AUBURN | One way to look at Saturday’s SEC opener against Missouri is a bad win is a heck of a lot better than a bad loss.
And that’s true, especially for Auburn’s players, who continue to bring a lot of effort on both sides of the ball. They clearly care and want to perform well. They deserve your support.
I can’t say the same for a number of current coaches and former administrators. They’ve brought Auburn to this point, which I can plainly say is one of the worst football programs in the SEC.
And I don’t say that lightly.
What I saw at Jordan-Hare Saturday were two teams that are going to struggle to win another conference game although Mizzou has the fortune of hosting Vanderbilt on Oct. 22.
Auburn will likely be an underdog in its remaining games expect for Western Kentucky Nov. 19. Barring a sudden and major uptick in performance on the offensive side of the ball, I expect Bryan Harsin will be long gone by then.
Had first-team All-SEC kicker Harrison Mevis made a 26-yard field goal at the end of regulation or running back Nathaniel Peat just held onto the ball inside the 1-yard line or Missouri not commit a number of other crucial errors, the Harsin era may have already ended.
The talent deficit between Auburn and the top teams in the SEC has only widened under Harsin and having the 51st recruiting class in the country (12th in the SEC) is just another step in the wrong direction.
Auburn is worse now than it would have been had Gus Malzahn been retained or Kevin Steele hired. I don't think either of those two moves would have been good for the future of this program either, but AU's leaders chose the worst of the three options.
The optimist can point to the transfer portal and the opportunity to quickly turnaround a football program like Auburn with the right leadership. I don’t disagree.
But it’s important to point out that there’s no guarantee of a quick turnaround and the transfer portal works both ways. Tennessee has gone 15 years without winning 10 games and has an 85-88 record during that stretch. Finally, under second-year coach Josh Heupel, the Volunteers are beginning to return to relevance.
Several other SEC programs appear to be on the rise including Texas A&M, Arkansas and Kentucky. Add Texas and Oklahoma in a couple of years and Auburn could be falling farther and farther behind.
That’s what makes the next couple of weeks and months so important to the future of the program.
Auburn needs decisive and smart leadership. They can’t afford to mess this up. The leadership at the University from the BOT, President and AD have to work together for once and put a competent and motivated leader in charge of Auburn’s football program.
Auburn’s peers in the SEC, which are also its biggest rivals, are supposed to be Alabama and Georgia. Auburn is not in the same orbit as those two programs right now.
It’s going to take a special coach and everybody working together to have a fighting chance to get back.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 28 years to the debut album of one of the most diverse, eclectic and talented bands in history. On Sept. 27, 1994, The Dave Matthews Band released their first studio album, Under The Table and Dreaming. It has sold over six million copies and been certified 6x platinum. The album had a couple of hit singles in What Would You Say and Ants Marching. The title of the album comes from a lyric in Ants Marching: "He remembers being small, playing under the table and dreaming." The album was dedicated to Matthews’ older sister, Anne, who was killed by her husband in a murder-suicide in 1994. Recorded at Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, N.Y., Under The Table and Dreaming peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 116 consecutive weeks. The group when it composed the album consisted of Dave Matthews as writer, lead singer and lead guitarist along with Stefan Lessard on bass guitar, Boyd Tinsley on violin, LeRoi Moore on saxophone and Carter Beauford on drums. John Popper of Blues Traveler plays the harmonica on What Would You Say.
David John Matthews was born in 1967 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to New York as a young child before moving back to Johannesburg in 1977. Raised a Quaker, Matthews left South Africa upon high school graduation in 1985 to avoid the draft. He started playing guitar at age nine but first started playing in front of audiences after moving to Charlottesville, Va. He worked as a bartender while pursuing a career in music and formed the Dave Matthews Band in 1991. After Anne’s death in 94, Dave and his younger sister, Jane, took care of Anne’s two children. After their breakout album, Under The Table and Dreaming, The Dave Matthews Band has produced eight more studio albums and continues to tour and create music to this day. Their second album, 1996’s Crash, is the band’s most successful and included a few hit singles: Too Much, So Much to Say and Crash Into Me. They’ve had several more hits including 1999’s Crush and 2001’s The Space Between. Moore passed away in 2008 due to complications from an ATV accident. Known as a jam band, DMB made $530 million touring in the 2000’s, more than any other band. They’ve sold a total of 20 million concert tickets as of 2018. The band won a Grammy Award in 1996 and has also won three AMA’s and six MTV Video Music Awards. They were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 but not inducted.
