LIKE IT IS : Include Tuberville’s Tigers in BCS title talk
Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/231414/
In the weeks and months to come, there will be tons of talk, from coast to coast, about college football and which team will win the BCS championship.
It is a favorite subject, and there are a handful of preseason favorites. A great case can be made for each and every one.
Ohio State has lost back-toback national championships, but you can’t lose it if you aren’t playing for it. Playing in the final game of the season three of the past six years speaks volumes for what Jim Tressel, who is 73-16 at Ohio State, has done. Plus, no one really expected the young Buckeyes to make it to New Orleans last season.
Southern Cal has been almost as consistent in making it to the big game, and this year, the Trojans have a defense as good as their offense.
Florida and Georgia out of the tough SEC appear loaded.
The Gators have 16 starters back, including Heisman Trophy winner and phenomenal quarterback Tim Tebow.
Georgia finished last season ranked No. 2 in the final Associated Press poll, and it is loaded, too, with 17 starters back.
It would not be wise to ignore Oklahoma, either, or perhaps even Missouri if the Tigers, who will have a better defense than last season, can win at Austin, Texas.
There are a couple of others, such as West Virginia and Clemson, who have a shot, too, but there is one dark horse in this race that most seem to be overlooking.
Auburn.
Tommy Tuberville has 16 starters back, including his top four rushers, top two receivers and two strong quarterbacks, one being Fort Smith’s Kodi Burns, who is a run-throw threat on every down.
If it was easy, anyone could do it, but this season, the schedule is not as brutal as last season’s when the Tigers had to travel to Florida, Arkansas, LSU and Georgia. Going 2-2 on the road was very respectable.
This season, Auburn’s conference road games are against Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Mississippi and Alabama.
On Oct. 23, the Tigers go to West Virginia, and that could be the game that catapults them to a top-five spot.
They get Georgia and LSU at home.
Tuberville, a native of Camden (three-sport letterman at Harmony Grove ) and a proud Southern Arkansas University graduate, has almost quietly established a powerhouse down on the plains.
He is 80-33 overall at Auburn, and that includes an impressive 6-3 in bowl games.
Since that weird season in 2003 when a power-hungry booster wanted Tuberville fired and Bobby Petrino hired, the Tigers have played in the Sugar Bowl and the Cotton Bowl and twice in the Capital One Bowl.
Which is one of the reasons Auburn locked Tuberville up with a huge buyout, one that was too large for him to be a real candidate for the Arkansas job last December.
Tuberville, who spent five years at Arkansas State with defensive genius Larry Lacewell, lost his defensive coordinator again, but since that odd year in 2003, he’s managed to make great hires. Paul Rhoads, after eight seasons at Pitt, is Tuberville’s newest defensive coordinator.
Still, Tuberville has been like one of the great secrets of the SEC.
Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer get headlines, but Tuberville has collected his fair share of hardware.
He’s won or shared four SEC West championships and one overall SEC championship, that coming when he led the Tigers to a 13-0 record.
Obviously, he knows how to win, and he’s put together a program that in the past four years has gone 42-9.
Now, flying under the radar, he comes into his 10 th season at Auburn with a very talented and deep team.
If the Tigers take care of business and Burns establishes himself as the quarterback, they will eventually play either Florida or Georgia for the SEC championship, and as stated earlier, both of those are schools being hotly mentioned as national championship caliber.
There’s still lot of time before football starts, but the favorite subject of who wins and who loses is heating up.