Fresh Men for Auburn Football

Auburn Football: I was in Auburn a couple days ago and you can smell football in the air and feel it lurking just off College Street. The campus and the whole town is alive with alumni, and with a new generation of alumni-to-be moving into fresh apartments.

My own son is one of these switching from the Copper Beech complex to a condo south of campus. I'm also glad to report that the historic oak tree at Toomer's Corner is still living, but it was sad to see the barricades around it and the lack of leaves at the tips of the branches.

This is type of mean-spirited damage is not what college sports is all about. It's about that 50-something couple I saw in Wal-Mart holding hands, with his orange polo and her white "AU" T-shirt. It's about the giggly girl shopper at the Apple Computer specialist store, Graphicom, where my son now has a part time job, in her blue and orange; and soon it's going to be about a crop of freshmen that Coach Gene Chizik said this week will NOT be sitting on the bench.

Chizik said this week that they'll play until they show that they need to be red-shirted and not the other way around. That should make for some interesting games, even if Auburn can't live up to it's pre-season #19 national ranking. Two of the most important new Tigers will try to boost the defensive side of the line, Jonathan Rose at Corner Back and Gabe Wright on the Defensive Line. With Nick Fairley and a number of other D players gone, these freshmen will be needed; and will bring an element of the unknown to the team -- should make for some fun footbal!