Over the past 10 years, Tommy Tuberville has run a very open program in Auburn, Alabama.  That’s why it’s such a big story when he denies media requests to makes his assistant coaches available for comment.

Tuberville says the move was made so embattled offensive coordinator Tony Franklin could concentrate on his coaching duties, not the media.

When asked how a brief interview could interfere with Franklin’s coaching duties, Tuberville joked, “He’ll give y’all about 15 minutes, but that’s a month’s worth to write about.”

“By not letting him talk, I’m trying to put him in a better situation where he can coach and not have to worry about you guys.” 

Uh-huh.

Receiver Rod Smith says there might be some tweaks to the Auburn attack this weekend against Arkansas.  “We had a couple changes (Sunday), not too much, but (Tuberville) said we’re going to cut back on what we’ve been doing and just try to keep it simplified because he thought we tried to do too much on Saturday.  We’re just going to cut it back and run a few simple plays and get good at it and just go out and lay it out on the field and see what happens.”  (There are more stories in this same notes column.)

Meanwhile, Tuberville is meeting with seniors every Sunday for open discussions about the team’s mood… in order to ward off and “defense vs. offense” finger-pointing.  Safety Zac Etheridge admits that it isn’t easy to stay upbeat if you’re playing on the Tigers’ D right now.  “Sometimes it does get frustrating, but it’s a team sport.  We go out on defense and we just go out there to do our part and bring the offense along.”

Paul Finebaum of The Mobile Press-Register writes that Tuberville will probably throw Franklin overboard at the end of the year in order to lessen the heat on himself.  But, writes Finebaum, shouldn’t the buck stop with the head coach… who changed Auburn’s offense by hiring Franklin?

Hard to imagine that with six straight wins over Alabama, Tuberville could be in trouble, but that appears to be the case.



Lost in all the offensive woes is the fact that this week’s Auburn-Arkansas game is the first Jetgate Bowl.  It was just five years ago that Bobby Petrino tried to snake Tuberville’s job at AU.

“Business is business,” said Tuberville.  “That’s such a long time ago and something we’ve all put behind us.” 

Well, according to this article by Charles Goldberg, not all of Tuberville’s assistants are as forgiving as their boss.  Apparently some Tiger assistants would love to stick it to Petrino this weekend.

With their current struggles, they should probably just focus on scoring some points.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 7:08 am and is filed under Homepage, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.