Blue Helmets? Blue Pants for Saturday?

The message boards have been humming with rumors today that Auburn will be wearing blue pants this weekend when they welcome Clemson to Pat Dye Field. It's gotten so much attention that Auburn coach Gene Chizik was asked about it earlier tonight.

"Our uniforms are our uniforms and we love them,'' Chizik said. He was pressed again by reporters and said unequivocally that Auburn would be in their traditional uniforms come Saturday night.

A few hours later, the website, warblogle.com published the above picture of a navy Auburn helmet. Whether it's authentic is anyone's guess. It certainly looks real enough. But then again, I've seen orange and blue game-ready helmets for sale at the local Auburn bookstores for several years.

Make of it what you will. What we do know is that school officials want all Auburn fans attending the Clemson contest to wear blue in the stadium. This is to off-set the orange worn by Clemson and to force close to 80,000 people to shop the local stores looking for blue Auburn shirts.

It's pure marketing genius on Auburn's part and will ensure that the children of J&M Bookstore and Tiger Rags have good Christmases.

So what do you think? Good idea or bad idea?