The No. 15 Auburn Tigers travel to Columbia this weekend as a three-point favorite over the South Carolina Gamecocks. In a colorful conversation on ESPN’s “Stanford Steve and The Bear” podcast, the two hosts questioned both the Tigers’ ranking and the point spread for Saturday’s game.
Following his team’s controversy-filled win against Arkansas, Gus Malzahn said he views the game against South Carolina as the next step in improvement over the course of the season.
“Our goal is to get a little better each week,” he stated. “If we do that, we think that we think we’ll have a chance to be in the mix at the end. There’s not going to be a whole lot of teams to improve especially under these unusual circumstances this year.”
“Stanford” Steve Coughlin and Chris “The Bear” Fallica had the following to say about Auburn’s current standing:
COUGHLIN: I said it about LSU last week … I said LSU should not be ranked. This week it’s Auburn. Auburn should not be ranked. They are currently ranked I want to say 17.
FALLICA: That’s too high.
COUGHLIN: Come on.
FALLICA: We hit it last week, brother.
COUGHLIN: Fifteenth. They are 15 in the AP [Poll]. Why do we have the AP? Get rid of it.
FALLICA: I don’t know how because you are finally voting teams that aren’t playing to be voted. How are you voting them that high?
COUGHLIN: Why can’t Coastal be ranked?
FALLICA: The refs completely choked in that game last week and Arkansas should have won the game. We talked about it going into the week. Arkansas played Georgia a hell of a lot tougher than Auburn did and what Odom has done defensively has been really good. Franks has been steady, steady at quarterback. They look like a well-coached team for the first time in a while. And there was stuff going on at Auburn. Offensively they’re a mess. I don’t know, man. This is a very tricky number, too, with Auburn only laying a field goal against South Carolina.
COUGHLIN: I don’t understand it. I don’t get it. I don’t want anything to do with it, more importantly.
The Tigers’ game at South Carolina kicks off at 11:00 a.m. CT on ESPN.
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