News of the day, 12/14

Hey everyone. Auburn held its first official bowl practice this afternoon. Tuberville held a press conference afterward, spending almost 20 minutes discussing new offensive coordinator Tony Franklin and how his arrival will affect the Tigers' offense.

I'll get a summary up in a little while.

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Franklin and the offensive players won't be available until 5:30 or so. They've having a Come To Jesus meeting right now. Those are the people I want to see. Can't wait to hear what guys like Kodi Burns and Rod Smith think about this.

FYI: QB Brandon Cox is out today attending a funeral. He's expected back tomorrow.

Here are the official HABOTN Things You Need to Know about what coach Tommy Tuberville said today:

*Tony Franklin, as expected, didn't start implementing stuff today. After "practice," many offensive players stuck around for a walk-through that ended around dusk. It was as laid-back as a practice can be. Franklin was just showing how the pace of practice soon will pick up and how the basic sets look.

*Tuberville said Franklin won't be the main play-caller at the bowl game. "The running game would probably be Hugh. He's been in charge of the running game the last several years. I'm not saying that 100 percent but in the game situations up to this point, he was the guy scripting runs, putting our run gameplan together, and that would probably be the logical choice."

*Franklin's system won't represent a total overhaul. "We're not abandoning everything that we're doing. We're trying to add something that will give us an opportunity on the game field and in recruiting to be able to take another step up. We've got good football players on the team but everybody that's watched us in the last couple of years we've had a tough time of making big plays. Whether that's got to do with personnel or the plays we've been running is yet to be seen."

*Auburn may have The Quarterback already on scholarship. "They ran the spread offense in high school. Neil Caudle ran this. Blake Field ran it. Kodi Burns ran it. The thing you get into in this offense is most of the players that we recruited or anybody recruits is going to be in some form of this offense now. That's one of things that's the beauty of this. You can go out and evaluate players better for fitting this offense than you can the West Coast offense. There's not many high schools out there that run what we've been running. There's not much changeover for the players other than some might have been here and gone through our system for a year or two. Now they're going to have to learn something a little bit different for spring practice."

*Tuberville doesn't like answering questions about new Arkansas coach Bob Petrino. "He's at Arkansas," was all Tuberville offered.