It's a slow time for football news, so naturally we'll gobble up every bit of information that we can. And while we at the War Eagle Extra did not attend the SEC meetings in Destin, Fla., this week, friend of the blog David Hale, who covers Georgia for the Ledger-Enquirer's sister paper, the Macon Telegraph, is live on the scene (catch all of his blog postings here and his tweets here).

He caught up with Auburn coach Gene Chizik briefly this afternoon. Here's what Chizik had to say:

"I can only comment from me. When things need to be said, I say them. When they don't need to be said, I keep quiet. I just call it like it is when I need to call it. I don't feel like things always need to be said on my behalf so I choose my words. That's the way I've always been. I've got so much more to worry about on my plate, I can't worry about what anybody else is saying. I don't pay attention to what's going on out there. I don't get validated by other people, outside resources. I can't speak intelligently about anybody except for Auburn."

On his biggest worries for '09 ...

"I feel like our offensive line right now is a position we don't have a lot of depth at and we've got to get better at, no question about it. Wide receiver is a position that's been down. I feel they've responded well to the offense, but when you look at production, we've got to have more production at those two positions for sure. Linebacker on defense is a position we're very, very thin right now. Those three areas are the most glaring that we've got to shore up."

On reportedly turning down the chance to play UCLA in Atlanta in 2010 and non-conference scheduling ...

"There's nobody that we're reluctant to play. That schedule had already been set, and I'm sure down the road we'll find some other great competition outside our league to find someone to play. I think you've got to be smart. It's good to schedule some out-of-conference big games, and I think you have to especially when you start talking BCS and possibilities of national championship implications. But you've got to balance it out with some other ones that aren't necessarily to that degree."

"It is important. We would definitively like to settle on one, there's no question about that. That's not writing off the possibility of us having to use more than one because I'm never going to back myself into the corner and say never, but if you ask me what we would like, we'd like to settle on one. There's not one I could settle on right now. Obviously, Kodi Burns has more experience, and Kodi did some nice things last fall, but I'm not ready to name who would be starting if we played here tomorrow."