$4 million just doesn’t get you what it used to
Posted by Brian |
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(AP Photo/Rob Carr) |
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but take a large degree of joy seeing the vaunted (and expensive) Nick Saban utterly fail in his first year in T-town. He came in walking on water and the hapless, hungry Alabama fan base set him on a pedestal. A few months later the season is over and Bama doesn’t even have a winning record. Six wins. Six losses. Six straight to AU.
There’s really no way to pardon the team’s performance. You can’t say, “Well, he was playing with Shula’s boys.” Shula coached with most of the same players last year and also won six games - and didn’t lose to the Louisiana Monroe WarHawks. Saban has bought the Tide absolutely no improvement. It looks like the long term investment is going to be slow to mature.
And I gotta say I’m glad Saban wasn’t president during 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. His foolish evocation of those events in a press conference after the ULM loss may have been intended to fire up his troops, but it didn’t seem to work.
Enough of that…
One item of note from the game itself. Just why the hell are there police with attack dogs on the field during the game? Is that really what the school plans on using if some overly excited kids rush the field? They’re going to sic friggin’ dogs on students?!?! I only ask because in the fourth quarter of the game Auburn DB Jerraud Powers made a play in the back of the end zone and as he was walking away a police dog lunged at him and bit his hand. Powers wasn’t threatening the dog in any way and the handler had the dog positioned just a couple of feet out of bounds. According to Powers in an interview after the game, the bite drew blood.
I think it is time for the university to review their policy and get those animals off the field. What if a player dove out of the end zone to make a play and landed on or near the dog and the animal started to maul the player? There is absolutely no reason to have dogs trained to attack sitting on the field of a sporting event.
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November 25th, 2007 at 9:19 am
War Damn Eagle!
I couldn’t believe they had police dogs on the sidelines either! Not sure if they were supposed to be bomb sniffers or what, but is it really necessary?
November 26th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Likely there to prevent the goal posts from coming down. The guard tried to hide after his dog bit the player. What a goob!
November 26th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Is it the university’s opinion that it would be preferable for police dogs to attack students on national TV rather than have those students climb on the goal posts? Call me crazy, but if students did rush the field and the dogs were released on them you would see lawsuits, intense media scrutiny, and probably the cognizant official at Auburn fired. I can’t think of a legitimate reason to have attack dogs on the field.
The dog in question should probably be retrained because it is my understanding that they are not supposed to attack unless commanded by their handler. Maybe the dog has a chip on his shoulder against football players after the whole Michael Vick thing.