Before Tommy Tuberville was ushered out of Auburn, there was Tony Franklin, the offensive coordinator who lasted less than 10 months on the job.
Franklin, now the offensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee, hasn't forgotten about his brief stay on The Plains, and some of his words won't play well in the Bible Belt.
"That's all they do is pray — and talk about praying and religion," Franklin said of the Auburn athletic department. "It's a constant thing with them, and it's just overwhelming at times. A lot of people use religion as a crutch, and I think that's the case there. Every word coming out of their mouths is something about religion, and most of it is just a joke.
"I don't want to come off as anti-religion or that I'm not a Christian, but the best people in the world — the ones who do truly great things — they just do good things for people. You don't know most of the time if they're Muslim or Christian or anything else, because they never talk about it. But it was constant with them, and it was uncomfortable sometimes. When you talk about your religion so much, it comes off as fake or phony. That's the way I think of several of those people [at Auburn] as fake."
Franklin's quotes about religion aside, Will Collier of From The Bleachers doesn't think the Montgomery Advertiser story carries much journalistic significance:
"After reading it, the biggest revelation I walked away with was, based on the level of promotion for this nothing sandwich, the Montgomery Advertiser must be utterly desperate to boost its flagging readership. Otherwise, why would any sane editor or publisher go out of their way to flog six pages worth of stuff everybody already knew?"
A wise former Southern Baptist man once told me that "the harder someone tries to thump you with the Bible, the more they need to be thumped themselves."
While I'm sure there are fermented grapes here, the coach does have a few good points in the article.
Posted by: Matt | June 08, 2009 at 05:58 AM