BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Just when you thought ESPN couldn't get any more tone deaf, after backing Little League father of the year Craig James over respected professional Bruce Feldman, now comes this inexplicable decision.

Urban Meyer will be in the ABC booth Saturday working the Auburn-Clemson game.

Are they kidding?

Of all the booths in all the stadiums in all the world, Meyer's going to walk into Death Valley's with Auburn in the house?

Did they ask Nick Saban to skip the North Texas game to join the fun?

Let's get this

out of the way up front. Meyer has no business working an Auburn game, there, here or anywhere.

The appearance of a conflict of interest is thicker than Joe Paterno's glasses. Try as he might, the former Florida coach can't escape his history with the Auburn program, and that history isn't exactly defined by mutual respect.

In the spring of 2009, after Auburn hit the road in its Tiger Prowl recruiting limos, Meyer told the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun that the NCAA should investigate. He also took a few shots at Auburn's tires.

"We're trying to sell graduation rates and academics and trying the sing and dance routine," he said. "The Florida coaching staff will not be riding around in limos or ripping off our shirts."

That shirt reference was a shot at Lane Kiffin and his Tennessee staff, but still. Even two years later, Meyer trying to drag his program onto the high ground, despite its arrest record, remains a shining example of hypocrisy.

He didn't stop there. In December of 2010, Meyer was the only SEC coach with a vote that didn't put Auburn No. 1 on his final regular-season ballot in the USA Today poll. He put Oregon first and Auburn second.

But those slights pale next to the role Meyer may have played as a wizard behind the curtain of the Cecil Newton-Kenny Rogers story last fall.

According to multiple news reports, before that story broke, Meyer had vowed on a three-way call with his protege, Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen, and former Mississippi State quarterback John Bond to tell it to The New York Times and ESPN.

Who broke the story of Newton and Rogers asking for money from Mississippi State boosters, Bond included, to send Cam Newton to State? The Times and ESPN.

That story, as the NCAA later confirmed, was right. You can argue that Meyer did the right thing in trying to get the story out, in blowing the whistle on shady recruiting, despite Mullen's reported preference to let that sleeping dog lie since the proper authorities had been notified.

Kevin Scarbinsky is a columnist for The Birmingham News. His column is published on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

There's no argument that, if Meyer played Deep Throat, he put Cam Newton's Heisman season and Auburn's BCS championship run in jeopardy, even though there was no solid evidence then - and none has been presented since - that Auburn broke NCAA rules to sign Newton.

Hence, bad blood.

Gene Chizik might never admit it in public, but he hinted last November that Meyer might be a wizard behind the curtain. During a passionate defense of his quarterback in the middle of the storm, the Auburn coach said this:

"If you really want to do your homework, go and start with his Little League coach, then go to his junior high coach, then go to his high school coach, then go to his junior college coach and then come talk to any coach at Auburn."

Who was missing from Chizik's suggested list of character references for Newton? His Florida coaches, Meyer and Mullen.

A lot of Auburn fans didn't like it when ESPN sent Meyer and Saban, who could hardly be considered neutral observers, to serve as pregame and halftime analysts for the BCS Championship Game in January, but at least the network had legitimate reasons.

They were the two previous national championship coaches, and besides, Saban had just coached against Auburn, and Meyer had once coached Newton.

There's no similar justification for ESPN/ABC to send Meyer to Clemson, not for cameos but for a game-long stint in the booth, and there are more than enough reasons to believe that he isn't neutral in his feelings toward Auburn.

What is ESPN thinking? I asked, and the network provided this statement: "We regularly assign analysts to games involving conferences and teams they have coached for and against and do not avoid assignments based on a competitive rivalry that existed when they were coaching. We expect our personnel to do their jobs as professionals. Like all of our analysts, Urban will work games involving teams from multiple conferences."

Sorry, but this goes beyond "a competitive rivalry that existed" while Meyer was coaching. This is wrong person, wrong place, wrong time.

ESPN should change assignments for this weekend, and Meyer, at the first opportunity, should change careers. He should go back to coaching. That way, he can try to do something he's never done. Beat Auburn on the field.

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