking system worked out pretty well with the Florida duo scoring 34 (30 for Wynn, 4 for Caldwell), the Arky contingent netting 30 (19 for Howard, 11 for Monk), the Auburn boys combining for 29 (23 for Cox, 6 for Devin), and the Kentucky tandem going for 11 (5 for Begley, 6 for the win).

Week 3 brings us some intriguing match ups. Florida and Tennessee tangle in the Swamp. Can Leak, Wynn, Jackson, et al continue to put up gaudy stats against a real defense? Will Rick Clausen and the stable of UT wideouts open up the Gator D and allow Riggs to run wild? Bama heads to Columbia with grilled chicken on their minds. But the Cock D pretty much shut down the explosive and versatile D.J. Shockley. Will the Cocks be able to penetrate and spank a stationary target like little Crodie? On the flip side, Georgia was able to run at will on the Cocks. Will Darby find the Cocks D flaccid or hard as a rock? Can I work any more sexual entendres into a preview of a South Carolina Cocks game? Vandy and Ole Miss square off in yet another opportunity for the SEC West to look bad. Vandy is looking for it's first 3-0 start since the last SEC Scholar Bowl Season and might actually be favored at home. Auburn and Georgia should pad the stats against a couple of sacrificial lambs in Ball State and UL-Monroe, but will the starters stay in long enough to pile up the JLM points? Mississippi State and Kentucky also step outside of conference play to battle Tulane and Indiana.

Good luck fellas. Pick 'em well.

Do I look that dumb?

As everyone and their brother is aware, math textbooks have the odd answers in the back of the book. I don't try and pretend like they aren't there, I just tell the kids things like "I'll know if you know how to work the problems on the quiz/test." Well, in my Algebra 1 class (the one that takes two years to complete) there was a question that could have multiple answers, so obviously the back of the book lists a "sample answer." So I'm grading one of my student's assignment when I get to that question and her answer is "sample answer." You can't help but laugh out loud at this. I couldn't even call her out on it. Larry would have probably called her to the front of the class to explain her answer. I'm beginning to think I need to start a weekly post titled, "you won't believe I heard/saw" or something to that effect. I actually get paid for this entertainment.

Alonzo Horton

Story on espn.com about Auburn freshman Alonzo Horton. He lost an aunt and two little brothers and they still haven't located his dad. Gut wrenching stuff. Just tears at your heart.

NFL Suicide Pool - Week 1

Matt - Minnesota

AU Lineman

Geez...our starting center is huge and burly:

Daily training log

Well, after 2.5 weeks of no exercise I got out for a short run. Man, it's amazing how quick the fitness goes away. The vet school has a "dog jog" coming up that Abbey and I plan on taking down. Should be fun. Guess I'd better wear my slickers. (If you don't know what slickers are then you never mowed yards with Jeremy.)

Thoughts on AU this weekend

Offense is still going to struggle. Mississippi State knows that we're going to come out and run the football. I would be willing to bet that Cox could throw 35-40 passes, get around 375-400 yards, and several touchdowns if Borges wanted to do that. But you know the coaching staff wants to establish the running game - not only to show other teams that we're still a tough, smash mouth football team, but to give confidence to the O-line and running backs. Croom, who is five times the coach Shula is by the way, will have that Mississippi State defense so jacked up and ready to go. I guarantee if they win the coin toss they will defer and go on defense first. My prediction for our first offensive series: hand off into the line for loss of one...toss sweep to the strong side for two yard gain...screen pass or draw play for 3-5 yards...punt. Lost in the rout of Mississippi State last year was the performance of Omar Conner. He was nearly flawless against our D, hitting some ridiculous number of passes. I think he was 12 of 13 in the first half or something like that. They just couldn't stop our offense and they were playing from way behind the whole game. This one is going to be different. I think it will be a tight game at the half - 13-10 AU and we'll pull away a little because of superior talent and depth. Final score 30-16.

Other thoughts...Arizona State shocks LSU. There's no way those players can be ready to play a football game. If you get SI make sure you read Rick Reilly's column as soon as your magazine shows up at the house. I have so much respect for everyone associated with LSU, from the school administration to the athletic department officials to the students and athletes who have busted their asses to help out the last two weeks. They have just gone through too much to be focused on a football game against a quality opponent (especially after preparing all off season for the game to be played at home, only to have it moved a thousand miles away).

Georgia smacks the crap out of the SpurCocks. Way too much speed and talent for USC.

Alabama's defense shuts out Southern Miss. USM has been through a lot as well, having moved to Memphis since Katrina came through. Plus they have some suspensions. Bama wins ugly and easy 24-7 (Crodie throws a pick six late in the third quarter causing Sheila to drop a few F bombs).

Arky runs all over Vandy. The Hogs are going to be good...against teams that can't force them to pass. They might get worked by USC next week in Los Angeles but I think they'll handle Vandy pretty easily.

New Option to keep blog spammers away

There is an added step now required for posting. You have to look at the screen and type the word that appears. Only humans can write the word, so this is supposed to keep automated spammers from posting. Lets give it a try, shall we.......

LJM - Week #2

Team AllI'maskingforisonefreakingtouchdownfromawidereceiver

QB: C. Leak, UF
RB: Peyton Hillis, UArky
RB: Kennth Darby, UAT
WR: Craig Davis, LSU
WR: Keenan Burton, UK
WR: Courtney Taylor, AU
K: Chris Hetland, UF
DEF: AUBURN, Gotta have faith (or lack of brains)

Ummm, go Cats

I've never really had any vested interest in the success of the Kentucky football program. Until now. Maybe it's a bit of a rip off (Major League anyone?) but I still like it.

Not really sure how he did it, but...

James wasted what might be the greatest single player score in JLM history. After lamenting his inability to log on to South Carolina's school web site to find the name of the quarterback who will be in control of the Cock 'n Fire offense, James despondently chose to start Georgia QB D.J. Shockley in week one. Well, apparently in this case D.J. stood for Damn Justified. Shockley passed for almost 300 yards, ran for nearly 100, and produced a staggering SIX touchdowns. His total of 58 JLM points has to be at least close to a record score (the official JLM statisticians are poring over reams of data as we speak). Unfortunately James squandered Shockley's big day by choosing an otherwise pathetic squad (I can say this because if you took out the quarterback scores I would have beat him down with or without his kicker faux paux...which I will explain shortly). His other seven choices combined to score either 32 or 45, depending on how generous Larry and I feel. You see, James picked Andy Bailey, kicker, from UGA. Unfortunately Andy Bailey used up his collegiate eligibility roughly around the same time I did. Brandon Coutu is UGA's kicker in the year of our Lord, 2005. Bailey is somewhere collecting Social Security. So James' score is either 90 or 103 (I think...I don't have the scoring spreadsheet anymore so I did all the numbers in my head). Mine was a paltry 72. I won't go into my choice of an alabama quarterback except to say I had to dodge lightning bolts all Saturday long.

Now that I've got all that out of the way I shouldn't gloss over Larry's winning performance. The prescient Doctor of Thinkology (in both the fields of football and electrical engineering - not to be confused with wiring a washing machine) held a deep faith for the Urban Renewal going on in Gainesville and his two Gator picks came up HUGE. QB Chris Leak ran the Utah spread offense to near perfection to the tune of 320 some odd passing yards and 3 touchdowns. Apparently though the spread in spread offense doesn't pertain to getting multiple receivers (such as, ahem, Dallas Baker perhaps???) involved in the scoring. Chad Jackson, Larry's final WR choice, made an astounding four trips to paydirt (three if by air, one if by land) to team with his quarterback for the outrageous total of 71 points. The rest of his choices were solid if not spectacular and his team choice of Mississippi State (probably the first time anyone's picked MSU since the 2000 JLM season) produced the highest team score. Anyway, according to my unofficial numbers Team ThreeTimesaBabyDaddy racked up 124 points to Team There'sThisThingCalledtheInternet's 90 or 103 to Team AtLeastIKickedmyWife'sButtatTennisYesterday's 72.

True Auburn Fashion

Win win the fans least expect it and lose when the expectations are high. Cox sucks. 4 ints. Put in Booker.

Wireless Internet

I just got a new laptop from work. I brought it home tonight to work on my annual review. I don't have wireless internet,...... but apparently my neighbors do. Stealing wireless is cool.