Auburn « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Auburn

Auburn / football / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
19
Jan 11

“Like Agnes, Agatha, Germaine, and Jacq”

I learned today a photograph of mine is being published in a book. Perhaps more than one. The Email reads “We are happy to inform you that one (or more) of your photos has been selected for publication … ”

They could be more specific, but, then, it is a coffee table book. Perhaps they can’t. Maybe the coffee table book industry is in flux about the size of their margins and page counts and that’s left everything up to a last-minute design by some machine tech who’s going to be doing the actual heavy lifting. Maybe there’s some question about whether a book should have odd or even pages and an extra photograph or two hangs in the balance. Maybe they just like to keep their options open. This is for a book on Auburn football. You can find out more about it here.

Spend some time on campus this afternoon. We had a meeting about a class which is set to begin next week. We’re teaching three sections of the same class and are trying to standardize things a bit. One of my colleagues has done a very nice job pulling all of this together, and so this was a great meeting.

This is a survey class where we take new students and give them the opportunity to learn about various types of media and public relations and advertising. In the overview we take field trips. Now I just have to line up a television station, a magazine publisher and a PR firm. That’s for the rest of the week.

We had a late lunch at Moe’s Original BBQ with Brian. I think we might have been the only people in the place. For a while I wasn’t sure that the one employee was there. But the barbecue was good.

We stopped at the mall for The Yankee to exchange something at Sephora. She exchanged her product there and the lady running the counter complained of gas prices. I told her to try a horse. Government regulations have improved their oats mileage, you might have heard.

We drove home in the darkness. As we got off the interstate I learned that my wife has, improbably, never heard Biz Markie’s classic hit. So, for her, and for you:

That spent 22 weeks on the Billboard chart in 1990, earning heavy rotation from January to June, peaking at ninth that March. Only Phil Collins, Michel’le, Billy Joel, Bad English, Taylor Dane, The B-52s and Janet Jackson topped Biz at his height of popularity, and three of their songs were number ones.

How did she miss that?

Auburn / football / iPhone / video / weekend — Comments Off
16
Jan 11

Catching Up

Seems I didn’t take a lot of extra pictures this week. Most things have either already been published or were adventures of the prosaic kind. Nevertheless, here are four pictures — three of them a little overdue — and one video.

Here’s a three-picture collage from the gym meet. These guys always sit on the front row, on the floor. If you paint yourself blue, you deserve it.

She likes books.

Allie helped us put away the Christmas things some time back.

She also likes sun tans.

Rolling Toomer’s.

Auburn / football / iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
15
Jan 11

22 words about not seeing the BCS trophy

I’m not going to Walmart. I don’t care for crowds or lines that much. I’ll just see the trophy at the museum.

That’s the setting for tomorrow, though. If someone doesn’t write Fear and Loathing in the Walmart Parking Lot piece I’ll be disappointed.

That is all.

adventures / Auburn / Friday / history / links / memories / photo — Comments Off
14
Jan 11

A good deed, an ending, a beginning

I caught an escaping dog this morning while out pounding the pavement. There was a collar on the pooch, so we called, wonder who was named Colby. Turned out that was the dog. A big white pekapoo, or some such, out free and intent on telling the other dogs within sniffing range about it.

When Colby’s owner caught up to us she said the dog was more trouble than her kids. He’d figured out a way to get through the bushes in the yard. Maybe the children haven’t mastered that technique yet, but the dog is escaping every time if the deterrent is shrubbery.

Anyway. That was the beginning of the day. Good deed done. The day’s going to end with a bite of frozen yogurt, so it has rounded itself out nicely.

In between there was reading and a little more reading. There was also a delicious steak dinner, my balloon post from yesterday got picked up by The War Eagle Reader. Also I had a little chat with a member of the governor’s office that is leaving Montgomery today.

Bob Riley returns home — or to his lake house, his home is getting water damage repairs, apparently — after eight years in the governor’s mansion. I was a cub reporter when he was first elected to Congress. Interviewed him on election night. He was a very nice man, who could have been self-important, but was willing to entertain questions from a kid who didn’t really yet know what he was doing.

He’s not without his critics, of course, but there’s no denying the mark he’s had on the state in two terms. And, if half of the things for which executives get credit or blame are really directly related to his efforts, it has been a good administration.

The economy has slowed everywhere, of course, but there are several vital aspects of the state now leading the way in a way that wouldn’t have been possible a decade or two ago. There are car manufacturers everywhere. Mobile is poised to become a boomtown with new naval contracts and airline deals and shipping growth. Birmingham has completed the transition from being a steel town to being a medical center and a biomedical hotbed. Huntsville will grow as more military comes that way. Education, which has never been a strong area for bragging in Alabama, got some good news just today:

The report, dubbed by Education Week as the most comprehensive ongoing assessment of the state of American education, ranked Alabama 25th among all states and the District of Columbia for overall grades and scores on the report card. This is the first time Alabama has ever ranked ahead of the national average in the overall education quality.

[…]

(T)oday Alabama students are outpacing the rest of the nation in improvements in Reading, Math and Science scores and Alabama ranked 4th nationally in gains in the graduation rate between 2002 and 2008.

Not a bad bit of news to hear on your way out the door. Also, a few huge and ancient lawsuits against the state were resolved during Riley’s eight years. He also pushed some useful ethics reform bills late in his second term.

There are criticisms, to be sure, but if inauguration day is about hope and promise, the day you leave office should be something of a victory lap. Riley — and every member of his cabinet whom I had occasion to interview, come to think of it — was always considerate to me professionally. I tried to follow along on his re-election campaign for my master’s thesis, but that didn’t work out. Even so, his people were cordial.

This evening we went out to the gymnastics meet. This was the first home meet of the year for Auburn, and the first meet in the new Auburn Arena. Pictures and blurbs below:

The answer to a trivia question no one will ever ask: Who had the first routine for the gymnastics team in Auburn Arena? Allyson Sandusky. She also won the beam routine in the Arena opener.

Kendall Swartz scored a 9.750 on bars, putting her at fourth in the meet.

Lauren Brzostowski’s 9.800 was good for second on the beam, behind her teammate Allyson Sandusky.

Laura Lane’s 9.750 was good for third overall on the floor, an event the Tigers swept.

Rachel Inniss scored 9.900 to win the floor routine. Something about this pose seems familiar. Feels like I’ve seen that three times before, around here.

The Auburn gymnastics team got their first win of the season against No. 25 LSU, 194.775-194.475. The gymnasts performed for a crowd of 4,190 on hand to see the Tigers’ first meet at the Auburn Arena and the first victory for new head coach Jeff Graba. Auburn and LSU were tied after one event, but the Bengal Tigers took a lead halfway through the meet. Auburn, which began the season ranked 15th, pulled away in their final two rotations on the beam and floor. Petria Yokay won the all-around with 38.750.

It is really nice to be at a gymnastics meet and hear “War Eagle” after events.

Auburn / football / iPhone / memories / Thursday — 1 Comment
13
Jan 11

See ya, Superman

Cam Newton says it is time for him to fly off to the NFL. And this is how I’ll remember the guy, a big joyous balloon-like creature — because balloons make you smile — flying out of the light holding something that I’ll choose to think of as a popsicle stick. Because if balloon creatures make you smile, then a balloon creature bringing popsicle sticks is all the better.

By happenstance I was taking that picture at about the same time Newton was announcing his goodbyes.

Yes, yes. Cam Newton was at the center of a controversy that was either manufactured or so shady as to be disbelieved, depending on whom you believe. I don’t know, and you still don’t either. What is definitive is that he was a nice part of a renaissance of fervor in the Auburn community and he did nice things while he was here, too. All of that won’t soon be forgotten, I’m sure.

We’d told ourselves the last several years that Tim Tebow was one of the greatest to ever play college football. And he was. So was Cam Newton. Consider: the guy played on three national championship programs in a row at Florida, Blinn and Auburn. Statistically you can’t get much more gaudy than his 1,473 yards rushing and 4,327 yards in total offense for the year. His 51 (!!!) scores — 20 rushing, 30 passing and one receiving — are more than 80something teams in big-time college football manufactured this season.

He wasn’t Auburn’s entire team, but he alone was statistically better than most of what you could see on Saturdays. He broke records previously owned by men named Tebow and Bo Jackson and Jimmy Sidle.

(That last one stood for more than 40 years. Newton would pick up the AP Player of the Year, the Walter Camp, the Maxwell, the Davey O’Brien and the Heisman awards, all as a matter of course. Best ever? If he was not he was darn close.)

His teammate, Lombardi award-winning defensive bear-dragon Nick Fairley will declare for the draft tomorrow. I can’t show a representation of him. Balloons can’t be twisted into savage rage machines. (He’s apparently a very nice young man off the field, though.)

So good luck to them, and all of their departing teammates, two dozen seniors in all. It has been a pleasure cheering you on and it’ll be nice seeing you when you return to the plain for a visit. War Eagle.