Game 7 Review: SKUNKED

I said last week I did not see Auburn winning this game.  I waffled some throughout the week thinking surely Auburn would get one of these games.  I should not have waffled.  In maybe their worst performance yet Auburn lost 17-13 to a Vanderbilt team that played terrible.  Vandy tried to give Auburn the game and Auburn did not take it.  Vandy had three turnovers and blew three fourth down conversions giving Auburn great field position several times.  Even with those gifts Auburn could not win this game.  Scott Loeffler is simply the worst offensive coordinator I have ever seen.  Since his boss Gene Chizik will not or can not do anything about Loeffler's incompetance, his value is not going to be much more by the end of this nightmare season.

This was it, this was Auburn's last good chance to win a conference game and not get skunked in-conference.  We all have been there.  For me, I still play pick-up basketball and tennis regularly.  You hit those days where you are getting your butt kicked.  Sometimes I am on a weaker team or a team that just cannot get it together in hoops playing several games or I am playing a better player in tennis.  You are going through that and you get to a point where you are like "man if I can just win one game and avoid the shutout at least I will feel a little better".  In tennis, you just hate getting beat 6-0 in a set.  The one game really doesn't mean anything but it is better than being skunked.  That is where Auburn was Saturday and they did not get that win and now they will get skunked.

As with last week there is not much point in talking much about the game.  Like last week... "I can talk about Moseley coming out looking pretty good throwing short passes (which is all he throws as anyone knows who has watched him play).  I could talk about (Vandy) seeing that and adjusting...  I could talk about continuing to run the majority of the plays from three-wide sets.  I could talk about the continuing avalanche of idiotic penalties.  I could talk about the defense's continuing problems against spread offenses.  I could talk about bad tackling for the billionth time this season.  I could talk about Auburn (continuing to blow it) in the fourth quarter.  I could talk about all that but frankly I am tired of talking about it.  Also I am sure I will get (YET) another chance next week."

As I stated before Auburn looks to have clinched its worse modern day season.  Auburn looks to have absolutely no chance to keep it close against Texas A&M, Georgia or Bama so if things end that way Auburn will have gone 0-8 in the SEC.  That is worse than the 3-8 (1-7) team in 1998 and Doug Barfield's final team in 1980 who ended at 5-6 (0-6) in the SEC.  It appears that Gene Chizik will be fired at the end of the season.  As several people have pointed out, I do not know how you can come back from a season this bad.  You just lose all credibility with the fans and recruits.  Good coaches simply do not have seasons like this.  They have bad seasons but not seasons filled with this much stupidity on the coaching side.  With that said, the opinions in this space and most like it will move toward where Auburn goes post-Chizik.

Jay Coulter at Track'em Tigers leads the way with his post this morning, "It Will Take More Than a Coach to Fix Auburn".  He does a great job pointing out that as the title suggests, it will take more than a new coach to fix Auburn.  I have thought Jay Jacobs was unqualified from the moment he was considered for the AD job.  I have watched as he has bungled one thing after another while patting himself on the back for anything positive that happened around Auburn (whether he had anything to do with it or not).  Jacobs, associate AD Tim Jackson, Chizik, president Jay Gogue and former coach Pat Dye are the public faces of the current "ruling faction". 

It is highly debatable how much power each person has.  I have seen everyone just rail on Pat Dye for his comments this season.  While I also wish Coach Dye would stop making these public comments and criticisms I see him as a lonely older man who is not all there anymore and just wants some attention.  I just do not think Coach Dye has much power anymore other than being privy to some inside information from the more powerful people.

I think president Jay Gogue just wants to be president and not have to get involved with the football program (that would take some extra work) so he goes with the flow.  I think Gene Chizik who was failing as a head coach at Iowa State would have agreed to do anything to get the Auburn job so he pledged his allegiance.  That leaves us with Jacobs and his hatchet man Tim Jackson.  They appear to be the most public power brokers of this faction.  They obviously answer to more powerful forces but they are the public faces.  It was Jacobs and Jackson who clashed with and then ousted Tommy Tuberville and his "Bar-BQ Bunch".  They were the ones who ran off former defensive coordinator Will Muschamp and guaranteed he would not consider Auburn. 

This "ruling faction" led by Jacobs and Jackson thought they had their power sown up for years to come as Auburn won the national championship but their hand-picked head coach has been exposed without Cam Newton, Tuberville's players and Gus Malzahn's leadership.  It has been a continual descent since that night in Arizona bottoming out in this worst of all seasons.  This has stripped this faction of their power.  However as Jay Coulter wisely asks... 

"The million dollar question is who does run Auburn Athletics now? With his recent publicized financial problems and departure from the board of trustees, Lowder's influence has at best been minimized.

At this point, no one person has emerged as the driving force behind Auburn football. That can be both good and bad.

With a changing of the guard in the Auburn hierarchy now possible, many are calling for a complete washing of the old regime and Jacobs is the face of that group. Whether there's enough new blood to make this happen will be the storyline of the coming months.

In the meantime, any chance of Auburn bringing in a proven winner will be hard. Putting your love of the university aside, you have to ask yourself who'd want to step into this Peyton Place.

The tradition, facilities and money at Auburn are top notch; but the same can be said for a lot of other places. Top coaches can demand these things anywhere, and they can do it without the baggage of Auburn's internal fighting.

I'll tell you right now, no proven coach is going to let Tim Jackson stick his nose in the football program. It was all fine and cool when Auburn was winning, now it's just plain disgusting. His interference in football matters is a prime example of why the job will be unappealing to some."

I think at the very least to get Auburn on the right path Jacobs, Jackson and Chizik all need to be sent packing with Jay Gogue exiting shortly thereafter.  Auburn then obviously has to make some good hires.  However I am not sure of anything other than Chizik getting the heave.  Nothing will change if no other cleaning out is done.  If we do the right thing, can we get a good AD?  Can we get that person in time?  Will we get that person in time for that person to hire the next football coach?  If not then who will hire the next football coach?  These and many other questions will need to be answered and answered quickly.  Wrong answers and choices could lead to a prolonged down period for Auburn in football.