can you link some of the articles you wrote for BR? I would like to see them.
Well, that's a problem because when I quit I asked that all my stuff be deleted, but I copied most of my stuff to my desktop before they deleted them. I guess I wrote about 50 articles over a 3 year period.
Here are some that I kept from BR and some others that were picked up by other sites and publications from BR.
http://alabama.scout.com/2/911554.html
http://alabama.scout.com/2/916261.html
What Is Wrong With LSU? The Nick Saban Effect Is Wearing Off for Les Miles
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Well, let me be the first to say it.
Les Miles is LSU's version of 'The Miami Hurricane's' Larry Coker.
When Les Miles got a phone call from LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman in 2005, he must have splashed cold water on his face, looked in the mirror, and said, "I must be the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
I know that is what I would have thought if I had just come off 8-5, 9-4, and 7-5 records in the previous three seasons at Oklahoma State, and then received a phone call offering me the Head Coaching job at LSU.
Then he must have smiled when it sank in that he was being handed a team that had more great athletes than any other team in the countryāall thanks to LSU's previous coach, Nick Saban.
He must have felt like the kid who drives a Ford Pinto, being told his uncle Nick just left the keys to a Ferrari in his will!
It was truly a dream come true!
I mean really, how could he lose? Winning with well-coached athletes like that would be as simple as point and click!
I need not tell you that is exactly what has happened.
In Miles' first year, LSU went 11-2, winning the SEC Western Division, and then managed to blow the SEC title game to an inferior Georgia team.
In 2006 LSU was again 11-2, losing two key SEC games to Auburn and Florida, eliminating LSU from contention for the Western Division title race in the SEC.
This was another step backwards from the progress made by Saban.
Then in 2007 Les Miles managed to hit the lottery. LSU went 11-2 again, losing embarrassingly to Kentucky and Arkansas, and yet through an unbelievable turn of events managed to back into the BCS Title Game.
LSU lost the coveted top spot in the BCS rankings twice that year through terrible coaching and his team showing up unprepared.
Still Les Miles and LSU managed to back their way into the BCS championship game just three years after Saban's departure.
This 2007 LSU team was still loaded with Saban recruits. All the upperclassmen were Saban disciples. They still remembered what it took.
Once again Ohio State was pushed into the Lions' den by the media. Once again they were eaten alive by the SEC representative.
All Miles had to do was shut up and stay out of the way.
All this was accomplished with Nick Saban's highly regarded, meticulously coached, disciplined players.
You see football players take on the personalities of their Head Coach.
Coach Saban is regarded by most as the most talented Head Coach in college football. His teams are disciplined, tough, and motivated.
Everywhere Saban has been he has left his mark, and that mark has left everywhere he has been, better than it was before his arrival.
LSU was his crowning gloryāa team built to his high standards. LSU was athletic, hard-nosed, and smart.
It would take years to ruin a team like that, and sure enough, it has taken a few years. The Saban influence is wearing off.
So is the overall athletic ability of LSU. It is not a drastic difference, but if you look hard, you can see a difference.
Coach Miles was able to recruit well at first while at LSU mostly due to the seeds that Saban had sown.
Everything was made easy for Lesāat least until now.
Now it is going to get more difficult.
Nick Saban is now back in the SEC at Alabama, and already Miles has taken a back seat in recruiting.
Now, Alabama has taken LSU's usual spot in the polls, and the tide seems to be turning (pardon the pun) toward Nick Saban's Alabama team.
Last week's embarrassing loss to Florida is just the tip of the iceberg for LSU and Les Miles.
His dumbing down of LSU is just about complete.
The blowout loss to Florida has exposed Miles for the pretender he is.
Those crazy chances and unorthodox coaching decisions that were cute at first, just look foolish when you start losing.
Les Miles is an average coach at best that made a name by beating one team. That team was Oklahoma in 2001 and 2002.
Then he made his reputation by winning a National Championship while standing on the sideline and watching Nick Saban players beat Ohio State.
This man is no Nick Saban.
A good example of Saban's influence waning is the trash talk that took place last week before the LSU's loss to Florida.
It all started when Ricky Jean-Francois told
The Orlando Sentinel that a hit from his defense can equate to "a car wreck without a seatbelt. ... If we get a good shot on (Tebow), we're going to try our best to take him out of the game. ... If he does get hurt, there's a trained medical staff at Florida."
Ricky Jean-Francois is not one of Saban's playersāhe is a product of Les Miles' brand of coaching...brash and stupid!
College football is all about emotion and motivation. You just do not allow a player to help the other team get jacked up by trash-talking in the media.
That sort of thing would have never been tolerated by Coach Saban.
A Saban-coached player would have never dared!
In the Auburn game you got a sense that this LSU team was missing something.
After the Florida game, it was obvious! They lack the Nick Saban discipline.
So from this point forward, we will start seeing less Nick Saban and more Les Miles in the Tigers.
Believe me, the LSU fans are not going to like Miles' version of the Tigers nearly as much.
Oh, they will still win, but they will win more like Les Miles' Oklahoma State teams. They will be inconsistent and undisciplined.
They may beat a team they are not supposed to beat one week, only to lay an egg against a lesser opponent the next.
Earlier this year I predicted that LSU could lose as many as four games this year. I stand by that prediction.
The foundation laid by Saban is starting to crumble.
Les Miles will look back on his days of coaching Nick Saban's teams as the highlight of his career.
LSU fans that will argue with me now will agree with me at a later date.
Nick Saban won a National Championship for LSU in 2003. Some would argue he won another for LSU in 2007.
Listen, playing LSU under Miles is still very dangerous, and it will be for a while.
Les Miles still has his hands on a dangerous weapon, the LSU football team!
The difference between LSU under Miles and LSU under Saban, as far as danger, is...
The same as the danger presented by a mentally disturbed man versus the danger presented by a Navy Seal brandishing a deadly weapon.
They are two completely different types of danger, but you had better be afraid of both of them!
It's Not Revenge Alabama Is Seeking on Auburn: It Is a Reckoning!
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Don't like your poll? You can delete it.
VOTE NOW! - AUTHOR POLL
Who will win this years Iron Bowl?
<form action="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/82449-its-not-revenge-alabama-is-seeking-on-auburn-it-is-a-reckoning/polls/5761/vote" id="poll-vote-form" method="post" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: transparent; ">
- <input type="radio" name="vote" value="choice0" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/1 Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; ">Alabama
- <input type="radio" name="vote" value="choice1" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/1 Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; ">Auburn
<input type="submit" value="Submit Vote" id="poll-submit" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/1 Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; "> <small style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); ">vote to see results</small></form>
Alabama sits 11-0 and is currently sitting at the top of the BCS rankings.
Alabama has accomplished more this year than any Alabama fan could have ever expected so soon after Nick Saban's arrival.
All of Alabama's loftiest preseason goals are either already accomplished or are now within their reach.
We are unbeaten and are heading to the SEC Championship Game in search of our 22nd SEC championship. If we are successful there, we will head to Miami in search of our 13th National Championship.
It has been a long, difficult road back to prominence thanks to circumstances beyond Alabama's control.
Along the way we have had personal scores to settleāperceived wrongs that needed to be, shall we say, righted.
Scores that needed to be settled like the following:
We have paid back the Georgia players for celebrating in the Student Section End Zone after Georgia's overtime victory last year with a sound whipping in their own stadium and ending their dreams of a national championship.
We helped send the cause of our NCAA misery, Tennessee's Coach Phillip Fulmer, into an early retirement by handing Tennessee back-to-back lopsided losses.
We have broken LSU's five-game winning streak that dated back to 2002 and have silenced a sarcastic Les Miles for his "It looks like Alabama loses to all the Louisiana teams" statement, as well as put his future at LSU in doubt.
We have ended a humiliating two-game losing streak to our closest neighbor school, Mississippi State, that is located just 82 miles down, coincidentally, Highway 82.
Alabama has had its hands tied behind its back since its run-in with the NCAA, and all of our rivals have gotten in their licks on a helpless Alabama team.
Those days are over now, and the world is spinning correctly on its axis again!
Many wrongs have been righted, but the most important wrong that needs to be righted is now in Alabama's crosshairs.
That worst of all wrongs, the smug and arrogant Auburn Tigers!
The Auburn Tigers have also had their own brand of fun these last six years at Alabama's expense. They have enjoyed a humiliating six-game winning streak over "The Tide" spanning all the way back to 2002.
Auburn fans have twisted the knife and rubbed salt in Alabama fans' festering wounds day in and day out for 2,190 days. They have teased and taunted Alabama fans for over 26,280 hours.
You see, Alabama and Auburn fans live, work, and even go to church together. They are friends, relatives, and even husbands and wives.
There are 1,576,800 minutes of pent-up frustration hiding just below the surface in millions of Alabama fans.
That adds up to over 94,608,000 seconds of pure Hell just about to be released on the Auburn nation.
So on November 29, 2008, it is not revenge Alabama is seeking. In the words of Doc Holliday in the movie about
Wyatt Earp, "It is a reckoning!"
For those of you not familiar with that term, it means...the working out of consequences or retribution for one's actions.
We have had to suffer under Auburn's temporary reign of terror over Alabama for the past six years.
We have had to watch the Auburn head coach's immature taunting of Alabama fans and students by holding up the number of fingers relating to the winning streak.
We have had to witness Auburn players celebrating on our field while Auburn students and fans celebrated in our stadium, all holding up their fingers as well.
We have to go to work, school, and even church where Auburn fans waited with T-shirts depicting "Fear of the Thumb" and writing taunting messages on their windshields.
We have even witnessed a classless Tommy Tuberville disembarking Auburn's chartered plane over a month later at Auburn's Bowl game wearing his own Fear of the Thumb T-shirt.
Well, to quote
Wyatt Earp again, we are Alabama and..."This stops now!"
Alabama is ready to resume its rightful place in our state, in the SEC, and in the nation as one of the nation's premier college football programs.
Alabama is ready to be Alabama again. Now it is our turn to have a little fun at our rival's expense.
Alabama has always tried to win with class and lose with class, but in this case, you may have to forgive us Bearāthey all have it coming to them.
Make no mistake about it, Hell is coming and Alabama is coming with it!
Alabama is back!
Most of these are several years old but I will post one of the latest one on another post...
