A peek at Auburn

Seems there is always something interesting and fascinating going on with the football programs inside the state of Alabama.

It's just a perpetual bizarro world whose events are followed by those of us on the outside kind of like those tabloids that catch your eye in the grocery-store line.

Major boosters taking secret flights to interview Bobby Petrino? Check. Head coaches who are ... uh ... rolling, baby at strip clubs on the Florida panhandle? Check. Degenerates who poison trees and brag about it on the radio? Check.

The latest object of my fascination is the hair of new Auburn defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder.

Before we go any further, let me say that I have no business making fun of someone else's hair because I don't have much of it. And studies show that my situation probably will not get any better. So I probably shouldn't be gawking at a guy who is able to look like this guy:

Or this guy:

Or, my personal favorite, this guy:

It's just a bit startling because I remember the Brian VanGorder from his, uh, less stylish days. Covered him in 2001, 2002 and 2003 when he was the defensive coordinator at Georgia. During that time, VanGorder struck you as much more Full Metal Jacket than Boogie Nights. Very businesslike. No nonsense. Very much the crew-cut type.

So there was a definite double-take last year as I half-heartedly watched a Falcons game and the camera zoomed in on Magnum D.C.

But that's not the point of this blog, or at least I didn't intend for it to be. Lot of interesting stuff going on at Auburn beyond VanGorder's locks.

Still a little hard to believe things disintegrated so quickly with Gus Malzahn, a genius one minute and a bum the next in the eyes of a lot of folks.

I'm still leaning toward the genius extreme because the guy's system works. Yeah, he had perhaps the most feared SEC offensive threat ever in Cam Newton, but he moved the ball pretty well in 2009 before Newton's arrival.

Auburn's offense was bad last year, but 26 points a game isn't exactly brutal when you've lost Newton and your entire offensive line from the 2010 BCS champs. The defense was pretty bad again, giving up 29 points a game. You're not going to win many games in the SEC when you're giving up almost 200 yards a game, as Auburn did last year.

Malzahn's replacement, Scott Loeffler, has only one year of coordinating experience but has coached a bunch of good quarterbacks including Tim Tebow, Tom Brady and Brian Griese. He says Auburn is going to be more of a run-first offense, which is interesting because ideally the Malzahn offense is a run-first offense as well.

Probably won't be as many funky looks for defenses to worry about, less eye candy on display when the Tigers and Tigers square off in Atlanta for the 2012 opener. Auburn appears to be going more conventional, and the belief here is that those Tigers will be less feared as a result.

Some Auburn links: Pre-Snap Read takes an in-depth look at the offensive line ... A look at the two new coordinators at work ... More on that here ... Who are the top candidates at running back after Michael Dyer's jump to Arky State? ... And a look at Loeffler's work with quarterbacks.

Loeffler, by the way, is the youngest member of Auburn's staff.

LW