Monday, February 28, 2011

AUBurgeddon: Kevin Scarbinsky is probably a lousy poker player

JailAubie At the website run by the state media cartel (aka, al.com), Kevin Scarbinsky, Senior Sports Columnist and Head Auburn Cheerleader has a new panties-in-a-wad rant today.

As a friend of mine pointed out when he saw the column, “if this were Alabama he was writing about, the headline would read ‘Alabama deserves stiff sanctions for lying to the NCAA during the investigation.’ ”

How true and and a great point about media bias (or simple lack of intellectual curiosity) plaguing the state’s three major daily newspapers. 

What’s more interesting to me is that Scarbinsky doesn’t seem to grasp the game being played here. It’s not about credibility. It’s about protecting one’s interests in a very high stakes game.


If those two former Mississippi State football players have a tape or tapes of Cecil Newton asking for money to send his son Cam to their school, as [radio talkshow host Scott] Moore said Friday during a radio interview with WNSP in Mobile, they should play them for the public.

If John Bond and Bill Bell have a tape or tapes to prove that Cam Newton was in the room when his dad was asking for money to send him to State, as Moore also said when he described having heard some of the tapes, they should play them, too.

And not for pay.

If they're trying to cash in because, as Moore said Friday, the tapes "have a lot of value," they're no better than Cecil Newton himself.


I’m not gonna parse Scott Moore’s comments because I didn’t hear the whole radio interview. But yeah, they do have a lot of value. One of the most valuable aspects of those recordings is that they serve as the only leverage Bond, Bell, Rogers and Mississippi State have against the SEC and the NCAA throwing them under the bus.

If there is evidence that the Newtons lied to the NCAA about the son not knowing what the father was doing, it’s not only front page news, it’s a 2010 record of 0-0 for Auburn, vacated SEC and national titles and probably a forfeited Heisman Trophy. And then, the NCAA will penalize Auburn.

Bond and Bell have now seized the narrative with the publicity surrounding the existence of incriminating recordings. They have forced the “other side” to change their tactics and reconsider their own strategy. It’s as if these are two poker players heads up, with all the chips in the pot.

In poker, you don’t have to be holding the nuts to make the other side fold. All you have to do is make them think you do. Scarbinsky’s rant is akin to a player hollering “show me your cards!  SHOW ME YOUR CARDS!!” after watching his opponent raise it for everything.

It’s not time for Bell and Bond to put up or shut up. It’s time for the SEC and the NCAA to do that.  Bell and Bond have placed their bets, and you don’t get to see their cards until you call.

Scarbinsky doesn’t get that, so I’m inviting him to a weekly poker game held each Friday night.

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