Auburn

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl announced his retirement Monday less than six months after finishing the Tigers' best season in program history with another trip to the Final Four. Pearl's 38-year-old son Steven Pearl, who has been on his father's coaching staff for all 11 seasons at Auburn, will take over as coach. And, about a run for the U.S. Senate?

College football in Alabama is celebrated in the context of two major powerhouse programs. That’s Crimson Tide and the Auburn Tigers. With incredible success over more than a century of competition each, it’s a no-brainer. But hundreds of collegiate athletes take the field for dozens of other programs within the state’s borders, often never getting the chance to put their skill and passion up against some of the very best from Tuscaloosa or the Plains. Here’s another highly anticipated game this weekend.

Auburn is claiming four additional football national titles and will call itself a nine-time champion moving forward. The Tigers, for decades, boasted titles in 1957 and 2010. They also claimed the 1913, 1983 and 1993 seasons as meeting national championship qualifications. Now, though, athletic director John Cohen is adding titles from 1910, 1914, 1958 and 2004 to the program’s resume. It’s laudable by some and laughable by others.

It was sixty years ago this month when NASA astronaut Ed White opened the hatch on his two-man Gemini space capsule and floated outside on the first “spacewalk” which lasted about twenty-three minutes. The U.S. record for the longest spacewalk is jointly held by retired Astronaut Jim Voss, of Opelika. He floated outside ISS for close to nine hours. Voss will be my guest on an upcoming edition of "APR Notebook."

Over 6,000 students graduated from the University of Alabama in May. They’re among the 10,000 diplomas typically awarded in Tuscaloosa each year. Another ceremony recently took place to help ensure that a certain group of students make it all the way to graduation

A recent report from Livability has placed Auburn among the top 100 places to live. The report highlights the city's school system, safety and welcoming atmosphere as reasons for the ranking.

The Auburn Public Library is hosting a postcard design competition to promote this year's Summer Learning Challenge. The theme for the challenge this year is "Color Our World" and the library is calling all artists to show how they would color the world through their postcard designs. The contest ends on May 13.

Alabama and Auburn now have something in common. Neither team will be going for the college men’s basketball championship. The Tigers lost to Florida during the Final Four seventy to seventy three and Houston stunned Duke seventy to sixty seven. Alabama lost to the Blue Devils during the Elite Eight round

The Tiger’s season began with some real turbulence on its first trip. While it is unclear exactly what happened in the air on November eighth, other than there was some kind of in-flight disturbance between players, the plane carrying the Tigers returned home and left two players there.

Auburn, Houston, Duke, and Florida are gearing up for the Final Four in college men’s basketball’s March Madness this weekend. Alabama is out after falling to Duke during the round of the championship known as the Elite Eight. The Crimson Tide is still in the running for a consolation prize in the form of the John R. Wooden Award for outstanding player