OT: Phillip Marshall died today

He was a reporter for the Auburn 247 website. He came out of the closet as a full blown Auburn mouth breather a while ago.

Phillip was a drunken disgusting slob to be around until he gave up drinking about 30 years ago after a DUI … I heard another story that he “came to” one time somewhere in the bowels of Montgomery, not knowing how he got there and having burned all the oil out of his car … after that he just became a disgusting slob.

But my professional disagreement with him and where it became obvious to me that he was an Auburn homer … I don’t know how that happened, Benny was so tight with Coach Bryant … was when I heard from a source I trusted that he personally talked Sonny Smith into staying at Auburn after he took another job. Now Sonny was a good guy and he was fun to cover, but it wasn’t Phillip’s business to give Sonny career advice, it was to report what Sonny did. Period. I had zero respect for him after that.

I think I told this story here before. We were in Chapel Hill in 1987 covering the Auburn at North Carolina football game. Phillip had been drinking all day long in the hospitality room that all schools including Bama set up for the media back then. Auburn then took the media out to eat at a nice restaurant that night as all schools including Bama used to do back then (Bama always chose better restaurants; at the bowl game in Tampa after that season Bama treated us to Bern’s, enough said.)

Anyway, Phillip kept drinking at dinner and all of a sudden started yelling at the top of his lungs in the middle of the restaurant “Herschel Walker couldn’t carry Bo Jackson’s jock strap.” He kept carrying on until Clyde Bolton picked up a butter knife off the table (of course more for effect) and said, “Phillip if you don’t shut up I’m going to cut you.”

Phillip was one of the cogs in the auburn media machine intent to destroy Bama. Indifferent to his passing.

What the hell ? I was simply asking a question about Scabs trolling Bama fans. Nothing about politics. I’m not going down that rabbit hole.

You’re right and I deleted the post and offer my apologies. I went down a rabbit hole trying to reinforce my contention that Scarbinsky favors the Barn just to be contrary more than any love for them.

That’s a very dumb business model to attach yourself to. Bama fans far outnumber Auburn fans in the state. Especially in north Alabama. Being objective, like a real journalist like Cecil Hurt, would have been better. But what do I know.

I was a sports writer for 20 years of a 49-year career in journalism in this state so I was around all these guys.

I remember all the stuff he wrote in the Bartow days trying to shame people into following UAB basketball.

Bartow was a good guy, I had lunch with him once.

Years ago the place I worked … which I would prefer to keep anonymous … paid to do an actual survey and Alabama fans were a huge majority. At the time … and this was during Dye’s heyday down there … there were more Braves fans than Barn fans.