Orange Is Our Color

 A few weeks ago I learned an Auburn football themed book had been published. The title "Orange Is Our Color." The Tuberville Years Through Navy-tinted Glasses resonated within me. I have always been a fan of Tommy Tuberville, even before he coached at Auburn. He was a top notch defensive coordinator for the Miami Hurricanes and the Texas A & M Aggies. Wikipedia's description of his early coaching career includes such Auburn coaching pipelines as being a high school coach in Arkansas, and an assistant at Arkansas State. Sound familiar?

   "Tuberville coached at Hermitage High School in Arkansas to begin his career. Tuberville was an assistant coach at Arkansas State University. He then went through the ranks at the University of Miami, beginning as graduate assistant and ending as defensive coordinator in 1993 and winning the national championship three times during his tenure there (1986–1994). In 1994, Tuberville replaced Bob Davie as defensive coordinator under R. C. Slocum at Texas A&M University. The Aggies went 10–0–1 that season." -wikipedia

 The author, Josh Dowdy is an Auburn graduate, and in our discussions I asked him; What inspired you to write this book? His answered with this....

  "Ever since Tuberville first asked the Auburn Family to wear orange on game day, I've been intrigued by how strongly the Auburn people responded. As the years went by, I began to see Auburn fans wearing orange as symbolic of the relationship between Tuberville and the Auburn Family.
When we continued to wear orange, even after Tuberville moved on, I began to wonder why the connection between the coach and the people had been so deep.
After digging a little for the answer to that question, I decided I could only answer it by thoroughly researching the entire Tuberville decade."

 Josh Dowdy does an excellent job at setting up the book's theme and then walking the reader through the Tuberville years. Many memorable Auburn football games and the memories that I have associated with those games came flooding back while reading his book. 

 One moment in particular is the game against Florida in 2006. In the words of Josh Dowdy, that Florida game at Jordan-Hare, is described this way...

    "The Auburn Tigers got their first taste of Tebowmania in 2006." 
"Early in the Third quarter Florida punter Eric Wilbur dropped a deep snap. After picking it up, he still attempted to punt the ball even as he was being tackled by Tristan Davis. Jerraud Powers blocked the punt. Trey Smith recovered and took in to the end zone."

  Here is the video of that game I found on YouTube.



 This book kept me entertained throughout. Josh does not back down from any of the Tuberville years at Auburn including the infamous Jet-Gate scandal. I would highly recommend this to any Auburn fan. I think it would make an excellent addition to any Auburn fans Christmas list.

***Full disclosure notice: I was sent a promotional copy of this book by the author. Although, it was after I had purchased a download from Amazon e-books.

You can read more of Josh Dowdy and his works at the Auburn blog aptly named "Orange Is Our Color"