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Auburn / football / memories / Monday — Comments Off
6
Sep 10

Some Mondays are slower than others

And some Mondays the ideas come slower.

My Monday? I spent the entire day on class prep. How does one spend two hours on grammar and keep students interested?

I think I’ll have about 75 minutes, actually. And then I’ll do a case study.

I liked case studies. That was my favorite class exercise, talking about a story or circumstance and weighing the pros and cons, taking the other position just for fun. It was a bit Socratic. A friend of mine tells me I’d like law school for this same reason. For once I’ll just believe him and not find out for myself.

The thing I really missed, after graduating and finding myself in a newsroom, were those conversations. We just never had time. Too many deadlines. And, in some later newsrooms, there weren’t that many people. At al.com we had these discussions, but it was about a lot of 2.0 and 3.0 topics.

Do students still enjoy case studies? I bring up one or two in the Crimson newsroom when I can. Tomorrow I’ll add one to my classroom goody bag.

So, yes. this took a great deal of the day. But the slide show, for the grammar, should be thorough.

We grilled steaks tonight. Had dinner over the Boise State-Virginia Tech game. Very fun to watch. They both look fast, if only Virginia Tech played with more certainty early. Since it was a back and forth game, though, and since Boise is from, well, Boise, I’m sure people will argue they haven’t proven themselves. They get a sponge cake of scheduling every year, but they beat everyone they play, even in the marquee, game of the week settings halfway across the country. Boise State belongs.

Those uniforms do not. Just dreadful stuff. The game looked like Tecmo Bowl, 8-bit graphics and a flea flicker to start the action followed by calls with little internal logic. Not that anyone noticed, every fanbase was too busy silently thanking the merchandising gods that their school wasn’t in a Nike deal. And the Nike fans were just dreading the next big “experiment.”

When I was in undergrad — two memories in one post! — someone had the nice idea to add an orange shadowbox under the jersey numbers. You would have thought they were tearing down beloved campus buildings based on the response. It is hard to imagine what would happen if Nike had the Auburn unis with which to tinker.

Not much else here for now. No history lessons today. The day just got away from me. Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.

Anyway, enjoy your four day office jaunt. And while you’re already mentally coasting into Wednesday, you can join me in wondering why someone didn’t advocate for Labor Week.

Just something to think about.

Auburn / football / video / weekend — Comments Off
4
Sep 10

Auburn beats Arkansas State

The Auburn University Marching Band, in the pre-game:

New quarterback Cameron Newton is already a star, setting a school record in his first game, collecting 171 yards rushing. Here is a series of photographs from just one play, a ridiculous 15-yard scramble where he broke six tackles on his way to a first down:

Newton also had a 71-yard touchdown run, the longest run from scrimmage for Auburn since Tristan Davis’ 2005 75-yarder. His total was also the most in a debut by an Auburn player since Rudi Johnson ran over Wyoming in 2000. His 171 yards rushing broke Phil Gargis’ single game record for a quarterback.

Newton also completed 9-of-14 passes for 186 yards and three touchdowns, accounting for five Auburn touchdowns in all; that’s just one shy of the school single-game record. Auburn beat Arkansas State 52-26.

Pictures will be up tomorrow.

Auburn / football / iPhone / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
4
Sep 10

Tiger Walk

Before games at Auburn the football team takes the short two block walk to Jordan-Hare Stadium from the athletic department. They’ve been walking down this hill for years and, at some point in the 1960w this became a very organic, ground-up tradition. Young fans would line the road and greet the team, cheering them on to victory even before they were in the stadium, even before they were in their uniforms.

Fans still re-create the tradition. Tiger Walk is two hours before kickoff. The picture above was taken an hour before that. Far up that street is where the players begin. And, as the coaches said yesterday, for young players Tiger Walk itself can almost be like playing another game.

Here’s the video, shot from my iPhone at the end of their walk, just as the players are about to enter the stadium.

Travis Williams, a former Auburn player who is now a graduate assistant for the team, produced a video that they played in the stadium just before the game. It is OK here, but best seen on a screen 30-by-70 foot screen inside the stadium.

More videos, pictures and such later. War Eagle.

adventures / Auburn / football / Friday / iPhone / photo / Pie Day / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
3
Sep 10

Friday is Pie Day

Football

Are you ready for football? This is week two of the high school season. Drove by this one this evening as the team was warming up. I’ll try to get to a high school game this fall, the school I covered many years ago is doing very well, but we are especially excited about college football. That, of course, begins tomorrow.

Reading and class prep today. And resting. Strained my back at the gym this morning. Did squats and everything was fine. Did what I think of as the jail break exercise — the move started years ago by some anonymous person is slowly digging through the corner of the cinderblock wall — and everything was fine. Did a curl and dropped down a weight. Did another curl and my back tightened up. Wisely, I put the weight down.

A comfy chair and a heating pad this evening have helped. I’m fine, just moving a little gingerly. Tomorrow I’ll be good as new.

Pie Day tonight at Mama Q’s. We had the chicken tonight, which was delicious. The dutch apple pie, we decided is a consistent winner. Give them a visit.

We checked out the soccer game tonight. The fans got a great show.

At the AU soccer game

(I downloaded a pseudo tilt shift application for my iPhone — two of them, actually, but I think one is a bust — and I’m playing around with it a bit. Now I have to figure out which subjects look best in the tilt shift style. My apologies in advance.)

Florida State was controlling things with a disciplined effort on the ground. They snuck in a goal in the 28th minute and Auburn struggled against the fifth ranked Seminoles through the middle portion of the game.

In the 73rd minute Auburn’s Lydia Townsend found a glaring hole in the center of the FSU defense. She chipped in the ball over the goalkeeper on a breakaway.

Tigers celebrate

Florida State scored on a header in the 83rd minute and Auburn answered with a goal in the 87th minute to force overtime. In college they play two sudden death periods of 10 minutes each. After that you just settle for a draw. With two minutes remaining in the second overtime, so in the 107th minute, Katy Frierson picked up a loose ball outside the 18 off of a corner kick and struck the ball home.

Here’s Frierson earlier in the game:

Frierson over the ball

And here the Tigers celebrate the game winning goal:

Tigers celebrate

They are celebrating Auburn’s first win over the Seminoles since 1995 and the first win over a top-five team since 2004.

I’ll have more pictures in the photo gallery early next week.

Which leaves us with the last installment of the evening, YouTube Cover Theater, where we turn the place over to people pouring their talents and odes and ambitions or fears out there for our consumption. Tonight’s featured coveree is Duncan Sheik. We’ll start out with an incredible rendition of She Runs Away:

And now, for your listening pleasure, we have a nice run at That Says It All:

Sheik, apparently, has written a musical. Here’s one of his fans’ playing his favorite tune:

And, finally, we’ll hear from the original artist himself as Duncan Sheik covers … Radiohead?

Who doesn’t enjoy a good cover?

Who doesn’t enjoy football? Are you ready? Tomorrow Auburn has Arkansas State. Look for us. We’ll be the ones in blue.

Alabama / football / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
2
Sep 10

There’s a football in the air

The last few days have been … mildish. Given the recent weather the upper 80s were delightful. Over the weekend we actually enjoyed a day of weather that, in comparison, seemed almost cool. And, yes, Deep South, September. I understand. We have this conversation often, The Yankee and I. These are perfectly natural temperatures here, I remind her.

Doesn’t make you sweat less.

But, today, we returned to a heat index of 97 degrees at one point. I like summer, but there comes a point in September when it just begins to feel cruel. We’ll reach that point in a week or two, the point of Rubbing It In. The point of Oh, Really? The point of biology where the body says “You know, there’s no more sweat to be had.”

And suddenly a subarctic lifestyle doesn’t seem like a bad idea. That’s when you walk into a restaurant’s cooler and realize “A little more summer might not be so bad.”

Spent the morning researching media effects. Had a meeting with one of my committee members to start discussing my comprehensive exams. He’s such a cool guy. Very kind and energetic and incredibly intelligent.

So naturally we talked about NASCAR and iPhone applications.

At Samford I had a meeting with the new editor. She’s getting ready to run her first issue of the newspaper next week. The online editor joined us to hammer out a few policies for the new year.

We turned it into a teleconference, which turned into a site re-design project in the next few weeks. And from that conversation a lot of exciting things will happen. It was an enthusiastic afternoon full of a great deal of promise. We’re looking forward to new partnerships, bringing in more news outlets to the site, breaking more news on the web, adding more sports and more.

It’ll be a good year.

Traffic? Not so great. Eight miles of construction to get through, all of it behind this guy:

Not speeding

Soon after I passed the buses carrying the Florida Atlantic football team. (Later: FAU blocked a UAB field goal attempt on the final play to win, 32-31.)

I also saw this guy:

Tailgaters

Temperatures or not, that’s the first sign of fall. Football is here!

In fact, there are five games on my television tonight, so if you’ll excuse me …