War Eagle.
Tecmo Bo knows shoes
Nike has tackled the Tecmo Bo meme.
The shoe giant’s recently released tribute to his 1989 digital counterpart makes Bo Jackson, God’s gift to God, the first person ever awesome enough to have their 20-year-old video game character awesome enough to have his own line of shoes.
Repeat: There are Tecmo Bo shoes.
If Real Bo ever put these on, God help us all…
Filed under General
Project End Zone: Authentic, Mysterious…
Kate O’Neil’s phone has been ringing off the hook all morning with calls from Alabama area-codes, all for naught.
O’Neil is the producer for Authentic Films… just not the Authentic Films that recently partnered with the Auburn ISP Sports Network to produce “Hard Knocks: Auburn” “Auburn Football: Every Day…,” a documentary series about, that’s right, Auburn football.
“It’s a great idea for schools,” she says. “I wish we were doing it.”
So likely did any Auburn fans who checked out the Cleveland-based group’s website: the creative forces behind documentaries of people running across America and mockumentaries on film school culture could surely have crafted the stretch Hummer of football reality television – Auburn’s latest headline-hungry move in Recruiting 2.0.
Not that the Authentic Films that is on the clock can’t, it’s just that no one – O’Neil included – seems to know anything about them: the only result of a Google search for “Authentic Films” + the names of the men Auburn lists as the company’s founders is the press release from the university.
“I have no ideal who they are,” O’Neil says. “If you find out, tell me, so I can pass along the messages.”
Filed under Diversions / Investigations, General
Writers, photographers wanted
The War Eagle Reader is readying for the big time and needs your help.
If you live in Auburn – or if you don’t but thrill with enough Auburn Spirit to fake it – and if you can write (Football? Music? Food? Profiles?) or take photos or shoot video and if you would like to make some money doing it, please write ASAP to thewareaglereader@gmail.com for more details. If you can’t, but know of someone who can, please spread the word.
War Eagle.
Filed under General
Toomer’s Rumors and Boomers — 8.10.09
First off, today’s random Glomerata image comes from 1967, page 169. War Eagle!
Random News Roundup
In a Sporting News interview, free agent running back Shaun Alexander tows the company line regarding 6 losses in a row (“We were on probation! waaaah! waaaaaaaah!”):
Q: I sit next to an Auburn guy. You’re an Alabama guy. Is there anything nice you can say to him?
Alexander: Umm … yeah. Congratulations on beating us six years in a row. It would take us to be on probation for you to win a couple of them in a row. But congratulations. You did it while we were on probation. Cool. But man, you haven’t scored in like two years against us. I don’t know what’s wrong with y’all.
Chris Low at ESPN has Auburn ranked #10 out of 12 teams in the SEC in his power rankings:
10. Auburn: It seems like everybody in the SEC (with the exception of Florida and Ole Miss) has some sort of issue at quarterback. The Tigers are sort of like the Vols. The same guys are back that struggled mightily last season. Plus, offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn is putting in a new spread offense. It’s going to take some time, and first-year coach Gene Chizik has said himself that he doesn’t want people to have “illusions of grandeur.” The defense will be good enough, though, that the Tigers will still be a tough out.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes a look at billboards by Auburn and Tennessee invading the Atlanta metro area (I had no idea there were 20 of them!):
Auburn also has encroached on Georgia and Georgia Tech’s turf, renting out more than 20 billboards that promote the school and football team in metro Atlanta.
The signs feature a Tigers helmet, the school’s familiar Tiger eyes and two messages — “Fearless and True,” from the school fight song, and “Choose Auburn.”
RocketDigest.com asks Toledo Rockets head coach Tim Beckman about how to look at a football schedule, Pat Dye style!
Q: … [Y]ou also mentioned during the spring that you were going through and playing one game at a time with an opponent for each practice and then playing against that team. It’s probably too early for that, but I assume the same thing is going to happen here …
Beckman: No, first meeting we went over that schedule right up there (pointing at a giant schedule poster on the wall). We talked about my first year in coaching with Pat Dye down at Auburn. We ended up third of fourth in the country; we had a great, great football team. I think we got beat in the Sugar Bowl. He taught me that you need to teach your players how to attack that schedule. That schedules up there for a reason. That’s everybody’s ambition. We want to be at that last date up there on that schedule board (MAC Championship Game), so we talked about that with the whole team in here and where we need to be in each one of these situations. Later on in camp here we’re going to get back here to Purdue, they’re the first opponent.
Filed under Toomer's Rumors and Boomers
TWER Salutes #21 Eltoro Freeman!
Don't lock horns with "The Bully Bull of Benjamin Russell High!" (Inspired by the archaic nicknames of Auburn football players past.)
The Montgomery Advertiser says, “AU’s Freeman goes full speed full time”
The Dothan Eagle gushes, “Eltoro Freeman standing out among Auburn linebackers”
The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer exclaims, “Auburn’s Freeman bringing energy to linebacker position”
Be his MySpace friend?
Hopefully, this fall, the solid gold hits from “The Bull” will keep coming!
Filed under General
Jason Campbell on cover of Sports Illustrated
There’s a game after the game in the NFL—former quarterback Bernie Kosar used to call it the fifth quarter—in which the starting QB is supposed to send an upbeat signal to the press and the public. Watching Campbell work the crowd at Redskins Park, you’d think he’d majored in Fifth Quarter at Auburn.
Filed under General
From The Notebook: Paul Hemphill (1936-2009)
Paul Hemphill, noted newspaper columnist and author of “The Nashville Sound,” “Leaving Birmingham,” and “Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams,” died Saturday morning. He was 73.
His last book, “A Tiger Walk through History: The Complete Story of Auburn Football from 1892 to the Tuberville Era,” was published in 2008.
Hemphill was a native of Birmingham and graduated from Auburn in 1957.
1957 was a good year to graduate…
It was also a good year to be The Plainsman’s sports editor.
Here’s Hemphill’s column from December 6, 1957.
[you can read it in its full, antique glory here]
I’ll Remember…
What does it take to be the best football team in the whole nation?
Lots of things, friends, lots of things… more than you’d think.
Most of’em are obvious, like scoring more points than the guys at the other end of the field every Saturday, or blocking hard and tackling the same way.
Your Aunt Matilda – who’s never seen a football game in her life – knows it takes a lot of good football players and the same amount of coaches molded into a happy, winning machine.
But there are plenty of things making for undefeated seasons which never get into the headlines… some folks call’em “intangibles”… others name them “loyalty” and “pride” and “desire.”
This Auburn team, the 1957 one, the one that’s sitting right on top and looking down at everybody else in the football world, had those “intangibles.”
Maybe that’s why almost everybody calls it the best in the nation instead of just another good football team.
And maybe I’m too sentimental, but it’s gonna be so, so hard to forget the many little – yet big – things that happened in the fall of 1957 to the bunch that has to be called the greatest in Auburn history.
I’ll remember all the surprises that came along week by week… things such as Lloyd Nix’s brilliant quarterbacking that cold, wet, day against Tennessee in his first college game at that position…
And the sight of unknown Mickey Welch, jumping into the battle against Georgia Tech in his hometown and stopping – all by himself – the Engineers’ most serious scoring threat.
I won’t forget either the raw courage shown by Bobby Hoppe when he refused for three Saturdays to give in to two ribs broken in the opener against Tennessee… Nor the way 165-pound Tommy Lorino buried back into the fray against Kentucky minutes after being laid low by 240-pound Lou Michaels.
The same kind of stuff was shown all year long by Captain Tim Baker, who was so banged up even before the season began that he shouldn’t even have been in a uniform.
“Desire,” is the nice word they call that… it’s also “guts.”
And I’ll never forget the display of same rendered by loose-jointed John Whatley, long, lanky and almost-forgotten, when he threw off his parka that cold afternoon in Birmingham and replaced Jimmy Phillips in a manner described by the All-American as “better than I could ever have done.”
The sights in the Auburn dressing room after that come-from-behind win over Mississippi State are even more clear in my mind.
There was end coach Gene Lorendo, big, tough, and with the booming voice, so happy about “Ol’ John’s” (Whatley) golden moment that he was almost in tears. And outside the clubhouse, there was backfield teacher Buck Bradberry, who was telling writers – even before they asked – what he thought of his Tigers’ coming from behind for the first time.
That was “pride.”
And when you start talking about “loyalty,” you have to mention everything “Shug” Jordan did, everything he said, all year.
He showed it each time he was asked about one of his men. Never, not once, was there a word of criticism for a player who had obviously made a mistake.
Never did the savior of Auburn football portray any doubt that the men who played for him WERE men.
That, you have to call “loyalty.”
And never did Jordan’s loyalty and respect of his football players show more to this fan than last Saturday against Alabama in a fleeting incident that almost everybody missed.
It was midway in the second half when graduating Bobby Hoppe had prematurely ended his college career with a twisted elbow.
And as the gritty Chattanoogan sat dejectedly on the Auburn bench, head down and probably with a tear in his eye, his coach sensed the need for saying one last word of gratitude to the one who had exemplified the Auburn spirit throughout the football season that was almost endd.
I’ll never, ever forget the look of fatherly pride in “Shug” Jordan’s eyes as he cupped Bobby Hoppe’s chin in his hand and lifted his head to say a simple… “thank you.”
That was loyalty, pride, and respect.
And I’ll remember…
Filed under Features, It's Pronounced JORDAN
Visions of ’57: Auburn 29, Florida St. 7
From the 1958 Glomerata:
Filed under General, It's Pronounced JORDAN
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