LITTLE ROCK — Auburn Athletic Director Jay Jacobs said Cecil Newton would not be attending the BCS championship game.
What he should have said, apparently, is he wouldn’t be attending as part of Auburn’s official party.
Not only was he there, he was the first person Cam Newton, his son and Auburn’s quarterback, searched for in the stands immediately following Monday’s victory over Oregon.
If the NCAA and the school your son plays football for told you to distance yourself from the program, and they would not give you a ticket to the national championship game, would you stay home? Or would you buy a ticket yourself and attend the game?
Cecil Newton was told all of the above and, as a citizen of this great country we live in, decided to attend the game, apparently on his own dime. If he had just stayed in the background, everything would have been fine.
Instead, an Alabama photographer caught them in a post game hug. Not much distance from the program there.
It has been reported that Cecil Newton admitted to asking Mississippi State for $180,000 for Cam’s talents, and Cecil has said Cam knew nothing about it.
Well, obviously the son knew in advance that his dad was coming to the game and didn’t bother to inform any of his coaches or the athletic director.
It seems to this scribe that father and son wanted everyone to know they are a team, and always have been. Always will be.
Cam Newton has brought Auburn the greatest glory in its football history, and perhaps the school’s greatest embarrassment before this whole fiasco ends.
Put this reporter down as squarely in favor, for now, of keeping the BCS but adding a plus-one game.
In that format, TCU and Auburn would be playing this Saturday for the undisputed championship of college football.
A plus-one format really wouldn’t take the kids out of school much more than they already are, it would keep the bowls intact, and it would increase the payout for everyone.
It is also probably as close to a playoff as college football is ever going to have, at least until ESPN decides it wants a playoff. That isn’t likely since the sports giant needs programming, and with 33 of the 35 bowls on ESPN or ABC, the parent company, they get plenty to show and plenty of advertising.
There has been much justified discussion over the similarities in the run Michael Dyer made in the BCS championship and the one Arkansas’ D.J. Williams made in the Sugar Bowl.
Dyer and Williams each rolled over a defender, but their knees did not touch the ground.
There are two differences, which might be where the questions about rules interpretation came from.
The back of Williams’ wrist touched the ground, and in the hand attached to that wrist was the ball.
The front of Dyer’s wrist and hand touched the turf, but the ball was in his other hand.
Gene Chizik, Auburn’s head coach, has said several times his intentions are not to recruit junior colleges.
He might want to stop saying that since Newton and Nick Fairley were the main cogs in Auburn’s march to the BCS championship.
In all the years this reporter has been covering college football, never has it been witnessed where two junior-college players had such a huge impact on one program.
Without Newton, who was in his first season with Auburn, and Fairley, who was in his second season, the Oregon Ducks would be the BCS national champs.
A final observation about the Sugar Bowl: Five years from now, most people won’t remember the score, but they will remember five players played who faced suspensions the next season.
Sports, Pages 17 on 01/13/2011