Forget any type of fancy introduction. It's Auburn week. And practice started today.

Here's what you need to know:

With nut-crunching time looming on the horizon, Bama knows where it stands in most aspects of the game:

There's one area that's not covered there: the team's passing game.  After three years of John Parker Wilson, Bama debuted a new signal-caller for 2009.  With only two offensive lineman returning, and only one returning receiver with over 16 catches in 2008, the questions in T-Town were obvious and pretty troubling.  So how has Greg McElroy been doing?

Bama did exactly what Bama needed to do on Saturday. The Tide was able to play anyone and everyone that they wanted to play en route to a dominating win over Chattanooga. Bama didn't have to pad stats for anyone. The Tide simply dominated an inferior opponent, and that's exactly what a championship caliber team does.

On a side note, I spoke to a Chattanooga area reporter who has a Heisman vote that told me that he was extremely impressed with Mark Ingram. The fact that he had over 100 yards and two touchdowns on only 11 carries says all that anyone needs to know. Florida let Tim Tebow pad his stats, and that might actually hurt his Heisman chances. The Heisman voters are smart enough now to pay attention to a guy that runs for 100 yards in one half, and to tell the difference between that and a guy who was left in too long simply to add to his stats total.

Either way, we'll have more coverage in the coming week. All that matters is that the Tide won, and no one was injured.

Oh yeah... forget the 24 hour rule.... it's Auburn week. And in case you have forgotten.... I hate orange.

It was a week around the Capstone that can best be described as sleepy. That's not a surprise, today's matchup isn't exactly a barn-burner and everyone is looking ahead to "Black Friday" (which is what I hope Auburn fans refer to it for years to come). It was a good week around some corners of campus: Anthony Grant picked up his second win last night, beating the Big East's Providence at home. Elsewhere, the golf team has signed a truly spectactular recruiting class. Coach Jay Seawell has really built a suddenly fantastic men's golf program. Nice work, Coach.

But really, this week is about the calm before the storm. There's no real suspense in this morning's game; Chattanooga lost to Furman, after all. But in the next 14 days, the Tide will play for the National Championship. Last year, it frankly felt a little flukey. I was just happy to be there - and maybe our players were too. But this time, Bama's hungry. It should be a helluva lot of fun.

To the picks!

The Alabama football team held it's final "open" practice of the week on Wednesday afternoon. The full pads practice was held outside, and was extremely intense.

Here's what you need to know:

I'm still not totally convinced that the 2009-2010 Alabama basketball team is very good, but they showed me a little something tonight.

Even better than showing me something -- they won their first game of the season 86-69 over Jackson State. And that is win #1 for Anthony Grant at Alabama.

The Alabama football team was back in action on the practice field on Tuesday afternoon. The Tide worked outside in full pads as they continued their prep for Chattanooga.

Here's what you need to know:

Tennessee From The Couch started out with the phrase "It wasn't that bad."  And this week I'm here to tell you it wasn't that good.

Maybe the lesson you should draw from this is that I'm a contrary cuss, and if you did, you might not be very wrong.  But maybe a better lesson is that you shouldn't really draw too many conclusions from the week-to-week ups and downs of a football season.  That one might not be very wrong, either.

Why did I think it wasn't that good?  I'll tell ya.

The Alabama football team began preparations on Monday for its final home game of the season. As usual, Monday's practice was in shells.

Here's what you need to know:

It's much easier to write a column after a close win, because there are defining moments and turning points that can be discussed. After a blow-out win, that type of thing just comes across as sunshine pumping. And that's not something that we necessarily want to be associated with.

Having said all of that, here are some things that I noticed on Saturday night: