How close are we?

[keesler 5,943]

LSU/UAT won't tolerate 8-4 season's, and they absolutely will NOT tolerate a team that gets man-handled, skull drug and dominated all over the field by their biggest rivals. Auburn won't tolerate it either, that's why we have a brand new coaching staff when the former group was only two years removed from winning our first NC in 50+ years. The bar has been set, and 8 win season's are mediocre now for the Big 6 teams in the SEC. You either produce as a coach or you find your ass in the unemployment line, i.e. Derek Dooley/Gene Chizik

Honesly, Mark Richt has been lucky as hell to still have a job at UGA, with all that talent he should have at least one crystal ball in Athens. They came very close this year, and should be a decent offense next season - although they lose a ton of defensive talent to the NFL this yr.

[AcUmen 243]

Is AU being left behind in the SEC in regards to facilities and the stadium? Arkansas is planning to spend $320 million on a new facilities in the next year. They will have a new 80,000 SF football complex and plan on spending millions for more stadium expansions. Folks, that's one third of a BILLION dollars. And Arky is not even a big 6 (or 8) team! Source: http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/89624/bret-bielema-sold-on-uas-athletic-facility

For those of you that live close to Auburn, how do the facilities stack up? I've seen the indoor practice field and it looks state of the art. How would you rank it with the competition?

I think the stadium is falling behind. 87,000 is 6th today in the SEC (bottom of the Big "6"). Here's the stadium rankings in size:

Official Capacity

1) UT 102,455

2) Bammer 101,821

3) UGA 92,746

4) LSU 92,542

5) UF 88,548

6) AU 87,451

7) TAMU 82,589

8) USCe 80,250

9) Arkansas 72,000

10) Mizzou 68,349

11) UK 67,942

12) Ole Miss 60,580

13) MSU 55,082

14) Vandy 40,550

Most of these stadiums have record crowds above the official max. UF routinely has crowds above 90k.

Arky is going to expand by 2014. Several other stadiums are supposed to be expanded in the coming few years as well. AFAIK, AU has no plans to expand. Will JHS fall to 8th or 9th in the next five years?

[manthatsnice 0]

Is AU being left behind in the SEC in regards to facilities and the stadium? Arkansas is planning to spend $320 million on a new facilities in the next year. They will have a new 80,000 SF football complex and plan on spending millions for more stadium expansions. Folks, that's one third of a BILLION dollars. And Arky is not even a big 6 (or 8) team! Source: http://www.arkansasb...hletic-facility

For those of you that live close to Auburn, how do the facilities stack up? I've seen the indoor practice field and it looks state of the art. How would you rank it with the competition?

I think the stadium is falling behind. 87,000 is 6th today in the SEC (bottom of the Big "6"). Here's the stadium rankings in size:

Official Capacity

1) UT 102,455

2) Bammer 101,821

3) UGA 92,746

4) LSU 92,542

5) UF 88,548

6) AU 87,451

7) TAMU 82,589

8) USCe 80,250

9) Arkansas 72,000

10) Mizzou 68,349

11) UK 67,942

12) Ole Miss 60,580

13) MSU 55,082

14) Vandy 40,550

Most of these stadiums have record crowds above the official max. UF routinely has crowds above 90k.

Arky is going to expand by 2014. Several other stadiums are supposed to be expanded in the coming few years as well. AFAIK, AU has no plans to expand. Will JHS fall to 8th or 9th in the next five years?

Stadium expansion is not the answer when we can't routinely fill JHS as it is now.

In this case, the phrase "if you build it, they will come" refers to building a consistent, winning program--not a new stadium.

[Plaric 4]

We win those games and we still have the same coaching staff and we are complacent with 6-8 wins a year.

Some folks were perfectly fine with AU "exceeding expectations" and said so on many occasions when the 2011 team got their arses handed to them by our biggest rivals. In the current SEC environment, an 8 win season is considered mediocre now, anything less than that is poor.

Actually you could argue the opposite. Since the SEC is stronger now than it has ever been, there are only so many wins to go around. Bammer, AU, USCe, UF, UGA, A&M, UT, LSU are all about equal in talent and coaching. Usually one or two of those 8 will stand out (like bammer and LSU right now, but it fluctuates every few years). It wasn't so long ago that the AU/LSU game always determined the west and UT/UF always determined the east. Now it's bammer/LSU in the west and USCe/UGA/UF in the east. UT has fallen in the east and AU has fallen in the west, but you can count on both coming back.

I'd say an 8 win season would be about average for the "big 8" and would be considered "good" for the SEC teams not in the big 8. With the parity in the "big 8" all of them are not going to go 10+ wins every season. It's mathematically impossible.

No such thing as the big 8....there is the big 6 and that is all.....

I disagree. The power has shifted. Take UT out of the big "6" because they haven't deserved it since Fulmer. Spurrier has proven that USCe deserves to take UT's place. In the west, A&M has proven they deserve not to kick anyone out, but to be added. So that will make a "big 7." And I have no doubt UT will be back strong in a couple years, so then it will become the big "8" as I originally said.

My point is the SEC is stronger than ever. The competition is insane. Not every team of the big "6" or 8 is going to go undefeated each year as ALL of their fans expect.

Big six is built on long term program success. The best 6 programs in the sec are currently and will be for a very long time au al uga tenn lsu and fl

Gonna take more then 5-10 down years (even in a row) to uproot any one of those teams.

[keesler 5,943]

We win those games and we still have the same coaching staff and we are complacent with 6-8 wins a year.

Some folks were perfectly fine with AU "exceeding expectations" and said so on many occasions when the 2011 team got their arses handed to them by our biggest rivals. In the current SEC environment, an 8 win season is considered mediocre now, anything less than that is poor.

Actually you could argue the opposite. Since the SEC is stronger now than it has ever been, there are only so many wins to go around. Bammer, AU, USCe, UF, UGA, A&M, UT, LSU are all about equal in talent and coaching. Usually one or two of those 8 will stand out (like bammer and LSU right now, but it fluctuates every few years). It wasn't so long ago that the AU/LSU game always determined the west and UT/UF always determined the east. Now it's bammer/LSU in the west and USCe/UGA/UF in the east. UT has fallen in the east and AU has fallen in the west, but you can count on both coming back.

I'd say an 8 win season would be about average for the "big 8" and would be considered "good" for the SEC teams not in the big 8. With the parity in the "big 8" all of them are not going to go 10+ wins every season. It's mathematically impossible.

No such thing as the big 8....there is the big 6 and that is all.....

I disagree. The power has shifted. Take UT out of the big "6" because they haven't deserved it since Fulmer. Spurrier has proven that USCe deserves to take UT's place. In the west, A&M has proven they deserve not to kick anyone out, but to be added. So that will make a "big 7." And I have no doubt UT will be back strong in a couple years, so then it will become the big "8" as I originally said.

My point is the SEC is stronger than ever. The competition is insane. Not every team of the big "6" or 8 is going to go undefeated each year as ALL of their fans expect.

Big six is built on long term program success. The best 6 programs in the sec are currently and will be for a very long time au al uga tenn lsu and fl

Gonna take more then 5-10 down years (even in a row) to uproot any one of those teams.

AMEN!

So Carolina needs to win a few SEC Championships if they want to be included, and so does Arkansas & aTm. Long term, historical SEC power belongs to AU/UA/UT/LSU/UGA/FLA, and it'll be that way for a long time IMO.

[keesler 5,943]

Is AU being left behind in the SEC in regards to facilities and the stadium? Arkansas is planning to spend $320 million on a new facilities in the next year. They will have a new 80,000 SF football complex and plan on spending millions for more stadium expansions. Folks, that's one third of a BILLION dollars. And Arky is not even a big 6 (or 8) team! Source: http://www.arkansasb...hletic-facility

For those of you that live close to Auburn, how do the facilities stack up? I've seen the indoor practice field and it looks state of the art. How would you rank it with the competition?

I think the stadium is falling behind. 87,000 is 6th today in the SEC (bottom of the Big "6"). Here's the stadium rankings in size:

Official Capacity

1) UT 102,455

2) Bammer 101,821

3) UGA 92,746

4) LSU 92,542

5) UF 88,548

6) AU 87,451

7) TAMU 82,589

8) USCe 80,250

9) Arkansas 72,000

10) Mizzou 68,349

11) UK 67,942

12) Ole Miss 60,580

13) MSU 55,082

14) Vandy 40,550

Most of these stadiums have record crowds above the official max. UF routinely has crowds above 90k.

Arky is going to expand by 2014. Several other stadiums are supposed to be expanded in the coming few years as well. AFAIK, AU has no plans to expand. Will JHS fall to 8th or 9th in the next five years?

Arkansas can build anything their money bags boosters can afford to build. Until they field a team that can make it to Atlanta to play for conference championships on a consistant basis, it won't matter one fig to the rest of the SEC power programs.

As far as Auburn is concerned, when our fans feel compelled to put their asses in the seats of JHS and pack it out year after year after year, there wont' be a stadium expansion. When a program fails to fill up the capacity they already have, there is no demand to add more seats. When the day comes that AU sells out, fills seats and folks are standing around outside JHS looking to buy tickets, calling the ticket office to buy season tix, complaining to the AU Admin that there aren't enough seats to meet the demand, THEN an expansion can be justified.

[Rednilla 5,439]

The justification for a stadium expansion is primarily for student tickets and luxury boxes, both of which have a demand that far outweighs the supply. I would say it makes sense to either stack two or three rows of boxes on both end zones (more likely) or to enclose at least one end zone with regular seats and a row or two of boxes between the two levels (preferable). In the latter case, I would suggest adding a second student section in the South endzone (to add to home field advantage by forcing opponents' offenses to go into the teeth of the students no matter what) and moving the general seating for that section to the new upper deck seats.

[Rednilla 5,439]

Big six is built on long term program success. The best 6 programs in the sec are currently and will be for a very long time au al uga tenn lsu and fl

Gonna take more then 5-10 down years (even in a row) to uproot any one of those teams.

This. Let us not forget that Tennessee does have a BCS National Title, even if they are down right now; the "Big 6" consists of the traditional powers of the SEC. No other team has won the SEC Championship Game, and only a handful of times has another team even made it to the SECCG. Spurrier has built SC into a very good team, sure, but they, just like the other team they joined the conference with, have never been anything more than a spoiler for the power teams. A&M has been in the conference for only one year, and as good a year as they had, it was no better than any year Petrino had at Arkansas (aside from beating Bama, which Petrino couldn't do...though they did lose to LSU, and CBP overcame that hurdle).

Also, Arkansas has a LONG way to go before they reach Auburn in stadium capacity. Not to mention that I suspect Malzahn's offense will bring a renewed excitement to the Plains, which will translate into expansion in very short order.

[BornAU76 405]

The justification for a stadium expansion is primarily for student tickets and luxury boxes, both of which have a demand that far outweighs the supply. I would say it makes sense to either stack two or three rows of boxes on both end zones (more likely) or to enclose at least one end zone with regular seats and a row or two of boxes between the two levels (preferable). In the latter case, I would suggest adding a second student section in the South endzone (to add to home field advantage by forcing opponents' offenses to go into the teeth of the students no matter what) and moving the general seating for that section to the new upper deck seats.

I like this idea...JHS would be rocking with students at both ends.

[Fairleyunderappreciated 0]

Considering CGM's previous success reviving AU's offense I am absolutely confident that our offense will be among the best in the SEC next year. We return an offense perfectly suited to run the offense it will be asked to run next year. CGM has to be salivating at the thought of finally getting to run his system with this caliber of talent. Wallace is the dual threat QB needed to make the spread option dangerous. We will be at least 4 deep at RB (TM, MB, CG and CAP). We have a beastly FB/HB that will free a 3 deep TE corp to run all the seam, wheel and drag routes to Gus wants. From the flashes they have shown individually, I think the combination of Coates, Reed, Bray and Louis can be as lethal as any in the SEC if utilized properly. Given CGM's offensive record, and the fact that these players were highly recruited talents that committed to play in his system, Im sure this group will be far more productive that 2009's (and thats not meant as a slight to that group). The OL returns the entire two deep save for 2. There is absolutely no way an experienced group of 4-5* (save for 2) can possibly perform next year as poorly as they all performed this year. Outside of aTm and Bama, there is no team that (on paper) I would say is potentially returning a more potent offenese (assume Murray goes pro).

Defensively, we return all but three regular contributers. The DL depth chart will be full of seniors. Corey Lemonier is considered a 1st round talent despite his production on the field this year. I think he, just like the rest of them, were the victims of poor coaching. Not just "poor" but "historically poor". No way that happens again. The defense doesnt have to be great, we won a BCSNC with the 10th best scoring defense in the SEC. As great as that Senior class was only 2 of them were drafted and even then it was in the final round of the draft.

I expect to immediate results. I think CGM feels that with the potential roster and schedule next year could be a very good one. I think this is why he is pursuing so many JUCO's. Im not a sunshine pumper but I am very optimistic about next year

[manthatsnice 0]

The justification for a stadium expansion is primarily for student tickets and luxury boxes, both of which have a demand that far outweighs the supply. I would say it makes sense to either stack two or three rows of boxes on both end zones (more likely) or to enclose at least one end zone with regular seats and a row or two of boxes between the two levels (preferable). In the latter case, I would suggest adding a second student section in the South endzone (to add to home field advantage by forcing opponents' offenses to go into the teeth of the students no matter what) and moving the general seating for that section to the new upper deck seats.

Or just "rezone" some of the general to student. General population isn't using them anyway. If there is truly a significant demand for more luxury seating then that may be worth looking into.

[leglessdan 1,934]

Considering CGM's previous success reviving AU's offense I am absolutely confident that our offense will be among the best in the SEC next year. We return an offense perfectly suited to run the offense it will be asked to run next year. CGM has to be salivating at the thought of finally getting to run his system with this caliber of talent. Wallace is the dual threat QB needed to make the spread option dangerous. We will be at least 4 deep at RB (TM, MB, CG and CAP). We have a beastly FB/HB that will free a 3 deep TE corp to run all the seam, wheel and drag routes to Gus wants. From the flashes they have shown individually, I think the combination of Coates, Reed, Bray and Louis can be as lethal as any in the SEC if utilized properly. Given CGM's offensive record, and the fact that these players were highly recruited talents that committed to play in his system, Im sure this group will be far more productive that 2009's (and thats not meant as a slight to that group). The OL returns the entire two deep save for 2. There is absolutely no way an experienced group of 4-5* (save for 2) can possibly perform next year as poorly as they all performed this year. Outside of aTm and Bama, there is no team that (on paper) I would say is potentially returning a more potent offenese (assume Murray goes pro).

Defensively, we return all but three regular contributers. The DL depth chart will be full of seniors. Corey Lemonier is considered a 1st round talent despite his production on the field this year. I think he, just like the rest of them, were the victims of poor coaching. Not just "poor" but "historically poor". No way that happens again. The defense doesnt have to be great, we won a BCSNC with the 10th best scoring defense in the SEC. As great as that Senior class was only 2 of them were drafted and even then it was in the final round of the draft.

I expect to immediate results. I think CGM feels that with the potential roster and schedule next year could be a very good one. I think this is why he is pursuing so many JUCO's. Im not a sunshine pumper but I am very optimistic about next year

+1....I think we beat bammer next year. Mark it down!

[AU-24 3,128]

Considering CGM's previous success reviving AU's offense I am absolutely confident that our offense will be among the best in the SEC next year. We return an offense perfectly suited to run the offense it will be asked to run next year. CGM has to be salivating at the thought of finally getting to run his system with this caliber of talent. Wallace is the dual threat QB needed to make the spread option dangerous. We will be at least 4 deep at RB (TM, MB, CG and CAP). We have a beastly FB/HB that will free a 3 deep TE corp to run all the seam, wheel and drag routes to Gus wants. From the flashes they have shown individually, I think the combination of Coates, Reed, Bray and Louis can be as lethal as any in the SEC if utilized properly. Given CGM's offensive record, and the fact that these players were highly recruited talents that committed to play in his system, Im sure this group will be far more productive that 2009's (and thats not meant as a slight to that group). The OL returns the entire two deep save for 2. There is absolutely no way an experienced group of 4-5* (save for 2) can possibly perform next year as poorly as they all performed this year. Outside of aTm and Bama, there is no team that (on paper) I would say is potentially returning a more potent offenese (assume Murray goespro)

Defensively, we return all but three regular contributers. The DL depth chart will be full of seniors. Corey Lemonier is considered a 1st round talent despite his production on the field this year. I think he, just like the rest of them, were the victims of poor coaching. Not just "poor" but "historically poor". No way that happens again. The defense doesnt have to be great, we won a BCSNC with the 10th best scoring defense in the SEC. As great as that Senior class was only 2 of them were drafted and even then it was in the final round of the draft.

I expect to immediate results. I think CGM feels that with the potential roster and schedule next year could be a very good one. I think this is why he is pursuing so many JUCO's. Im not a sunshine pumper but I am very optimistic about next year

Nick Fairly went in the 1st round (Detroit Lions) I agree with several of your points.

[AUbritt 611]

I think it will take a couple of years, or at least I'm willing to give CGM some time. I will say, though, that I'm liking the way the staff is coming together!

[Rednilla 5,439]

The justification for a stadium expansion is primarily for student tickets and luxury boxes, both of which have a demand that far outweighs the supply. I would say it makes sense to either stack two or three rows of boxes on both end zones (more likely) or to enclose at least one end zone with regular seats and a row or two of boxes between the two levels (preferable). In the latter case, I would suggest adding a second student section in the South endzone (to add to home field advantage by forcing opponents' offenses to go into the teeth of the students no matter what) and moving the general seating for that section to the new upper deck seats.

Or just "rezone" some of the general to student. General population isn't using them anyway. If there is truly a significant demand for more luxury seating then that may be worth looking into.

If I'm not mistaken, Auburn sells somewhere between 90% and 95% of its tickets in spite of having the highest face value of any SEC team. If the PTB want to see a full stadium every game, drop the tickets ten or fifteen bucks and I'd be willing to bet it happens far more frequently.

[IronMan70 3,321]

The justification for a stadium expansion is primarily for student tickets and luxury boxes, both of which have a demand that far outweighs the supply. I would say it makes sense to either stack two or three rows of boxes on both end zones (more likely) or to enclose at least one end zone with regular seats and a row or two of boxes between the two levels (preferable). In the latter case, I would suggest adding a second student section in the South endzone (to add to home field advantage by forcing opponents' offenses to go into the teeth of the students no matter what) and moving the general seating for that section to the new upper deck seats.

Yep