Give Gene Chizik a Lifetime Contract...

That is sure what it sounds like we need to do if you take a spin around any Auburn blog or web page. I mean I don't think I was excited as some of these people during the 2004 season, a real championship season.

Now before I get labeled a bammer or accused of not paying attention as Will Collier opines, let me state a few things. Here they are:

• I am glad Gene Chizik assembled a very good staff.


• I am glad Gene Chizik kept his mouth shut and went to work in the offseason unlike some other SEC coaches.


• I am glad Gene Chizik and his staff are seemingly taking recruiting very seriously and are thinking "out of the box" for different ways to get Auburn out there.


• I really like the fact Gene Chizik is putting a lot of emphasis on being an "Auburn man" and embracing Auburn's past.


• I am glad he hired Gus Malzahn and got out of his way and I love that we are currently one of the best offenses in the nation.


• I am glad we have started 3-0 against a decent opening slate of games in exciting offensive fashion.

Are we clear? Now with that being said, the collective Auburn community annointing Gene Chizik as the next big thing before playing one tough SEC team is simply ridiculous. I can see being optimistic and fired up but some of this stuff is simply unreadable (pick a link, any link to your right). Good gosh we sound like the Bama nation from 1997 through 2007. Call me crazy but no matter how exciting the start I would like to see us win a few tough SEC games (maybe one or two on the road) before giving Gene his lifetime contract. Also there is that nasty little matter of beating the team across the state sometime in the near future. Even Terry Bowden who started 10-0 said he was not an Auburn man till he beat Bama. Now, of course Bowden may not be an Auburn man but he was right about that being one of the qualifications of a great Auburn coach.

The same could be said of Chris Todd, how about we wait till the guy plays well on the road and actually helps us beat an upper-echelon SEC team before giving him the Davey O'Brien award. I mean I know most of the Auburn nation is now just assuming we are going to beat UT and Arkansas on the road and I can't wait to see it if that is true. However and I hate to be a buzzkill but UT's defense is much better than WVU and Arkansas' offense is better and won't make the dumb mistakes.

I mean good gosh you would think we had been down for years listening to the Auburn nation. I know the Tony Franklin debacle was horrible and Tuberville had his warts but good night people we had a winning record in the SEC every year from 2000 through 2007. We beat Bama six in a row and went 26-6 in the SEC from 2004 through 2007. I was definitely critical of Tub over the years but we were in the race for the SEC title almost the entire decade and that is the name of the game. I don't think we have been that win starved. In fact I think our expectations should be a bit higher than winning a nail biter over a Bill Stewart-coached WVU team.

However if anything good can come out of this over-the-top lovefest it would be some of these younger Auburn fans understanding why us older fans love Coach Dye. I have been pissed off and completely sickened to read what some of these losers (that say they are Auburn fans) say about Coach Dye on the various message boards. They would praise Tub and even Bowden and simply refer to Coach Dye as an "old cheater". The stupidity of trying to sum up Coach Dye like that is unbelievable.

Coach Dye definitely made some mistakes on and off the field and made another continuing mistake IMO continuing to talk to slimebaum. However, if some of these people think things were bad last year then they ought to try taking a trip back to 1980. Auburn had endured 5 years of Doug Barfield and one decent season out of those before crashing with an 0-6 SEC record in 1980. He also never beat Bama and during that time they won back-to-back national championships and then when their streak finally ended in 1980 our other main rival Georgia won one.

Coach Dye came into an absolute disaster and had us basically winning a national championship in 1983. That is absolutely miraculous. The hard work done to accomplish that feat coaching and recruiting is simply unbelievable. He then built the foundation for everything the program has done over the last 20 years. He expanded Jordan Hare, brought Bama to Auburn and won 4 SEC titles.

One thing Gene Chizik had right is when he said Coach Dye's players built this program (although one certain one in the AD office has tried hard to tear it down) but let's remember that Coach Dye and every other great coach and player in Auburn's history earned their accolades. Let's let Chizik try and earn his without going off the deep end after a trio of victories against La Tech, Miss St and West Virginia.