A friend of mine’s father owns that place. I like to think that I’ve helped with a few of the football-related messages this season. Every week it is a great excitement to drive down that stretch of College, just to see what they have put up. They are always amusing messages.
Less amusing:
Is this standard, end-of-year fare? Or is it ACA driven? And is the font large enough, because, you know, vision center and all.
The last newspaper of the semester is in the books. They put it to bed early this morning and it was on shelves today and we critiqued it this evening. They are now halfway through their run. It always goes so fast, but they never believe it will.
Also, we had about 19 student projects nominated for awards in the Southeast Journalism Conference’s Best of the South competition. We managed to get those in with about 10 minutes to spare today. There is some great work in there, so we are excited to see how they’ll do next February when the awards are announced.
Otherwise, there are the things that always fill this time of year. The paperwork that approaches wrapping things up. The administrative work that goes along with it. Sign this, establish hours for that, consider what’s next. And, oh, don’t forget to grade everything. It is a great time of year. The only downside is that my hands are covered in newsprint and red ink. If I found myself in a conversation with a police officer he or she might be concerned.
We’re watching the Iron Bowl again tonight. I’m going to make a lot of references to this video:
Maybe we should all take our football a little less seriously. And maybe people should reconsider that extra drink. And if you judge people based on how dejected they act after your team loses, let’s not be friends, mmkay?
The title of the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States hasn’t been in Alabama since Detroit filed this summer. So, in a way, Jefferson County got off the hook of ignominy. Now the county is out of bankruptcy:
(T)he county’s bankruptcy exit is being appealed by ratepayers. Critics of the county’s plan have said the sewer rate increases will place to great of a burden on poor residents. Others have noted that the debt structure of the deal could lead to problems down the road.
But county officials have maintained that the plan represents the best option for the county.
I knew, when I first covered the super sewer scandal in 2001, this would never end. This will never end.
Professor Jeff Jarvis writes, Past the page, asking you to watch a video about Ask Google. Then he writes:
(T)hink about the diminished role of the page and what that will do to media. We publishers found ourselves unbundled online, so we shifted from selling people entire publications to trying to get them to come to just a page — any page — and then another page on the web, lingering long enough to shove one more ad at their eyeballs.
But just as the web disintermediated physical media, voice disintermediates the page. But media still depend on the page as their atomic unit, carrying their content, brand, ownership, and revenue. Now, when you want to know the score of the Jets game — if you dare — you don’t need to go to ESPN and find the page, you just say, “OK, Google. What’s the Jets score?” And the nice lady will tell you the bad news.
Now let’s go farther — because that’s what I live to do. Let’s also disintermediate the device.
While Google Glass has some clear applications in higher education already, Robert Hernandez, a professor of web journalism at the University of Southern California, sees the technology’s potential more than anything else. “From a digital perspective, from my perspective, it’s just another device…it doesn’t change your life,” he explained. Nonetheless he can see a number of ways it can influence journalism and how it’s taught.
According to Hernandez, Google Glass isn’t likely to revolutionize journalism or education so much as provide users with a few additional options for how to create and interact with content.
Doesn’t technology just feel like that a lot? I’ve had that perception for most of the last decade. “This is neat, useful, somewhat impressive. But it is just a step along the way.”
More than anything, I see the shiny new thing (“Look what my phone can do!”) as an indicator of potential.
Words will never work. Photographs are pale, onion skin-thin layers of the event, so transparent that only the perceptible will see them. Video, with all of its attendant sights and sounds and cuts and edits, will never convey it.
We saw a little slice of the rapture. It was orange and blue.
“The moment before the chaos began,” I thought to myself when I took the shot of the opening kickoff. Oh, little did we know what the fates had in store:
Two good teams. Alabama, after this game, sits 62nd in the country in passing, 23rd in rushing, 14th in scoring and 36th in total offense. Auburn concluded their season 38th in third down defense, 44th in fourth down defense, 56th against the rush, 59th against the pass, 31st in scoring defense and 75th in total defense.
Auburn is now 105th in the nation in passing, fifth in rushing, 15th in scoring and 17th in total offense. Alabama wraps up their regular season 18th in third down defense, first in fourth down defense, 10th against the rush, 15th against the pass, second in scoring defense and fifth in total defense.
Add all of that up and you get the top-ranked team, the number four team, owners of three straight conference titles and the crystal clear memories of the last four national champions between them. Oh, and also maybe one of the greatest games ever played and the best finish ever witnessed in the history of sport. And we were there to see it.
They ruled this a touchdown, but instant replay changed the call. Nick Marshall did not score.
On the next play Marshall turned and gave the ball to Tre Mason, who scored his 19th touchdown of the season. He’s only two away from the school record. (Know who holds that? Some guy named Cam Newton.)
I said to my wife, on the second drive, that if Auburn was going to win Nick Marshall was going to win it with his arm. We were watching the Alabama defenders completely forget their responsibilities when he ran. He missed a big play early trying to take advantage of that, but the next opportunity came along and Bama showed their hand. They were terrified of Nick Marshall on the edges and getting to the open field.
Rightly so. He gained 127 yards, netting 99, while escaping the likes of Denzel Devall and his teammates:
When the fourth quarter began the box score looked like this:
Bama 0 21 0
Auburn 7 7 7
Auburn had struck first in the game, but Alabama overcame their own struggles to mount an impressive second quarter. The way the Tide finished the first half seemed frantic though, which felt like a good sign for the boys in blue. The Tigers marched out and struck early to start the second half, and it stayed at 21-21 until the final frame began:
Fourteen more points would be scored as the home field clock began its last countdown of the season. Alabama put one score on the board in the fourth, despite playing even stiffer than they had the entire game, as their play calling even more quixotic.
Then in the final moments, with Alabama perhaps finally feeling almost comfortable, they lined up to kick the field goal that would put the score out of reach. A 10-point lead would have been too much to ask. Auburn knew it. Alabama knew it. Everyone in the stands and watching at home realized it too. So Auburn blocked the field goal. Alabama’s kicker, already playing the game a kicker would have nightmares about, missed his third opportunity of the game. The Tigers fell on the ball. Alabama committed a senseless penalty that moved Auburn up to their own 35. But still, that vaunted Alabama defense. Surely the Tigers couldn’t overcome the circumstance.
Overcome they did. Nick Marshall guided the team the length of the field, covering the green expanse and turning white-clad defenders into dust on a two minute, seven-play march.
The first six plays looked like this:
Tre Mason rush up middle for 7 yards to the AU42.
Tre Mason rush up middle for 1 yard to the AU43.
Timeout Alabama, clock 01:43.
Tre Mason rush up middle for 5 yards to the AU48, 1ST DOWN AU.
Tre Mason rush over left guard for 5 yards to the UA47.
Tre Mason rush up middle for 3 yards to the UA44.
Tre Mason rush up middle for 5 yards to the UA39, 1ST DOWN AU.
And on that play Auburn saw what they’d been waiting for the entire game. The Alabama defenders were finally getting too antsy. So Auburn ran the same zone read, the same play they’d just called, the same play they’d used all night and all year.
This is what they did: Nick Marshall showed the ball to Tre Mason. Mason is now destined to break the school record for single season total yardage (currently held by some fellow named Bo Jackson) after rolling up 233 yards against one of the best defenses in the universe and after having the nerve to appear, as a Birmingham professional polemicist wrote, “totally convinced that the Tigers can do to the Tide what they did to Georgia, Texas A&M, etc., etc., etc..” He was confident, yes, and he played like it, yes. And he put up those same kinds of numbers, most emphatically yes, and all night long. But Mason had done enough with the ball. His last job was to throw his body into the line one more time, this time as a decoy.
The previous six plays it had been Mason-Mason-Mason-Mason-Mason-Mason. But now it would be Marshall, who would roll to his left and look for the corner. Then, with a magician’s sleight-of-hand, he swapped the ball from his left hand back to his right. With the world watching this running quarterback flicked the ball to Sammie Coates, now completely forgotten by the Alabama defenders. Coates waltzed in for a 39 yard score. An extra point tied the game.
Now Alabama returns the ball to their offense, full of a star running back, a road-grading offensive line and a two-time national champion, sudden Heisman Trophy-darling quarterback. They had 32 seconds on the clock.
In retrospect, they should have had 31. In three plays they moved from their 29 to Auburn’s 38. The clock, now famous, expired. But Nick Saban, more famous and more furious, demanded time be put back on. The officials reviewed the play and found he was correct. (He was correct.)
Alabama would have one second. They could throw it into the end zone. Or they could try for a field goal. They chose the latter. They chose … poorly. Alabama opted to put in a freshman kicker who hadn’t seen the field all day. His teammate had missed three, so in came the younger guy. He lined up, gave it his best and it tailed away from the goal post, just short of giving the freshman kicker football glory.
In the back of the end zone stood a lone Tiger. He caught the ball and bolted up the middle of the field. He threw his entire body weight into his left foot and bent to the sideline. A wall was formed. The guys in white were cleared:
Chris Davis wasn’t heavily recruited out of high school. He was barely recruited at all. He has an amazing degree of talent and he’s been a team player for his entire career. Also, our friend — who runs the best tailgate on campus — claims him as her own. People in her section of the stadium think she is actually Chris Davis’ mother.
And so as the stars exploded and heaven opened and the horns blared their triumph. I looked at my wife and said “Do you know who that was? That was Chris!”
And I could only imagine a fraction of the pride or our friend, Kim, felt for Davis, which meant I could not conceive of the pride his mother, Ms. Janice, must have felt at that same moment as her son sprinted into immortality, nothing short of immortality:
The official scoring report reads like this:
Adam Griffith field goal attempt from 57 MISSED, kick to AU0, clock 00:00, Chris Davis return 100 yards to the UA0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 00:00.
Chris Davis has played four seasons. Yeah, he had a big punt return for a touchdown earlier this year. He absolutely is leading the team in tackles. None of that matters anymore. You ask anyone, any child or adult, who has ever played the Iron Bowl in their yard or living room, and they will tell you that Chris Davis is going to live forever:
They did not keep them off the field tonight:
People that were at the first Iron Bowl in Auburn remember the sky covered in an orange and blue haze. The old shakers were paper and that day, in 1989, they’d been thrust so vigorously into the sky that they were being obliterated by the forces of physics, distorted and compressed and expanded by the angst and joy and verve of thousands of people realizing an age-old dream.
There was none of that tonight. There was a crescendo. There was a lightning bolt and a thunder crack and the simultaneous explosion of a third of the planet’s fireworks. There was a big bang. There was a roar to move sensitive earth-measuring needles. The earth opened up and swallowed Alabama’s championship hopes and right along side that fissure ran War Damn Chris Davis.
Whether he knows it yet or not, he will never be the same.
Few of us ever will be.
That’s a lot to say about a football game. But it was that kind of game.
We saw a little slice of the rapture. It was orange and blue.
Busy day today. But it all felt like we were just waiting for the big game. Which, in a way, I guess we are.
Straightened things in the house. Then I made other messes and tried to keep them under control. We started the process of decorating the Christmas tree. We purchased it Wednesday night, carried it inside and it slipped right into the tree stand. It took two twists and then simply holding it straight while we tightened the screws. It was the easiest tree we’ve had so far. The man with the chainsaw knew his craft.
That evening we also put out the decorative trees outside, two three-foot tall pieces of exterior decoration. This involves a ladder. On the ladder I removed the porch light fixture. It exploded on contact, which was no worry because it was do for replacement after the holidays anyway. We removed the lightbulbs and installed one of those devices that turns your socket into an electric outlet. Then we plugged up the trees. Now, from a light switch inside, the trees can be lit. This is better than going outside and plugging and unplugging the things. We have simplified our pre-fab, pre-decorated trees.
By next year I’ll look for the technology that allows me to simply think “Light” and it will be so.
We went for a run this afternoon. I felt pretty bad at the start, with poor form and sore and sluggish in all the wrong places. So, I decided, the solution was to run more. I did the regular route through the neighborhood. That intersects with our town’s time trial route. When I’m riding that I sometimes see people running, so I decided to jog down that road. There’s a turn and I can make a big circle around a few neighborhoods. I managed to get in five miles. (I do not know what is happening.)
One of those miles actually felt good. And after a snack the rest of the day was grand.
We have company. Brian, a former co-worker and old friend, is in town to cover the big game. Scooby, a college friend, is in town for the big game. She joined The Yankee and I at the Celebrity Home Run Derby, benefiting the Hudson Family Foundation. Here’s the highlight package the athletics department produced:
Patrick Nix and Frank Sanders were there, too. They did not recreate their famous play:
Nix came off the bench, cold, against Alabama to throw that ball to Sanders on his first snap after Stan White went out with an injury. Nix is supposed to have said that he was born to complete that pass. Several years ago he told me once that, when he was a child, he tried to block Van Tiffin’s field goal in the Iron Bowl. He crouched behind his sofa and leaped into the air as Tiffin made The Kick. How could you not love a guy who believed like that?
The stars are lining up for Auburn. Sanders is being honored tomorrow. He was there with both of his college quarterbacks. Stan White made an appearance in the putting part of that video, alongside Philip Lutzenkirchen and PGA winner Jason Dufner. A large handful of great Auburn names have been filing into town for the big game tomorrow.
Had dinner at Niffer’s. They were packed, as you would expect for a game day weekend where everyone is waiting. Brian snagged us a good table.
We’ve all stayed up too late. Too busy with tasks, busy with visiting and busy with waiting for the game tomorrow. We’re going to have a great time, of course. Who’s going to win, I don’t know.
