What It Was, Was FOOTBALL!!

With the autumn sky ablaze with the brilliant colors of changing leaves and waving pennants; the crisp air filled with the smells of hamburgers and popcorn and the sounds of cheering and brass bands, it can only mean one thing...that's right, Wal-Mart already has their Christmas stuff out for sale!!

AND it means FOOTBALL SEASON! AND not just football season, but time for the ferocious Auburn Tigers to take the field!

The Plainsmen have been talked-up a great deal this year, predicted to win the Western Division of the SEC, along with the SEC title, and then the really stupid guys at The Sporting News ruined our chances for any sort of success by predicting we would wind up the season at Number One. As it stands, the AP has positioned the team in a bit more realistic berth at 6th place, which gives some breathing room.

The Tigers look relatively strong this year, with 18 starters returning, although the loss of sophomore offensive lineman Taylor Bourgeois is bound to be a detriment. Troy Reddick, another sophomore of equal tallness and girth, shares duty at the weak-side guard position with Bourgeois, and might be slotted in his place.

Biggest hoss of the team is sophomore offensive tackle Marcus McNeill of Decatur, GA, tipping the balance at 322 and scraping the ceiling at 6'-9". Tiniest Tiger honors belong to kicker John White, a junior from Midlothian, VA who at 5'-7" and 143 pounds is too small for a picture OR a jersey number.

The Tigers' foes for their first game of the season (Saturday, 5 pm Central, CBS, with lead reporter Jill Arrington) will be the 9th ranked Trojans from the University of Southern California. Despite being named after a brand of male contraceptive devices, and having a man in a dress as a mascot, the Trojans beat the tar out of the Tigers at the opener last year out in the depressing, smog-filled LaLa Land. This year the Ancient Warriors might have their hands full when they reach the sweet-smelling and verdant plains of east Alabama. (No jokes about having their hands full of cow poop, please.)

Although ranked a bit lower, So Cal is still a very strong team with a lot of young talent, but of even more worry to the Tigers is their incredibly strong lineup of Song Leaders. This is what USC calls their cheerleaders, despite the fact that they do not sing nor carry any sort of karaoke machinery.

In any event, this is one area where Auburn has usually held a relatively strong lead over rivals, but it appears that the Trojan's webmaster has been hard at work in the off season and come up with a exciting and handsome layout for the girls. They have their own page with a photo of the entire squad (and PLEASE notice that there are no guys in the picture), as well as individual pages for each of the young ladies. Such as Lindsey, a Business major who is hot and whose favorite movie is Dumb and Dumber, favorite book is Love In a Time of Cholera, and favorite TV shows are Friends and Sex and the City! And then there's Michelle, a junior in communications from Fresno, CA whose hobbies include reading, going to church, and spending time in the sun--one reason why she is hot.

Nice looking bunch of kids, but when you look over at the Auburn crew and do a comparison, you see some potential pitfalls--still a good looking bunch, but there are all sorts of guys in the picture. This is bad. And there are no individual pictures--with the guys, this is no problem, but they need some for the girls. Finally, the actual cheerleader website appears to have been done by someone whose only exposure to the Web is the stack of AOL 8.0 discs he found in a dumpster. If they keep this up all season, I don't know what will become of us.

Anyway, to wrap it all up here at Possumblog Sports Center, I have asked our Chief Statistician Ipsa Dixie to give us her scientific prediction. However, being that she is not speaking to me at the moment (other than the stream of invective and obscene hand gestures wholly unrelated to the game) due to the toaster oven incident, it makes it difficult to discern what she might have come up with. I did go by and rummage through her pencil drawer, where I found a slip of paper upon which it appeared she was predicting a score of Auburn 21--USC 17, although it's a bit hard to read. It might say Auburn 0--USC 23. Nah, that COULDN'T be right.

So there you go.

posted by Terry at 2:26:00 PM