Auburn will face Samford on the Plains in 2011
By Jay Coulter
jccoulter@gmail.com
While there's still no word from Auburn, it appears the University has reached an agreement with Samford to play at Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2011. Speaking to a group in Birmingham today, Samford Head Coach Pat Sullivan said his team will travel to the Plains for the first time since 1993.
The former Auburn Heisman Trophy winner also announced games with Central Florida in 2009 and Florida State during the 2010 season. It's also rumored the Bulldogs will travel to Tuscaloosa in 2012 to face Alabama.
"First, I want to thank these schools for giving us the opportunity to play," Sullivan said. "It's very special to our team and to our Samford family to be able to go to those places, and it's also exciting for our players to go to those venues. This will help us in recruiting, and for us to build our program to where we want it to be, this is what we need to do."
Samford will likely travel to Auburn during the first week of November and serve as its homecoming opponent. Believe it or not, the two schools have played 26 times. As you would expect, Auburn holds a 25-0-1 advantage over the Bulldogs.
Sullivan starts his second season in Birmingham on August 28th when he welcomes West Georgia. Last year, he posted a 4-7 record. Scheduling these big name schools makes you wonder if Samford is not trying to go the route of Troy and move up to Division I-A at some point.
We can all agree there are some big idiots who cover college football. But I think I've found the biggest. His name is Taylor Zarzour and he's host of a radio program called The Big Tailgate Show on WPTF-AM in Raleigh, N.C.
It seems that somehow Zarzour was granted a vote in this year's AP College Football Poll. When he turned in his preseason ballot, Auburn was not in his top 25.
Why?
Paul Gattis of The Huntsville Times wanted to know the same thing. So he did some research and found Zarzour's bio on the show's website. In it, Mr. Zarzour describes himself as "An avid Alabama fan" and says his greatest sports moment was Alabama's win over Miami in the 1992 Sugar Bowl.
But the plot thickens. After Gattis reported this, the station removed the Alabama references from Zarzour's bio. For the record, he ranks Alabama 23rd to start the season.
I don't blame Zarzour for this incident. He's a complete moron and obviously shouldn't be taken seriously by the media if he has crap like that written in his bio. I blame the Associated Press. How far down do you have to reach to find someone of this caliber to vote in your poll? Thank God it no longer factors in the BCS.
The AP should do the right thing and pull this bozo from its panel. Better yet, the poll should go the way of newspapers and just call it a day. What a joke.