Interesting press conference today with head coach Tommy Tuberville, who dispelled notions that he had a stroke, has lost his passion for recruiting and no longer wants to coach. Here is his (unprovoked) rant in its entirety:

"One thing I want to talk about, and I don't talk about rumors that much, but over the last week or so, obviously there's been a lot of things said in the papers and magazines, whatever, I get people e-mailing me that. I just want everybody to know that everything is going good. I did not have a stroke. I am completely healthy. Matter of fact, about three months ago I had a full physical. I'm not tired of coaching. I'm as fired up as ever. I've been here 10 years as a head coach. This is my 30th year to coach and I feel as good right now as I ever have about coaching football and young guys and I still got that drive. You pretty much have to, 14-, 18-hour days this time of year. I read that my drive was gone.

"No we did not negotiate a contract last week. That's another one that came out. I don't like recruiting anymore? Well, I went 2,500 miles last Thursday and Friday and covered a lot of high schools and talked to a lot of coaches and I love every minute of it, and our recruiting is going great. And it's just amazing the rumors that go around when things are not going as well as you would hope. And no matter what happens anywhere, you're going to have years that things are not going to go perfect. And that's my job to get it straightened out.

"The one thing I will tell you about our football team is with all these distractions from the outside, I tell more about our football team when things go like this than any other time. Because a good football team is made from within, not from without. And we've got some great kids on this team who have busted their tail and they have hurt immensely. And they should. As much time and effort that they put into it. And every fan out there you can put them together. And they really love their football, and I'm proud of that, but you can put every fan together and it wouldn't come near the hurt that it hurts one of these kids to lose a football game, the effort and time that they put into it. I'm proud of them.

"But I just wanted to let you know that I've been here 10 years; I plan on being here 10 more. And I'm looking forward to it. All these rumors get started. I'm 10 years an Auburn man and I'm 10 years more of an Auburn man than most, because I put my heart and soul into this thing, and we ain't going to stop now. We're going to keep working, keep striving to get better. Because we do have a good football team. We're not playing good right now. This is a transition year, but we're going to get better.

"I don't know whether we're going to win any of these last five games, but I can tell you one thing, all you have to do is look back at the first seven. We led every game at halftime. Some things didn't work out in the second half, but we fought hard in every game and we played well. We haven't been beat by 30 points. There's times when you'd think, 'Man, we lost that game by three or four touchdowns.' And it came down to basically the last play or so. That's just football. But I'm proud of how they've worked, of how they put it together, the coaches of how they've done it.

"Again, good football teams don't win every game. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and seeing how much we improve. We put in some seven principles of what we want to do for the next five games in terms of winning, and we're going to base this team on that. But your football team is just based more on how it plays on Saturday. I base it on a lot more things -- around the program, how they handle themselves, things, classes, all those things together, and we're going to have some guys get in trouble, but we'll take care of those problems.

"So we've got a great program that's going to get stronger, going to get better. All the detractors from outside keep throwing stones at us, that's fine. I love it. It makes us work harder. So we're looking forward to this Thursday and getting ready for the next conference game and on and on.

"So I appreciate getting all the sympathy cards for my illnesses and all that, but please don't send any flowers. Save your money for Christmas, because from the way the economy is it looks like we're all going to need it.

"That's a paid political announcement by Tommy Tuberville, by the way. Now we can get on with it after dispelling all those things."

WOW. More on this later. Now to talk to some players.