The Sporting Life

"Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1978 ..."

Kick the stuffin'!

Look, listen and sit in stunned silence. Rumor has it the limited-edition CD single will include a special Inflatable Houndstooth Remix by B.A.M.A.

On football, bathrooms and Doves

· Auburn graduates are everywhere, it seems. The latest example: a journalist at USA Today. How else do you explain this story mentioning LSU fans breaking windows on the UT team buses? After all, it has to be yet another example of one of those tall tales wussy Auburn fans tell about bad experiences in Baton Rouge.

9/28 UPDATE: My attempt at humor here was apparently unclear to fellow Auburn fans, judging by e-mails and visits I'm getting from Rivals. My sarcasm is weaker than I thought. Carry on.

· Like Courtney Love in the first five minutes after a 12-step program, Auburn and Alabama fans already are falling into familiar patterns only four games into the season.

After facing Middle Tennessee State, Southern Miss, South Carolina and Arkansas, the Tide finds itself undefeated and many of its faithful in a state of delusion. I kid you not: "Rose Bowl," "Heisman Trophy" and "back on top" are phrases that are being bandied about by some within the Cult of the Bear.

On the opposite end of the spectrum we find many in the sometimes dysfunctional Auburn family on suicide watch because of the Tigers' season-opening loss to Georgia Tech. You'd think 13-0 would mean something, but it didn't take long before it gave way to stereotypical woe-is-weism once the final second ticked off the clock vs. the ‘Jackets. Some who had been saying "9-2" are now moaning "maybe 6-5."

Something to watch for: The reactions on both sides of the rivalry to Auburn's performance vs. the Gamecocks on Saturday. If Auburn doesn't win as decisively as Alabama did or (God forbid) loses, untold numbers of fans from both camps will be convinced they know who will win the Iron Bowl at season's end.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country doesn't care. They consider it an argument between a has-been and a never-was in a state they know not by the Louvin Brothers, the RTJ Trail or Harper Lee but by Bull Connor, George Wallace and My Cousin Vinny.

· I turned the corner to the restrooms at work just as a member of the cleaning crew pushed her cart away from the door to the men's. That meant bleached tile, sanitized air and quiet awaited.

But seconds after I unzipped at a urinal, someone appeared at my side, separated only by a pressboard partition. And then he spoke.

"There's nothing like a freshly cleaned bathroom."

Huh. Really? Of all the things you could say to a co-worker you don't know while he's spraying urine into a porcelain bowl mounted to the wall, that's your choice?

But let's put that aside for a sec. Don't people usually mean "nothing quite as nice as" when they say "nothing like"? So I'm supposed to agree that there's nothing better than this moment the two of us are sharing? It's better than fried catfish? Ranks right up there with watching the sunset on the Gulf of St. Lawrence? As satisfying as the birth of your firstborn?

Don't get me wrong: A clean public bathroom is something to be thankful for. But if I ever give you a list of a few of my favorite things, a freshly cleaned bathroom won't be among them. Maybe I'd feel differently if I regularly attended games at Turner Field.

· If you were at the Doves' show in Atlanta last Tuesday night, then rest easy that the guy who spent the entire evening leaning against the back wall wasn't a narc. He was yours truly. Coldplay wannabes, my ass. Martin and crew, though I enjoy them, don't hold a candle.

 

More than double the number of women 18-44, 11.5 percent, are experimenting with bisexuality than they were a decade ago, according to the findings of a survey by the CDC released today.

In a related story, CDC phone lines have been jammed throughout the day as a result of a barrage of requests from men 18-44 for access to the database storing contact information for the 11.5 percent of the respondents, in hopes of finding their wives and girlfriends on the list.

Random thoughts

· Beano still full of gas: As far as my brother and I are concerned, Beano Cook will never live down a prediction he made in the early to mid '90s that Rutgers would win the national championship in football before the year 2000. So I'm not really sure why I was so surprised to hear him last weekend propose something as outlandish as moving the Sugar Bowl to Seattle.

Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, the Sugar Bowl hosts the national championship on a rotating basis. Otherwise, it hosts a game pitting the winner of the SEC against the winner of the ACC every year. So I'm trying to get a good idea of why the two biggest conferences from the South would want to move this contest to the opposite end of the continental United States during its rainy season.

Whether he meant temporarily, until New Orleans can repair the Superdome or build a new stadium, or permanently, I just don't see his rationale. Any ideas? I'm drawing a blank.

· Astronomical feat: Yep, I'm aware I've said almost nothing about the Astros' down-to-the-wire battle with the Marlins and Phillies for the NL wild card. I guess I have some irrational fear that I'm going to jinx the situation. The preceding two series have not been a good sign, coupled with the Braves' collapse vs. the Phillies, but I'm not giving up. Last year taught me that conceding defeat before things are a mathematical impossibility is something I can never again do.

On a related note, how much of a stud of an athlete is Roger Clemens? Last night was remarkable. Apologies on behalf of our offense to The Rocket for all the games they've blown for him this season. It was good to see them come through for him during such a difficult time.

· From the people who brought us I-75's "Georgia Peach's" signs?: This week I saw an anti-Bush sticker on an SUV (as opposed to a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac) in a parking lot downtown that made me smile: "Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its' idiot." I'll readily admit that people have created some clever jokes about the president and his policies. But it wasn't originality that made this one stand out. It was the punctuation.

Everybody makes mistakes in writing, and punctuation and grammar errors, in my opinion, are rarely a reflection of intelligence. But I've always thought that, if you're going to be bold and call someone a moron, an idiot or some other barb implying stupidity, you'd better be pretty certain you've consulted a good editor. Case in point: How many times have you seen the phrases "Your stupid!" and "Your a moron!" uttered in a chat room or on a message board?

· Picture perfect: A co-worker of mine who's a big Cincinnati fan shared these links to blog posts from Red Hot Mama and Reds (and Blues) featuring Major League Baseball's take on those inspirational posters you can't get away from in mall frame shops. Good stuff.

· "But we're a national paper": Another sign the local paper doesn't understand its readership for its sports section: Today's edition features a huge, above-the-fold photo of USC to accompany a massive story about the Trojans not from a wire service but from a staffer.

Tech's 2-0, Georgia's 2-0, Florida-Tennessee is on the horizon, the Falcons are coming off a big win on Monday Night Football, the Braves are looking to wrap up another trip to the postseason and the Thrashers are gaining attention for assembling a roster that could not only put them in the playoffs for the first time but also put them in position to make some serious noise. So I can see why the editors assigned someone a story about a Pac-10 team and played it as the day's biggest feature. I'll await next week's article entitled "The case for Notre Dame at No. 1."

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night!

· When my brother and I were young, he would move the tiny black-and-white TV from our parents' bedroom into the living room on New Year's Day so we could watch overlapping bowl games. The memory sprang to mind last night when I kept flipping back and forth among Southern Miss-Alabama, Texas-Ohio State and LSU-Arizona State. I'm trying to remember the last time so many exciting games occurred simultaneously in the second week of the season. Who was it who said two outta three ain't bad? Meatloaf?

· I thought Jefferson-Pilot Sports' Dave Neal summed it up when, at some point in the second half, he said any sort of rhythm seemed absent from the Auburn-Miss. State game. Despite the score, neither team appeared able to sustain momentum for any significant amount of time.

· You'd think, living in the Eastern Time Zone, I'd like JP games: Kickoff's at 12:30 p.m., so I can get home to Atlanta at a decent hour when I've driven to Auburn. But I don't. The mood in Auburn always seems quiet, since it's only 11:30 a.m. CT. That's likely because people who've driven from Birmingham, Huntsville or Mobile are running on so little sleep as a result of getting up with the birds to arrive prior to kickoff.

· I knew Spurrier's South Carolina had a good shot against Georgia when the trendy local story by week's end was discussion of the Evil Genius' last trip to Athens and whether the Dawgs would deliver on payback for the 52-17 shellacking and not whether they would win or lose.

· Yet another sign that LSU isn't on par with Alabama and Georgia in the rivalry department for Auburn fans: Most were cheering for the other Tigers of the SEC West when they took the field against the Sun Devils last night and also celebrated their last-minute victory.

· Any glimmer of hope I had of Arkansas giving Southern Cal (yes, I know) a good game were snuffed out last night. The Hogs lost — in Fayetteville — to Vanderbilt. Cutler, blah, blah, blah ... Save it. It's still Vandy.

Ramblings about the wreck vs. Tech

Thank God for Oklahoma. The Sooners' stumble out of the gate vs. the Horned Frogs for the most part overshadowed the debacle on the Plains. A few days after the fact, here are some random thoughts:

·  I don't care how much money we earned doing it, games that start at 8:45 p.m. EDT should never again happen at Auburn. I got home to Atlanta at 3 a.m. Ridiculous.

· As far as game days go, I'd rank last Saturday as third among the hottest I've ever attended. No. 1 would be '83 Texas, and No. 2 would be '03 Southern Cal. (Before anyone who attended the Ole Miss game in Jackson 15 years or so ago speaks up, yes, I know that game was played on the surface of the sun, according to everyone who attended. My grandfather and brother went, but I didn't.)

·  It's good to know that — after a loss that surprised many Auburn fans, particularly one at home following an undefeated season — our game-day behavior still impresses opposing fans. (Countdown to an LSU fan posting "We're all really the same!" in the comments section in five, four, three …)

· Maybe Ben Leard and Daniel Cobb are to blame for diminished expectations on my part, but I wasn't upset about Brandon Cox's performance. I came into the game worried about balls soaring several feet over receivers' heads or mannerisms and expressions that telegraphed to everyone in the stadium where the ball would be going.

Four interceptions aren't going to get you named SEC Offensive Player of the Week, but the penalties that kept pushing us into desperate third-and-long situations had to play a role in Cox trying to do too much in the latter stages of the game.

The sickness is in full swing

Example No. 347 that Southerners take college football very, very seriously: You spend more than an hour arguing with a total stranger on the Internet — about something from last season. (Not that anyone we know fell prey to this one ...)