Dynasty

The Auburn Men's Swimming Team won its eighth national championship in the past thirteen seasons last weekend. Please note, that's "won," not "claimed." Predictably, and shamefully, the media in Alabama scarcely noticed.



No such disregard here. The team that David Marsh built and Richard Quick has carried on is easily the most successful in state history, and one of the most remarkable dynasties in the history of college sports. Competitive swimming draws from a tiny and ever-diminishing pool of talent (no pun intended), and the ability of Marsh and Quick to recruit and coach to this level of dominance for over a decade is flat-out astonishing.

It's even more surprising when you compare the resources at Auburn compared to AU's competitors in the sport, notably Stanford and Texas, the latter of which is probably the richest state school in the nation. Texas spends in excess of $100 million a year on athletics. Stanford isn't exactly poor, either, with an annual athletic budget in the $75 million range.

And little old Auburn, with a sub-$50 million budget and an athletic department that treats the swim team like a redheaded stepchild, just keeps on knocking them out, year after year. Maybe best of all, they do so in an arena where no sportswriter gets a vote, and where the only contribution of computers is in tallying the points.

That's what a real championship looks like, and Auburn has got them in spades.

He's Back

Tony Barnhart, having taken a buyout last year to become a free agent, is still blogging for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's website. Barnhart came back from his winter hiatus this week, check the blog at its new address (or just click here).

Like They Say At Instapundit...

"Heh":

Comedy writer Jerry Perisho, after the University of Alabama football team admitted to NCAA violations involving players and textbooks: "This marks the first time Alabama football players have ever been linked in any way to college textbooks.''

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

File this one in the, "Things Better Left Behind In The 80's" department, but some idiot is actually trying to revive the USFL.

I went to one Birmingham Stallions game. It was against the Jersey team that had Doug Flutie and Herschel Walker on the roster. It remains the single most boring football game I've ever attended--and that includes A-Day games.

Preliminary Letter Of Inquiry at Alabama

The mid-2007 "Textbookgate" story at Alabama has been considered old news since five UAT players were suspended for the second half of that season and eventually reinstated just in time for that year's Auburn game. The story broke open again around 11AM today, when Cecil Hurt of the Tuscaloosa News reported online,

Representatives of the University of Alabama met with the NCAA Committee on Infractions last month to address allegations concerning the textbook violations which sidelined five football players in the 2007 season, The News has learned.

The meeting took place in San Diego on February 20, 2009. The two specific NCAA allegations, which were sent in a letter to UA President Dr. Robert Witt, last May, state that an unspecified number of UA student-athletes obtained impermissible textbooks and supplies beginning in “at least the 2005-06 academic year and continuing through the fall of 2007.” Furthermore, the letter alleges that “the scope and nature of the allegations” demonstrate a "failure to monitor the student-athlete textbook distribution system."

Along with Hurt's story, a sidebar has been posted containing pertinent documents, most notably including this Preliminary Letter Of Inquiry (labeled as a "Notice of allegations"; per ESPN, the two names are interchangable in NCAA parlance). The existence of this letter, dated May 8, 2008, has been successfully kept under wraps by UAT until today.

Among other things, the mildly-redacted PLOI charges UAT with Failure To Monitor (page 6), which is basically the second most serious charge in the NCAA rulebook, behind the dreaded Failure Of Institutional Control.

Contrary to everything you've read in the media to date, the NCAA considers this is a major violations case (page 4). According to the letter, UAT has requested and been denied summary disposition (top of page 3).

In short, this story is much more serious than the UAT administration, athletic department, and the media in Alabama have ever let on.

UPDATE: Here's something I missed when first reading over the NCAA letter. From page 6, detailing the first of two allegations, in this case a potential violation of Bylaw 16.11.2.1:

It is alleged that beginning at least in the 2005-06 academic year and continuing through the fall of 2007, the institution's textbook distribution system allowed [section redacted] different student athletes to obtain impermissible textbooks and supplies, with a total value of [redacted].

This is possibly the most significant section of the entire PLOI, since it places the violations within the five-year Repeat Offender window. Alabama's last bout of NCAA probation began on February 1, 2002, and lasted through February 1 of 2007. Any violations during calendar 2006 would fall within the repeat offender window. This would make Alabama a three-time repeat offender, as the Albert Means probation was itself a repeat-offender case.

Valentine's Day

The middle of February is not exactly a busy time for college football news, but based on my email traffic, I guess I should post a couple of things.

First, if it weren't already pretty obvious, FTB tends to be dormant during the off-season. Believe it or not, I do try to not write here (or elsewhere) if I don't actually have anything to say, and since recruiting just doesn't interest me (having gone to the same high school as Alan Evans and Charlie Dare--two of the biggest flops in recruiting history--pretty much cured me of that malady), I really don't have a whole lot pertinent to note about Auburn or SEC football in general right now. I do plan to go to A-Day in April, and assuming it rises above the standard bore-fest, I'll probably post something about it--but no promises.

Second, a lot of people are apparently curious as to whether I'm still as down on Gene Chizik as I was the day he was hired. The short answer is, ask me again in October, because it won't be until then that anybody has anything approximating a good idea about how the Chizik regime is going to work out.

The longer answer is, we'll see. I am encouraged by the new coaching staff. I like pretty much everybody Chizik has hired, and more importantly, people who know a lot more about X's and O's than I do are very impressed by these assistants. Given the likelihood that with a merely mediocre offense, Auburn would have won at least eight games and played on New Year's Day last year, and the near certainty that the incoming offensive staff is light-years more competent than the one most recently departed, there are reasons for optimism.

As I just noted, I'm about as far from a "recruitnik" as you can get, but I do think Chizik and his staff did as well as could reasonably be expected this year, given that they only had six weeks on the job. Once again, people with more knowledge (and frankly, interest) in the subject than I possess like what they've seen, and that's likely a good thing.

All that understood, the jury is obviously still out until Chizik has several games under his belt as Auburn's head coach. I'm not going to go all sunshine-pumpery here and declare that I was nuts to think hiring a guy with a 10-game losing streak was a bad idea. To be perfectly honest, the reports out of Iowa regarding chaos on the sidelines and poor game planning still scare me to death. As an alumnus and life-long fan, I'm quite happy to be supportive of the team , but the coaches have to earn it, especially a coach who comes in with a less-than-stellar (let's be honest here--really awful) track record.

So, like I said, ask me again in October.

YAW YAW YAW YAW YAW YAW YAW YAW--CORNDOGS!

He's baaaaack! From the Lafayette, LA Advertiser:

New Orleans Saints defensive line coach Ed Orgeron is expected to join LSU's staff as its highest paid assistant coach with the title of associate head coach along with recruiting coordinator and defensive line coach.

Lester and the Ogre on the same staff? Break out the popcorn.

UPDATE: Or not. Via Bruce Feldman:

Ed Orgeron is headed to Tennessee.

The former Ole Miss head coach, who spent the 2008 season as the New Orleans Saints defensive line coach, confirmed via text message this afternoon that he has accepted an offer to be the Volunteers recruiting coordinator, defensive line coach and will have the title of associate head coach.

Suffice to say, this is a very disappointing turn of events. Ogre at LSU would have been a lot funnier.

Please Disregard the Prior Post

All that stuff about "don't panic" and "they sky is not falling" and "Auburn will hire a good coach?" Never mind all that. Dogs and cats are, in fact, living together in the luxury suites of Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Via Rivals.com:

Iowa State's Gene Chizik will be the next Auburn coach, Rivals.com has learned. Chizik has been the coach of the Cyclones the last two years, compiling a 5-19 record. Iowa State finished 2-10 (0-8 in the Big 12) in 2008.

News that this might happen broke this morning, but I could not bring myself to take it seriously. Gene Chizik is almost certainly the worst candidate interviewed during this utter farce of a coaching search. He is a poor recruiter who has completely failed to date as a head coach. Chizik's own friends in the coaching community openly scoff at the idea of him being a head coach for a major program.

For Auburn's program, he will be the equivalent of Mike DuBose, although hopefully without the cheating.

This is a terrible hire, and a monstrously bad decision on the part of an Athletic Director who shouldn't be put in charge of managing a janitorial staff of two, much less a multi-million dollar athletics program.

I don't say this lightly, but, Fire Jay Jacobs. And while you're at it, fire his buddy Tim Jackson, who inexplicably was invited along for the interviews, despite the fact that Jackson is Auburn's... ticket manager. That makes as much sense as asking a halfwit greenskeeper to sit in on interviews for a corporate CEO.

The Pill Of Chillness

Coaching changes are by definition turbulent times, but this is just way over the top:

Today, Auburn finds itself in its deepest abyss in school history.

As Gretzky said to Bo, "No."

As little fun as the last three months have been, matters on the Plains are not even remotely as bad as during 1977-80, or 1991-92, or in the even-worse-than-this-year debacle of 1998. The NCAA is not on campus (well, not on our campus). Auburn has won significant football games within the last 13 months. The conditioning program has not collapsed. The Auburn City Jail is not having to rent out apartments on Magnolia Avenue to get a place to put all the arrested football players.

Things. Have Been. Much. Worse.

It's been a week since Tuberville resigned/was fired/what the hell, left. A week is not an indication of biblical disaster. Dogs and cats are not living together in the luxury suites of Jordan-Hare. Everybody obviously wants to see some resolution to the coaching search as soon as possible, but people, we are not on a deadline. There's no bowl to practice for, and no reason to panic just because there hasn't been a press conference on the schedule that you (and I) would have preferred.

This is a crazy situation, but if the 1990's taught Auburn fans anything, it should have been not to get emotionally attached to football coaches. Fact of life, they will come and they will go. If it makes you feel any better (and it should), they actually tend to stay longer at Auburn than in most other stops in this conference.

Now, is Jay Jacobs my idea of the perfect athletic director? Not in the least. Am I thrilled with the way things have gone over the last week-to-a-year? Hell, no. But get a grip, people. The sky is not falling. It's a job search. It's not Armageddon. Take the pill of chillness, and leave the blind coach-idolatry to others. Auburn will have another head coach before long, and if history is any guide, he'll probably be a good one.

If I may close by quoting from Say Anything, "Chill! You must chill!"

Morning Update

Obviously, yesterday's rumor about an afternoon press conference did not pan out, and the AU coaching search is apparently still going on. As Jerry noted, it would have been logistically unlikely for anything to happen yesterday anyway, as Jay Jacobs was still in New York City until late in the day. It'd be pretty hard to imagine Auburn announcing a new head coach from a ballroom in Manhattan.

Then again, as improbable ideas go, even the Emperor Highly Unlikely would have had a hard time wrapping his brain around today's wild rumor, namely that Steve Spurrier is in the mix for the Auburn job. My initial take is that Visor Boy on the Plains is kind of fun to talk about, but I really seriously doubt it would happen. Spurrier is in his sixties, doesn't like to recruit, and frankly has looked beaten down over the past three or four years. When he does step down in Columbia, I think it's going to be to play golf, not to take another coaching job.

Rumor Du Jour

The interwebs are burning up with rumors of an impending announcement at Auburn, reportedly as soon as this afternoon. File it under "I read it on the internet--so it must be true" for the time being, but things might just be taking a Turner--uh, I mean, turn for the better.

On The Search

Here's a quick rundown on where I think we stand with Auburn's coaching search at this particular moment. Things can (and probably will) change without notice:

The current frontrunner for the job is Buffalo's Turner Gill. Gill vaulted up to favorite status after leading the formerly hapless Bulls to an improbable MAC championship in just his third year on the job. I think I'm safe in saying that Gill is the Auburn fan favorite right now. His ascension was strongly aided by Will Muschamp's apparent decision to rely on Texas's promise that he will succeed Mack Brown in Austin--even while reports continue to circulate indicating the defensive wunderkind is still in contention at Auburn.

I would be happy with either Gill or Muschamp. The upsides are obvious; they're both widely respected among their peers, both are energetic and inspiring leaders, both are strong on their respective X's and/or O's, and both are obviously going to be major-program head coaches in the near future. The added plus for Muschamp is his life-long background in SEC football and prior stints at Auburn. In Gill's case you'd have a nationally-known figure who in addition to bringing in a wave of good PR, would arrive without the baggage of one James Sexton, Esq.

On the down side, Muschamp would return to the Plains with Sexton in tow, and given Muschamp's recent employment history, Auburn could look forward to further rounds of "will he bolt?" stories engineered by the uber-agent on a very regular basis. Given the way Muschamp did bolt from Auburn just under a year ago, there's also the question of whether Muschamp could work under current athletic director Jay Jacobs--but that's a problem easily solvable by just hiring a different AD. Jacobs is hardly indispensable. The 37-year-old Muschamp has also never been a head coach, and would bring the additional annoyance of being younger than me.

In Gill's case, the big question is whether one really good year at Buffalo is proof of head coaching genius, or just of a guy who had the ball bounce his way at the right times. The SEC quite obviously isn't the MAC, and Gill would be under pressure to produce at Auburn right now, not a few years down the line. Gill has few if any recruiting contacts in the Southeast, and nobody knows what kind of staff he would bring in as a head coach. Buffalo's defensive team was pretty awful, and questions are already being raised about whether Gill would retain his current defensive coordinator (Jimmy Williams) or bring in a "top gun" to take over the job Paul Rhoades is most likely vacating.

Regarding other names in the news recently, Rodney Garner and Patrick Nix are not serious candidates. They're getting interviews out of courtesy for their status as AU alums in the job market, and to help their future careers. Neither will be the next head coach at Auburn. As noted below, while it's possible that somebody at AU actually was stupid enough to consider Houston Nutt as a candidate, Nutt is not going to get the job, either; the flurry of Nutt-ism late last week was another example of Sexton's patented media manipulation to squeeze more money out of this clients' employers--and yet another reason not to hire another of Sexton's clients.

I don't think Ball State's Brady Hoke is a serious candidate, either, even given ESPN's apparent determination to push Hoke's name into the ring. While I agree with Jerry that Cincinnati's Brian Kelly would be a strong candidate and probably a good hire, I've seen no evidence to date that he's either being considered for or considering the job. One suspects he's holding out for the well-nigh inevitable departure of one Charlie The Hutt from Notre Dame instead.

This leaves us with but two remaining names, those of Florida State's Jimbo Fisher and Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson. Yesterday, Phillip Marshall asked (quite reasonably) what would be wrong with a coach who's already been named as heir-apparent head coach for FSU, an undeniably big-time program. Fisher is obviously well-respected as a coach; Alabama's trustee overlord Cub Bryant was sufficiently concerned about Fisher getting the head job at UAB a couple of years back to torpedo what was considered a done deal. As I've noted in the past, Fisher is a terrific quarterback coach; anybody who could take Stan White and Patrick Nix and win nearly 30 games in three years clearly knows what he's doing.

But despite a series of non-denial denials and being the favorite of at least one Auburn trustee (one who favors a certain primary color that is not red or blue), I suspect Fisher probably isn't going to get the job. For one thing, he'd cost a fortune to get, over $5 million to buy out his FSU contract by some reports. For another, he's also a Sexton client (meaning Auburn would go through Sexton's goat-rope again when Bobby Bowden finally shambles off the field), and finally (and perhaps unfairly), because he has that Bowden stink on him. A decade after Terry Bowden's ignominious departure, much of Auburn wants nothing to do with either Bobby's brood or their disciples, and even given Fisher's obvious fondness for AU, I think that's one strike too many against him.

That leaves us with Johnson, who is apparently (and unsurprisingly) the favorite of former coach Pat Dye. There's a lot to like about Johnson. Like Gill, he's been able to win in places where normally nobody can win. His tenure at Navy and first year at Tech were inspiring to watch, and anybody who could take a bunch of players recruited by Chan Gailey for an entirely different offense and score 45 on Georgia in his first time out can damn well coach.

Thing is, as much fun as Johnson's offense is to watch (especially for those of us who grew up on option football), the general suspicion is that no matter how good you are at running a triple option attack, you're never going to break through with it in the SEC. There's a reason why nobody outside of talent-starved Vanderbilt has even tried a traditional option offense since the mid-80's. As good and accomplished as he is, a Johnson hire would be widely seen as a step back to the past for Auburn, and it's very hard for me to see how Johnson's offense would attract any more playmakers than AU has right now (which is to say, very few). And even given all that, there's no indication that Johnson would actually bolt from Atlanta after just one year.

Let Me Be Completely Clear Here

Word has broken out that Houston Nutt is a possible candidate for the Auburn head coaching job. Whether this is a "real" story or just another case of Jimmy Sexton playing the media, I'm not sure, but I am completely sure of this:

Hiring Houston Nutt would be the biggest mistake in the history of Auburn University football. Bigger than Doug Barfield. Bigger than Eric Ramsey.

Houston Nutt is an undisciplined clown who recruits and makes excuses for undisciplined players. He coaches dirty football, and he was thrown out of his own alma mater for being a pardon-the-pun nutcase. He has no business being within several hundred miles of Auburn University, and that includes when he's working for another team that's playing AU. The idiot should have to coach by cell phone on those days.

I didn't think I would ever say anything like this, but I will have nothing to do with any football program that would hire Houston Nutt. Nothing whatsoever.

Anybody who is even thinking about this kind of hire should be given his walking papers just on general principles.

UPDATE: While I'm told there actually was somebody at Auburn dumb enough to express 'serious interest' in Nutt, this one appears to be yet another case of Sexton, the SEC's evil genius, playing outclassed AD's and university presidents like his own personal church organ--again. Nutt has agreed to a raise and will stay at Ole Miss.

Time Loves A Hero

Almost exactly five years ago, I got a call from Tim Stephens at the Orlando Sentinel, who was working on a story about the Auburn-Alabama rivalry. I'd done a few op-eds for Tim when he was the sports editor for the now-defunct Birmingham Post-Herald, and we chatted for a while about the then-news of the day. Tim asked at one point whether Scott Brown and I were planning to write a sequel to "The Uncivil War" that would cover the years after 1994. I told him I thought we probably would, and that I had the title already picked out, "Time Loves A Hero," which was lifted directly from the chorus of an old Little Feat song:

Well they say, time loves a hero
But only time will tell
If he's real, he's a legend from heaven
If he ain't he was sent here from hell

I doubt now that Scott and I will be doing another Auburn-Alabama book anytime soon, but I still like the title, and I'm as convinced as ever that those lines might as well have been specifically written about how football fans think, or more accurately, feel about their team's coaches.

As the prior post here at FTB indicates, I was pretty well convinced that Tommy Tuberville would remain at Auburn for the 2009 season as late as mid-day on Monday. After that, things started to change. Rumblings within and without the athletic department indicated that something more than a standard offseason staff shakeup was underway. By the time the story broke early Wednesday evening, Tuberville's departure was considerably less surprising than it would have been just a few days earlier.

The pressures that led to Tuberville's departure have been accumulating for a long time, probably since at least 2001, when he was forced to fire old friend and then-defensive coordinator John Lovett after a disastrous November slump. Tuberville has been working at odds with many of the big money guys at Auburn ever since that season, and it very nearly cost him his own job in the now-famous "jetgate" saga of 2003. Tuberville slipped through that crisis, but the hard feelings on both sides continued to fester. Every time something went wrong, the old bitterness welled up again, and I think those recurrences were destined to go for as long as Tuberville occupied the big office overlooking the practice fields. Sooner or later, something was going to give, and "later" turned out to be December 3, 2008.

Tuberville himself bears some of the blame for the ill will that's been building over the past ten years. Tuberville milked his near-martyrdom in 2003 for too long and too smugly, and instead of mending fences with people who, right or wrong, were not going to go away, he elected to rub their faces in it at every opportunity. He also didn't help himself any by allowing his agent, Jimmy Sexton, to float his name for nearly every coaching job that popped up over the intervening seasons.

The "duck hunting" incident in early 2008 cost Tuberville a huge amount of goodwill among Auburn folks both high and low, and by the time the '08 season went in the tank at Vanderbilt Stadium, much of the political capital collected during the 2004-2007 run had already evaporated. It was at that point when I started to hear talk about a mutual "amicable separation," although that talk pretty well died down by the open date before the Alabama game. The feeling was that given the size of Tuberville's buyout clause (which itself was all the proof you need that any college president or athletic director is just not in the same league as Sexton when it comes to contract negotiations) and his overall record, he'd get at least one year to try and turn things around.

On Monday morning, it was clear that Tuberville was expected to fire at least a couple of long-time assistants (Greg Knox and Hugh Nall being the most likely candidates), hire a top-notch offensive coordinator, and get started on rebuilding. There was considerable suspicion at that time that at least some of the "powers that be" had not only given Tuberville an ultimatum on a staff shakeup, but also had informed him that thanks to the ongoing contract payoffs to Al Borges and Tony Franklin, he would not be given carte blache with Auburn's checkbook when it came to new hires. Some were already calling this a recipe for "slow death" in 2009, and comparing the situation to Alabama's early-1990 poison-pill contract offer to Bill Curry.

The other view (although the two are likely not mutually exclusive) is that Tuberville simply decided by Wednesday that he really didn't have the heart to fire his old friends and start over again. If accurate, that's a position it's hard not to sympathize with. Ten years is a very long time in today's SEC, and even Tuberville's most severe critics can't deny that he's had a fine run. Tuberville has enough money to never work again if that's what he wants, and I don't think he's got anything to prove to anybody at this point in his life.

Auburn will also move on, and to be honest, it's probably better for everybody at this point to make a clean break and start anew. As in the past, and in the years to come, time will provide another hero, and if he's real...

Season In The Abyss

There were no surprises in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. The outcome had been telegraphed for at least a couple of months; only the "how" was really in doubt. As more than one observer noted, the question wasn't whether Auburn would self-destruct, but in what ways. As it turned out, the answer was three unforced turnovers, two dropped interceptions on defense, an offense accurately described as "inept" by Stan White (if you saw White play in 1991-92, you're aware he knows from inept), and a defense that couldn't keep it together for 60 minutes with no help from their teammates.

Add all that in with an opponent in Alabama that's hitting on all cylinders, and what you will get every time is a blowout. For Auburn, the only real question is, "Now what?"

While Tommy Tuberville is correct in the macro sense that this season of disaster is his fault, and I suppose it's honorable that he's at least verbally trying to accept a hundred percent of the blame, 2008 has been an object lesson that in football as in politics, personnel is policy. It's manifestly obvious that Auburn's personnel on the offensive staff are not competent to coach football in the SEC. Tuberville loves to call himself a "CEO coach." Very well; it's high time he started acting like GE's Jack Welch in regard to the low performers on his staff.

Hugh Nall, while a capable position coach when being led by a competent coordinator, inexplicably believes himself to be an offensive genius who ought to be running things. Nall reportedly sowed dissent against both Al Borges and Tony Franklin among his fellow assistants and even Auburn's players. No matter what anybody thinks of either coordinator (although it should be noted that both have far better track records than Nall when it comes to running an offense), those are unforgivable sins. Even if Nall weren't a staff troublemaker, Auburn's line play virtually disintegrated this season; the O-line could neither pass protect nor open holes for the running game, and was still jumping offsides in the twelfth game.

Nall is a cancer on the program that must be removed; indeed, his removal is five years overdue.

As painfully demonstrated once again on Saturday, Auburn does not have a single dependable wide receiver. They can't get open, and they can't catch. Other than that, they're just fine, I suppose--except that they can't block any more, either. The utter lack of a passing game doomed AU's offense Saturday and indeed for the season; even if the offensive line were playing well (and they weren't), with no passing threat, all you had to do to stop Auburn was put lots of guys up front. NFL scouts and coaches regularly observe that Auburn receivers have to be completely re-coached once they reach the pros, and that's on the head of long-time assistant coach Greg Knox. Time for him to go, and to be replaced with somebody who can actually do the job.

There's no mystery as to why Kodi Burns has not developed much as a quarterback--he hasn't been coached. Burns was virtually ignored by both Borges and Franklin, and then left to the tender mercies of Steve Ensminger, a coach so monumentally incompetent that he managed to turn the best AU signal caller of the last 30 years into a near basket-case in 2003. The less said about Ensminger's play calling, the better; the very best thing about this horrible season's horrible end is that it should be the last time anyone ever sees a college game "called" by this guy.

Ensminger is, by far, the worst coach on the staff, and likely the worst assistant in the entire SEC. He needs to go back to teaching driver's ed in a high school, preferably one far, far away from Auburn University. Unfortunately for the Auburn program, unlike the assistants who accompanied Tuberville from Ole Miss, Ensminger is not yet vested in the Alabama teachers' retirement fund, and for that fact alone, he is apparently expected to be retained. Suffice to say, this is not a valid reason.

Carrying around Ensminger's dead weight for the last five years has even affected Auburn defensively. As an alleged "tight ends coach," Ensminger takes up an assistant slot that would normally be dedicated to either the defensive secondary or special teams, two places where Auburn badly needs the extra help. With Underperforming Steve still around, AU's defensive coordinator has to pull double duty as a position coach for the secondary, and that situation is made worse since Tuberville apparently can't be bothered himself to coach special teams, a la Frank Beamer or Mack Brown. That effectively leaves two slots unfilled, and is deeply unfair to the team, the program, and to the competent assistants on either side of the ball.

As things stand today, Tuberville is most likely going to survive for another year. If he still wants to be around in 2010, when the buyout in that ill-advised "lifetime contract" will be a few million dollars lower, he's going to have to make major changes, and that starts with the right hire at offensive coordinator. It's also time to end any excuse-making out of Auburn. We heard a lot of opining this season about how Auburn couldn't run a "spread" offense with players recruited for a West Coast set, but as Paul Johnson ably demonstrated this year at Georgia Tech, it's entirely possible to be successful in a completely different offense if the right coaching is there.

Tuberville said Sunday that he now plans to allow the new OC to choose his own staff, and that at least is a start, but Tuberville himself has got to get out of the office and get to work, and that starts with taking a dispassionate look at his program's shortcomings. He got lucky this year, when a high buyout matched up with Colonial Bank shares that aren't even worth the price of a Jordan-Hare hot dog, but that won't save him again if the 2009 season is anything like the shambling debacle of 2008.

Down But Not Out

As we're all re-learning when our 401(k) statements arrive lately, you have to hit bottom before you can start going back up. Auburn lost again Saturday, but for the first time in about eight weeks, the Tigers were able to walk away with something like confidence, and at least a glimmer of hope in the aftermath.

Georgia '08 was a hard loss to take, but I was still very proud of the team Saturday. Auburn played its best game since taking LSU to the wire in September, played hard for the duration, and finally played well on both sides of the ball. The defense broke out of its month-long funk and did a fine job, holding a very talented Georgia offense to 17 points and only 351 yards. Given the defensive eggs the Tigers laid in their last two games against the same team, that's a significant improvement.

It sure didn't look like AU was going to have a good defensive game early. Auburn wasn't able to stop much of anything on Georgia's opening drive, but aided by Tez Doolittle's block of a chip-shot field goal, the "D" was able to adjust and get a handle on things after a bad first quarter. After romping for more than 140 yards in the initial 15 minutes, the Bulldogs would average less than half as much per period for the rest of the game.

Kodi Burns has continued to improve. He had his best game so far as a Tiger, finally putting together a balanced attack on the ground and in the air. All those incompletions in the fourth quarter hurt his stats, but Burns deserves credit on most of those passes for recognizing that the receiver was carrying another guy on his back, and an incompletion is better than an interception. Burns threw for 180 yards and never put the ball where that other guy could catch it, and after the Ole Miss game, that's a step forward.

It's been a very long time since Auburn could drive 90 yards in the second half against, hell, anybody, but Burns put together just such a drive at the end of the third and start of the fourth quarters. Mario Fannin also had a breakout game, even while making legions of Auburn fans reach for their long-since torn-out hair and scream, "Why hasn't he been getting the ball all year?"

Obviously, that's not to say that everything went well. As one message board wag noted last week, if Auburn were James Bond, this year's movie would be titled "You Only Score Twice." Georgia does not have a great defensive team, but the Tigers still couldn't get it done in the red zone.

Part of that was thanks to play calling. As usual, Steve Ensminger was terrible in critical situations. Why anybody would call all those fades to the end zone when you demonstrably don't have receivers who can get enough separation to run a fade is way beyond me. Yes, UGA's defenders were doing a good impression of your average mugger, and the officiating crew are apparently expecting to get a bonus check depending on the quality of Georgia's bowl bid, but neither of those things excuse calling the same dumb play over and over again. For example, I thought going for it on fourth down during AU's penultimate possession was the right decision, but the play call on that fourth down (you guessed it, a fade to a covered-up Montez Billings) was execrable.

So, better, but still another loss. This team has one last shot at redemption coming up, and while you'd have to be a truly committed pumper of sunshine to predict a win in two weeks, their performance Georgia game does give reason for optimism.

Homecoming

There shouldn't be much to say about a Homecoming game against a 1-AA opponent, other than, "Nice day, the kids had a lot of fun." In what Jerry's calling The Season of DEATH, things aren't so straightforward.

The game started out literally as well as it possibly could for Auburn when Tristan Davis took the opening kickoff 95 yards for an easy 7-0 lead. Since nothing is supposed to be easy for the Tigers this year, Robert Dunn made what might be the worst mistake I've ever seen from a senior player when UT-Martin punted on their first possession, fumbling in the end zone to give the Skyhawks a just-as-easy tying score. And just like that, what should have been a walk turned into a battle, at least for three quarters.

A friend of mine sent a message after UTM's first offensive touchdown, which thanks only to a muffed PAT pulled the game to within a point at 14-13: "How did we let them score?!?" There are two answers. The first is that Auburn had no answer for basically one play, namely a very simple pitch-and-catch from quarterback Cade Thompson to receiver Mike Hicks. Number 19 was camped out and wide open over on the short-side flat for what felt like a hundred snaps. Thompson, who was only sacked once, had pleny of time to throw, and Hicks must have thought he was playing pre-game drills without a defense most of the time. Not being stupid, UTM's play callers kept calling a play that worked fine, and AU rarely did anything about it.

The other answer was, Auburn was playing with absolutely no intensity on defense. Sure, lots of guys were hurt, and there's no doubt not having Sen'derrick Marks and Antonio Coleman up front is going to affect your pass rush against anybody, but it was obvious from the stands that there was a whole lot of going through the motions on the field and precious little aggression or hustle. A team that didn't win a game in October had no business taking any opponent lightly, but that's what Auburn did on Saturday.

On offense, while Auburn obviously had a decent day as far as the numbers are concerned, nobody should be overly-fooled by the outcome. Even playing against an entirely outmanned 1-AA opponent with speed issues (the opening kickoff was all the proof you need of that), Auburn couldn't get receivers free and couldn't get any resemblance of blocking until UTM got tired in the second half. Sure, Kodi Burns did some great running in the game. He was making some fantastic, shifty moves--but then again, he had to. He wasn't getting any help to speak of from his offensive line, and as usual, Steve Ensminger's play calling was as predictable (and as appealing) as vomit at the Supper Club.

But it was a win, and that's more than we could say since, oh, the end of September.

If my mailbox and conversations at the game are any indication, a lot of people seem to think I have the "inside" story on what's going to happen to Tommy Tuberville's job status at the end of the year. Sorry to disappoint anybody out there, but I'm not in possession of any such knowledge. I will say this: when UTM pulled even in the third quarter, people briefly stopped asking "if" Tommy Tuberville would be fired, but rather "when." A lot of that dissipated as the Tigers pulled away to win, but I think it's very safe to say that if UTM's defensive line hadn't run out of gas in the fourth quarter, Auburn could well have been holding a press conference sometime today, and not to announce when season tickets for the '09 baseball team will be available.

As to what's actually going to happen, the rumor mill has churned out two basic themes. Tuberville will either be retained for another year and "clean house" on his offensive staff, or he and Auburn will (and depending on whom you believe, an agreement has already been reached) amicably separate, said separation to include a very sizable check to complete AU's contractual obligations. I have no idea which of these stories might be correct, or frankly if either of them has any grounding in reality, but since everybody has asked, that's what I've heard. Take it for what it's worth, or to put it another way, that and ten bucks will get you 50% ownership in Circuit City this morning.

As noted here previously, I think Tuberville has earned the chance to fix this mess, but honestly, the more this fiasco plays out, the more I wonder if everybody involved wouldn't do better to just shake hands and walk away. Sometimes the best cure for dysfunction is a fresh start. But we'll see.

Annus Horribilis

By any sane reckoning, Auburn will finally win another game this Saturday. By any reasonable reckoning, it will probably be the last game the Tigers win this year. I'd most certainly prefer the latter to be an inaccurate prediction, but based on this team's continued slump, it's just hard to see how things are going to turn out differently. It's a horrible year, and one that's getting worse by the week.

As if it weren't obvious from the record and the numbers, this is a pretty bad football team, almost as bad as the talent-starved and snakebitten 1998 squad that finished 3-8 (and even that team beat Ole Miss). Even the defense that started out gangbusters has lapsed into mediocrity, thanks in no small part to an avalanche of injuries, but you also have to think that they've just been relied to on save the offense far too many times as well.

While the offense showed occasional signs of life in Oxford, its limitations are still painfully clear. Kodi Burns has a ton of heart and a lot of talent, but let's face it, Tony Franklin was right when he noted that Burns gets too excited and makes too many mistakes in crucial situations. Saturday was easily Burns' most productive game as a Tiger, but those three awful interceptions doomed any chance of getting a win. But then again, Burns is now being "coached" by a guy who took an eventual first-round NFL starter and wrecked him so badly that people wondered whether the guy would ever play again.

Chris Slaughter had a great individual game, and Tommy Trott continued to improve catching the ball, but the rest of the receiving corps was once again missing in action. And let's not even talk about the blocking, or rather the lack thereof. Auburn's running game has shuddered to a near-complete halt (I would have said complete halt if not for the single great play on Ben Tate's touchdown).

It's also clear that every defense the Tigers play knows exactly what Auburn is going to do before they do it, especially in the running game. AU can't run inside, can't run to the outside, and can't even run a screen without having three defenders around the ball at all times. This is not a surprise, or at least it shouldn't be. The last time Steve Ensminger was in charge of the offense, the same thing happened; Georgia Tech's defenders in 2003 were calling out the plays from the line of scrimmage. I wouldn't be surprised if Ole Miss was doing the same thing over five years later.

It's very little consolation at this point to think that Ensminger only has three games left to screw over Auburn University. Then again, I wrote that five years ago, too, and look where we are now.

A brief respite, and then the annus horribilis will rumble on to its finish. Where we go from there is, I think, anybody's guess.

Deja Vu

First of all, I apologize again for being so late getting this week’s postgame column up. We left town the first thing Friday morning for a friend’s wedding in San Antonio, which was followed by an extra day in Austin on Sunday, and there hasn’t been a lot of free time available for blogging. I’d meant to write up the WVA game on the flight out, but thanks to the 250-pound broad in front of me leaning her seat back nearly into my lap, I literally couldn’t even open up my laptop. It’s now mid-morning on Monday, and I’m bashing this out in the San Antonio airport (free wi-fi=good) before we board to fly home.

So anyway.

I got a lot of calls and messages during the first half of the West Virginia game, and as you can imagine, they were pretty giddy. Auburn looked like Auburn again, stifling on defense and productive on offense. The much-anticipated return to standard sets and three-point stances up front was effective, and success from the offense bled into the defense, seemingly raising them out of their post-Vanderbilt funk.

While I enjoyed those two quarters as much as anybody else, I wasn’t able to get really excited at halftime. I’d seen this show before, and when yet another second-half collapse started rumbling across the screen, what I felt wasn’t so much disappointment as recognition: yep, that’s about what I expected.

For all the good done early in the game--and there was plenty: Kodi Burns playing like he's been expected to play for two years now, the running game working and even Tommy Trott catching about everything that came near him--the flaws on this team and in its coaching staff just can't be camouflaged for long. Pardon the broken record, but the receivers not only can't catch and can't get open, they've now also forgotten how to block. Blocking on the outside (along with a lot of bad tackling on Auburn's part) was why WVU was able to play the screen and sweeps so effectively, and a complete lack of same was why Auburn wasn't. Outside of Trott (and what does it say that he had his best game in forever two weeks after being relieved of Steve Ensminger's position "coaching"?), there wasn't a notable receiver the whole night.

Anybody who was surprised by the awful play-calling in the second half really hasn't been paying attention. Underperforming Ensminger managed to blow the best onside kick recovery I've ever seen by calling that idiotic reverse and losing about 300 yards, and Auburn was basically done on offense from then on. With the passing game inactive and the Mountaineers building a lead, all WVU had to do was stack the tackle box, and Ensminger proved long ago that he isn't capable of calling a game at this level when anything at all is on the line. Auburn's run and pass blocking was bad enough before the Tigers got behind; once AU's lead evaporated, the outcome was academic.

I take a back seat to no one in my contempt for Thenator Lou Holtz, but old Cheatin' Lou had it dead right when he observed that the AU defense was obviously thinking, "Oh no, here we go again" as the offense sputtered to a dead stop in the third quarter. When the Tiger defenders started trying to strip the ball from Noel Devine instead of wrapping up and tackling (usually giving up another 10 to 15 yards in the process), the game was effectively over. That doesn't excuse the complete collapse on defense in this or the two games that preceded it, but it does help to explain things.

There's very little left to say at this point. This season is officially a fiasco, and I personally see no reason to think Auburn is capable of winning any of its remaining conference games, and the likely final record is only going to make the current torrent of outrage in Auburndom even louder (pun certainly intended).

For whatever it's worth, I do think Tommy Tuberville has earned a mulligan and ought to get a chance to repair all the damage done this year, but I would instantly reverse that statement if he were to once again insist on retaining Hugh Nall, Steve Ensminger, or Greg Knox on staff after Thanksgiving weekend. They have failed, repeatedly, and they've got to go. Period. It's time to have some actual professionals in those slots instead of guys who are still collecting high-dollar checks purely because of their personal friendships with the head coach.

All Apologies

I apologize for not having anything up about the West Virginia game yet. I'm traveling, and the closest I've been to a computer and Internet account is the wife's iPhone and the wifi in an Irish pub. There will be more later, but for now, I'm sorry to say that nothing in the second half surprised me Thursday. More later, hang in there.