Two ESPN Articles Today

[AUChizad]

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/73361/success-doesnt-change-auburns-mentality

Success doesn't change Auburn's mentality
October, 29, 2013

By Greg Ostendorf

AUBURN, Ala. -- Gus Malzahn knows a thing or two about winning.

As a high school coach, he led seven teams to the state championship game in 14 years, winning three of them. From 2006 to 2011, he was offensive coordinator at Arkansas, Tulsa and Auburn and never endured a losing season. He won the national championship with the Tigers in 2010. And last season, his first as a college head coach, he led Arkansas State to the Sun Belt championship.

The record speaks for itself, but when Malzahn returned to Auburn prior to this season, nobody expected him to turn the program around in just one year. The Tigers were 3-9 a season ago, and most thought they’d be lucky just to make a bowl game in 2013.

But after eight games, Auburn is already bowl eligible, and Malzahn’s team has higher aspirations now. They’re 7-1, ranked No. 11 in the latest BCS standings and four wins away from claiming the SEC West title.

"We’ve got some great players," safety Jermaine Whitehead said. "I most definitely saw us competing in a lot of games. I felt like we had one of the oldest teams coming back, and it was about time that we make our mark."

The national perception has changed, too. Auburn was the underdog in three of its four SEC games, but after wins against No. 24 Ole Miss and No. 7 Texas A&M, the Tigers are now the favorite Saturday against Arkansas and will likely remain that way until they host No. 1 Alabama in the Iron Bowl.

But the players don’t care about being the favorite. They don’t care that Auburn is on the verge of cracking the BCS top 10. They’re taking the same approach.

“It doesn’t change the mindset,” first-year running back Cameron Artis-Payne said. “We’re just going to keep moving forward. We’re going to do the things that got us here. Coach Malzahn and the coaching staff definitely keep us grounded anyway, so there’s no way we’re going to lose what we’re doing.”

“You don’t want to think about rankings,” Dee Ford added. “That got a lot of teams in trouble early on in the year. You don’t think about rankings at all. You think about the task at hand. You really just want to focus on executing and playing football. At the end of the day, no matter what ranking you are, you have to play football.”

Still, with every win, Auburn is a team that is growing more and more confident. Beginning on Saturday, it has back-to-back road trips to Arkansas and Tennessee before finish the season at home with Georgia and Alabama. There’s not a game left on the Tigers' schedule that they don’t think they can win.

“We’re definitely gaining confidence,” Artis-Payne said. “We feel like we can beat anybody. We’re just going to keep working, and we’re going to see what happens when the smoke clears at the end of the season.”

It’s fun to look ahead to a potential top-10 matchup in the Iron Bowl, but the Tigers are focused only on their next opponent, a mindset that stems from their head coach.

“I feel like I’m saying the same thing every week, but it’s about Arkansas, and it’s about going on the road,” Malzahn said after Saturday’s win over Florida Atlantic. “It’s about trying to play our best football, and we’re not worried about all the underdogs or favorites. That’s our mindset.

“Any time you’re winning, you’re playing pretty good football. You have some things you can build upon. But every week is different.”

Auburn has lost five of the past seven meetings with the Razorbacks, but the Tigers are hoping to change that Saturday and keep the wins coming for their first-year head coach.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/73353/auburns-rise-revives-iron-bowl-rivalry

Auburn's rise revives Iron Bowl rivalry
October, 29, 2013

By Alex Scarborough
 
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The morning traffic in Birmingham on Saturday was unbearable. One side of the interstate was littered with cars, trucks and campers sporting some combination of crimson and white. Rows and rows of drivers were "On my way to see Bama play," according to the stickers on their vehicles. The caravan inched slowly toward Tuscaloosa, weaving on and off exits and around construction.

The Crimson Tide, the state's pride with back-to-back national championships, would demolish rival Tennessee 45-10 that afternoon to remain undefeated and firmly atop the BCS standings at No. 1 overall.

About the same time Alabama's supporters headed west toward Tuscaloosa, another group of cars marched south toward Auburn University, their vehicles sporting the school's traditional orange and blue colors and paw print stickers. Tiger-striped tails whipped in the wind, dangling from antennas and trunks. Almost prideful, their flow of traffic moved quicker than their counterparts on the opposite side of the interstate.

The Tigers, mired in mediocrity since winning the national championship in 2010 but recently resurgent under their new coach Gus Malzahn, would dispatch Florida Atlantic with ease later than night. The 45-10 win would boost Auburn to 7-1 and a No. 11 ranking in the BCS standings.

The wins and the rankings of both schools are one thing. Seeing the line of cars siphoning through the state's largest city, though, was a visual representation of where the rivalry is today. The Iron Bowl, after two years of being so incredibly one-sided in favor of Alabama, is relevant again. The Tide and the Tigers are squarely in the title hunt and only weeks away from a matchup that will determine both programs' postseason hopes.

Alabama's success is taken for granted these days, and for good reason. Coach Nick Saban has built the program into the model of success with only five losses and a staggering .097 winning percentage since 2009. The Tide has won three of the last four BCS National Championships and is well positioned to compete for an unprecedented third straight should it reach Christmas undefeated.

Auburn's rise to national relevance is much more surprising. The fact that Malzahn could resurrect a program left for dead by Gene Chizik is a shock. Auburn finished 8-5 in 2011 and fell further in 2012, ending the year 3-9 and winless in the SEC. Off-field problems rotted out the program and Chizik was fired two years after he and Cam Newton led it to a national championship.

"It’s very exciting," said safety Jermaine Whitehead, who signed with Auburn in 2011. "It’s the most live I’ve seen the fan base since I’ve been here. I think everyone has bought in, everyone believes. It kind of looks like the championship year -- the reason that I came here -- and I think we’re going to have a great story to tell when it’s all done."

Their story is already interesting. Two weeks ago Auburn went on the road to then-No. 7 Texas A&M and upset the Aggies in dramatic fashion. Quarterback Nick Marshall, a transfer, led Auburn to the come-from-behind win with a late fourth-quarter touchdown drive.

Corey Grant, who redshirted the 2010 season at Alabama before transferring to Auburn in 2011, said that there wasn't a time last year where he would have believed this season's turnaround could have happened. Beating Johnny Manziel, the defending Heisman Trophy winner, and the Aggies would have been unthinkable. But when Malzahn arrived he said the players were desperate for change and "we always just kept a new mindset and it turned out good for us."

"At the beginning of the season, things started off slow, but as the season got going, and Coach Malzahn kept preaching on what he wanted, and also this coaching staff, and everybody, all the players buying in, it's going good," he added.

As they say at Auburn, it's a new day. How long it will last, though, remains to be seen.

The Iron Bowl will be the ultimate litmus test for both programs.

Alabama has a major hurdle in No. 13-ranked LSU in two weeks, but neither Mississippi State nor Chattanooga in the following two weeks should prove an obstacle on the way to the Iron Bowl.

Auburn, meanwhile, should be favored in its remaining three games against Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia. The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry, as the Georgia-Auburn game is affectionately known, will be played at Auburn.

With LSU and Texas A&M currently sporting two losses, the West is either Alabama or Auburn's to steal.

Should both schools reach Nov. 30 without another loss, their matchup in the Iron Bowl would be huge, the biggest in years. It would be only the second time both teams were ranked since Saban took over at Alabama in 2007 and the first time the rivalry game would serve as the pseudo SEC West championship in recent memory.

Imagine the traffic in Birmingham if that happened. Post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping and an Iron Bowl? The roads were bad enough this weekend. Who knows if the state can handle both its teams being in the title hunt a month from now.

[Townhallsavoy]

I'm confused.  Where do I throw my pitchfork?

[AUChizad]

I'm confused.  Where do I throw my pitchfork?

I almost feel like this is an elaborate prank.

I didn't mentally prepare for this year to be a year where we'd be discussed, really at all, by ESPN and the like. Figured even if we exceeded expectations, we'd hear excuses about how we were paper tigers. I mean, we kind of have with the horse collar bullshit and all of that, but by and large, we're considered real contenders for the West.

I realize that this is extremely cynical and jaded, but I feel like maybe they're just hyping us up to further benefit Bama. Hype this "clash of the Titans" of two top five teams to end Bama's regular season in all its hyped glory should they win. With Bama's decided lack of an exciting schedule so far, they need a signature
GREATEST GAME EVER TO BE PLAYEDfor Bama this year, and this is about as close as they're going to get.

[wesfau2]

I almost feel like this is an elaborate prank.

I didn't mentally prepare for this year to be a year where we'd be discussed, really at all, by ESPN and the like. Figured even if we exceeded expectations, we'd hear excuses about how we were paper tigers. I mean, we kind of have with the horse collar bullshit and all of that, but by and large, we're considered real contenders for the West.

I realize that this is extremely cynical and jaded, but I feel like maybe they're just hyping us up to further benefit Bama. Hype this "clash of the Titans" of two top five teams to end Bama's regular season in all its hyped glory should they win. With Bama's decided lack of an exciting schedule so far, they need a signature
GREATEST GAME EVER TO BE PLAYEDfor Bama this year, and this is about as close as they're going to get.

Absolutely. 

[Godfather]

I almost feel like this is an elaborate prank.

I didn't mentally prepare for this year to be a year where we'd be discussed, really at all, by ESPN and the like. Figured even if we exceeded expectations, we'd hear excuses about how we were paper tigers. I mean, we kind of have with the horse collar bullshit and all of that, but by and large, we're considered real contenders for the West.

I realize that this is extremely cynical and jaded, but I feel like maybe they're just hyping us up to further benefit Bama. Hype this "clash of the Titans" of two top five teams to end Bama's regular season in all its hyped glory should they win. With Bama's decided lack of an exciting schedule so far, they need a signature
GREATEST GAME EVER TO BE PLAYEDfor Bama this year, and this is about as close as they're going to get.

Agree however that is shit ESPN does.  The Iron Bowl is played on CBS so DisABCESPNney gets no play out of it.

[Godfather]

Oh and point of order, don't use red this week for your rotating marquee. In fact don't use red ever.

For shame!

[Snaggletiger]

How many Greatest Games Played...EVAH can they have?  The hype over the A&M game started as soon as the season was over last year. 

[AUChizad]

Oh and point of order, don't use red this week for your rotating marquee. In fact don't use red ever.

For shame!

We didn't start the fire.

[Townhallsavoy]

I almost feel like this is an elaborate prank.

I didn't mentally prepare for this year to be a year where we'd be discussed, really at all, by ESPN and the like. Figured even if we exceeded expectations, we'd hear excuses about how we were paper tigers. I mean, we kind of have with the horse collar bullshit and all of that, but by and large, we're considered real contenders for the West.

I realize that this is extremely cynical and jaded, but I feel like maybe they're just hyping us up to further benefit Bama. Hype this "clash of the Titans" of two top five teams to end Bama's regular season in all its hyped glory should they win. With Bama's decided lack of an exciting schedule so far, they need a signature
GREATEST GAME EVER TO BE PLAYEDfor Bama this year, and this is about as close as they're going to get.

Yeah but if it's hyped up like that and we win....hope and change.