Hi everybody. I guess today's my last day of relative peace for the next four months. I spent it driving around Auburn between introductions with members of the football coaching staff, trying to find a halfway decent rental property that isn't already spoken for this fall. (No luck so far. Feel free to make any suggestions because I could use all the help I can get).

Anyway, I met the entire coaching staff today. Got to sit down with Tommy Tuberville and his son Tucker in his office for a good while and get to know him a little bit. It's nice to put the introductions behind you so you have at least met these guys before you start asking them questions. I'm looking forward to getting started with practices, and you can tell they are too, although I'm betting my enthusiasm will be dampened a bit by about Day 15 of the 17 consecutive days of practice they're about to start Saturday without a break.

Couple notes from the day and then I'm going to post a couple of amusing pictures a friend e-mailed me today at the bottom from the coaches tour in the Middle East.
* Tuberville said they still haven't heard back from the NCAA Clearinghouse on Daphne RB Reggie Hunt. He said they otherwise expect smooth sailing when everyone reports Friday. I'll be writing something from that and will post some extra quotes from the new guys on here sometime tomorrow night, so look for that.

* Auburn basketball forward Josh Dollard has been kicked off the team for breaking team rules. They put out a press release on it today. I'm not sure if that's part of why Jeff Lebo seemed so unsure over whether Dollard would be ready for the start of the year on the SEC coaches summer teleconference a couple weeks ago. But it doesn't matter. He's done at Auburn now.

Lebo's statement in the press release:
"Josh understood his requirements and responsibilities to be an Auburn student-athlete, and he has fallen short in fulfilling what was clearly communicated to him."

* Also, the official Auburn site has a new page up and running detailing all 25 of the current and former Auburn folks who will be participating in the Beijing Olympics. It's got what they'll be competing in, when, all that good stuff. Check it out here.

* Now onto the pictures from the Middle East. I'm sure these have been making the rounds among Auburn fans, so they may or may not be new to you. I'd hope nobody minds me posting them here (if they do, I'll take them down). According to the e-mail I received, they were sent by Lt. Justin Cobb, who is stationed in Bahrain. I assume he's the guy in the pictures with the coaches. I thought a couple of them were neat and a couple of them were funny.

It's crazy to me how much was being made of Tuberville's seven-finger thing after their touch football game. If it wasn't obvious to you before, it should be obvious when you see a picture of Mark Richt posing with a guy hoisting an Auburn flag -- these guys didn't have to play up team loyalty over there, they were just there to visit the soldiers. If somebody asked Richt to pose with an Auburn flag, obviously he did it. If some Auburn fan asked Tuberville to throw up seven fingers while they carried him off the field, he just wanted them to have a good time while he was there. Even when one of them held up a sign mocking how Nick Saban wasn't there and Tuberville posed with him, who cares? I mean, really...who cares? (And I guess I should point out you could photoshop whatever you want that sign to say on there. I didn't take that picture, so I'm not 100 percent sure it's legit). Either way, it's a good thing those coaches did to go over there and visit those guys. There's nothing wrong with a little good-natured fun, no matter what you might read to the contrary in some anonymous mongoloid's message board rants.

Also included in the e-mail forward were photos of the front and back sides of a coin Tuberville was handing out to those guys over there. Apparently he was the king schwag distributor over there.