Back To The Future

In the movie "Back To The Future", the character Marty McFly changes his future by going back to the past.  Auburn had decided to do the same thing by bringing back Gus Malzahn to replace his former boss Gene Chizik as head football coach.  Many people whispered that Malzahn was a bigger part of the 2010 national championship season than Chizik.  I guess we will see now if they are right.  I originally felt bad that I did not have this post up for an immediate reaction to the Malzahn hire.  However now I am glad as letting this simmer for a few days helped get a better perspective on the whole thing.  There are both pros and cons to this hire, lets take a look at them...

First, I originally wanted to do a post as to my thoughts on where Gene Chizik went wrong.  However I just did not have the motivation and I do not think anyone wants to read anything else about it.  This blog however serves as an imperfect but almost complete history of Gene Chizik's tenure at Auburn.  I started it before his first season started.  It contains game reviews for every one of Gene Chizik's games at Auburn and plenty of other commentary good and bad.  I will have to say here that not adjusting his defensive philosophy to mesh with Malzahn's offense and then trying to change it was one of Gene Chizik's biggest mistakes.  That is a good segway to this list...

PROS (of bringing Malzahn back)

• There is no doubt that Malzahn's handling of the Cam-powered Auburn offense was one of the finest coaching jobs I have seen.  Many Auburn fans including myself prefer an offensive coach ESPECIALLY after over a decade of defensive coaches completely reliant on their offensive coordinator.  It is one of the biggest cons on that type of coach.  Just look at the tenures of Tuberville and Chizik, they both got into trouble when they made bad picks at offensive coordinator.  We now have an offensive philosophy that will not change as long as Malzahn is head coach.
• Chizik always came off as so disingenuous. His inane coachspeak got on everyone's nerves. He just always came off as trying so hard to show that he was cool and had seen everything. It just came off as a bad act to me. The guy was just so fake so much of the time. Gus Malzahn is not like that. While every coach has to constantly throw out cliches, Malzahn is a much more genuine. The guy is a real coach and it shows, not somebody trying to act like a real coach. He has won championships as a head coach.
• Coaching changes are tough on the current players.  The new coach has to come in and show he is in charge and that usually entails being hard on the players.  The players do not know the coach and it is usually tough times for awhile.  Bringing back Malzahn only one year removed should alleviate a lot of that pain.  Most of the players know and seem to like Malzahn.  The offensive players will surely like going back to this offense especially the quarterbacks.  Frazier and Wallace should be much better running  this offense.  The defensive players are looking forward to any change I would think.  I am praying that Malzahn will move us away from the bend-but-don't-break philosophy of Chizik and Tuberville.  Maybe just maybe we might even recruit some gasp... BIGGER DEFENSIVE PLAYERS.
• The fall of Gene Chizik was casting another shadow on a great day in Auburn's past.  I am tired of every Auburn achievement being pushed aside everytime we have a coaching change.  Nobody remembers the great seasons under coach Dye because of his perceived meddling in the program.  Terry Bowden's name and subsequently the 1993 season are never spoken of.  Tommy Tuberville and all the great things he did are buried by the current administration.  Now it was looking like our national championship season was going to take a back seat to the downfall of Gene Chizik.  At least bringing back Malzahn lets us hold on to the great 2010 season.  It is now time to make things right with all our history even if people do not like the head coaches during those seasons. 

CONS (of bringing Malzahn back)

• This move is helping Jay Jacobs stay in power at Auburn.  I think Malzahn was pretty much the choice all along.  He was a safe pick that most people would like or not completely hate and subsequently help Jacobs survive.  I will continue to say that Jacobs "is a cancer that is killing Auburn and will make sure any success found like 2010 will be short lived."  Basically nothing has changed in the Auburn administration except the football staff and I do not believe the football staff was the whole problem.  They might lay low for awhile but Jacobs and his henchmen will continue to mess things up as long as they are at Auburn.
• As much as I criticized Gene Chizik he cannot be blamed for everything.  Yes he slowed Malzahn down in 2011 but that does not excuse the horrible offensive game plans and execution against Arkansas, LSU, Georgia and Bama that season.  Malzahn did do a horrible job in those games.  Malzahn also took Mike Dyer at Arkansas State when he knew what he had been doing.  Malzahn got out before the roof caved in but he was involved in the fall of the program.  That has to be said.  The biggest question I have heard on Malzahn is can he bring about and maintain the discipline needed to be a successful program.  Every program has their problems but the amount of players Auburn has had get in trouble the last two years is ridiculous.  It has to be stop.

There are also a lot of TOUGH CIRCUMSTANCES surrounding Auburn at the moment.  Those need to be mentioned as well...

Coaching changes usually hurt that year's recruiting.  The night the hire was announced I thought we might escape this but no such luck.  It looks like we are going to lose a lot of great prospects.  We desperately need help on defense especially at linebacker and losing some of the best linebacker prospects in the country is going to hurt.  A sub-par year recruiting could set Malzahn back a bit.  Recruiting is an in an inexact science but the teams with the best players are the ones that win.  Yes you have to coach them up as well but you also have to have the players.  Auburn fans should not delude themselves, our best teams were loaded with really good players and most of them were big-time recruits. 

I have gone back and forth on whether Malzahn should have kept Trooper Taylor to get some of these recruits on board.  However at the end of the day considering every that has happened this season I agree with his decision to completely clean house.  It is a shame Trooper Taylor was selling relationships to himself over recruiting a kid to Auburn.  Let us just hope that Trooper was not doing anything worse with the NCAA poking around.  We also do not know if that had anything to do with completely cleaning house on the staff.  It also appeared to me that Trooper and Luper were more concerned with recruiting rankings than building a team.

Can Gus Malzahn and the staff he will hire be able to recruit the players needed to compete for an SEC championship in the current environment?  That is the question.  Auburn fans are quick to answer yes to that question but I do not think it is that easy an answer.  People point quickly to 2004 and 2010.  Well folks I hate to burst your bubble but the bulk of the 2004 team was recruited while Bama was in big trouble with the NCAA and the majority of the 2010 team was recruited Mike Shula's last year at Bama.  People then point to Gene Chizik's last three "top ten" classes.  Well I will point out again that those rankings were made on signing day.  None of those classes would be ranked near as high the first day of practice the following year.  Those classes are littered with kids that did not make it, character problems and good old-fashions "busts".  There are some good players remaining but not near enough to win an SEC title.

It has never been tougher recruiting at Auburn.  Right next to us $aban has Bama on top of the world, to the east Georgia has been to the SEC Championship game the last two years, to the west the Mississippi schools are both about as strong as I can ever remember and to the south Jimbo Fisher and Florida State are grabbing a lot of prospects in our areas.  Auburn coaches have to work twice as hard as they have ever had to for recruits.  The SEC's success is pushing every school to get better.  Nearly every team in the league has a good coach especially in the SEC West.

Times are tough and while I think Gus Malzahn was a good hire I think people are underestimating how hard it is to comptete for an SEC championship right now.  However the bottom line is that we at least have some hope and that is desperately needed after this last season.   I hope that at the very least we will have a good offense during Malzahn's tenure and avoid the extreme ups and downs on offense we experienced under Tuberville and Chizik.  I hope that will help recruiting.  I hope we will run a defense that meshes with Malzahn's offense much better.  I hope...

Game 12 Review: Rock Bottom

Bama 49 Auburn 0.  There really is not anything left to say about this season or this coaching staff.  The biggest tragedy concerning this football program is we will be right back here or close to it if we do not get rid of that incompetent loser Jay Jacobs and his henchmen in the athletic department.  Auburn does not have a chance at success in anything remotely important while Jacobs remains at the helm or anywhere within the athletic department where he and his henchmen can meddle.  He is a cancer that is killing Auburn and will make sure any success found like 2010 will be short lived.

Game 11 Review: A Nice Time Before The Ship Goes Down

It was a nice day down on the plains, one of the few this year.  Auburn beat the Alabama A&M Bulldogs who are from my hometown and current residence of Huntsville, Alabama 51-7 on Senior Day.  It was good for these seniors to get one more win on the day they are honored.  I also think it is cool for Auburn to play their easier out-of-conference games against schools in the state.  I think we should rotate in Troy and UAB and if we are going to play an FCS school we should pick from: Samford, Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Jacksonville State, South Alabama, etc...  Let's keep that money in the state and help these schools out.  It would not be the end of the world if we got upset by Troy one year.  It would not hurt our recruiting.  Want proof?  Nick $aban has lost to both UAB (at LSU) and Louisiana Monroe and I think he is doing OK. 

Outside of helping our fellow schools in the state it also makes the match-up a little more interesting.  I think it is really cool Auburn played Alabama A&M.  I know from living here in Huntsville a ton of A&M alumni and fans went to Auburn and hopefully had a great time.  It is just good for everyone.  Why should we play these stupid Louisiana schools every single year and not in-state schools?  Since 1985 we have played one of the lesser Louisiana schools almost 20 times.  Nowadays that is a half million dollars going out of state every game.  Another good reason to do it is that Bama will not.  I believe I saw a stat that they had not played another in-state school outside of Auburn since the 1940s and I believe it took a resolution from the Alabama legislature to get them to start playing Auburn again.  The snobby attitude down in Tuscaloosa has been around for a long time it appears.

Back to this season, I am not sure you will see another rant here before "The Decision" is made.  I believe I have said my piece more than once and got my biggest rant out last week.  I purposely got it all out last week because I will not give Bama fans the satisfaction of one next week.  Last year I spent most of the my post flashing back to the year before and I will have to also find something fun to do this year.  As for this post I will follow Rob Pate's lead at "Eyes on Auburn" and post a few memories of our departing seniors...

First up...  Lutzenkirchen!!!  It has been awesome yelling this guy's name for four years.  Lutzenkirchen!  I mean that will probably go down as the most unique name in Auburn history.  Lutz made a lot of big catches but obviously the biggest and most memorable was the game winner down in Tuscaloosa and the dance afterward.  Next up... Emory Blake.  We found out pretty quick that Lutz, Darvin Adams and Terrell Zachary were the real deal under Gus Malzahn with Cam but Blake breaking out and adding to the mix helped us have a truly elite passing game.  My biggest memories of Blake was his first touchdown where he made a great stop-and-go move and scored against Mississippi State in 2010 and then his touchdowns against Bama and in the national championship game.

Ontario McCalebb.  What a playmaker.  One of the greatest playmakers in Auburn history I dare say.  He could hurt you so many ways (he is only the second player in SEC history to have 2000 yards rushing, 1000 yards returning and 500 yards receiving).  He was the perfect complement in Malzahn's offense to Cam and Dyer running up the gut.  He was always dangerous on the swing pass out of the backfield.  He was a threat (till they shut him down this season) to take it to the house on every kickoff return.  McCalebb has scored a lot of touchdowns but it is no contest what my favorite memory of him is.  In 2010 though we had dominated the whole game we were tied with LSU 17-17.  The dream season hung in the balance and McCalebb goes 70 yards for the winning touchdown.  It was the last time I have gone absolutely falling down nuts at a game.  It was my first game to watch Cam in person and it was not Cam's Heisman-clinching run I remember the most but that run by McCalebb.

T'Sharvan Bell.  This guy probably made two of the most memorable plays by a cornerback in Auburn history.  First, his slam sack of Bama quarterback Greg McElroy was one of the most memorable plays from a season full of memorable plays.  It was also sweet justice as McElroy was the one throwing deep on us after the game was over to make it 36-0 in 2008.  As for Bell, the next week he would make an even bigger play pick-sixing South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia to effectively end the SEC Championship game.

Darren Bates.  The guy was an freshmen All-SEC safety with a bright future till for some inexplicable reason our coaches decided he would be better as a linebacker.  Therefore he has spent three years as an undersized linebacker.  He has always been a gamer but he has just not had the size and strength to get the job done.  I think he would still be All-SEC at safety. 

As for the rest of the seniors, there are a few busts and a few overachievers who have hung on.  I guess that is the bottom line, they hung on.  Despite all the arduous hard work and the monumental ups and downs of playing football at the highest level they hung on and that says something.  There are so many big-time recruits who never even come close to making it all the way through college.  It is a huge accomplishment to play for an SEC team or any college team for that matter and make it all the way through.  Congrats to the 2012 Auburn football seniors.

Game 10 Review: THE WORST EVER

This is it.  We have not hit rock bottom yet (that is in two weeks) and this is already the worst Auburn team I have ever seen.  THE WORST EVER.  I never thought any team would get close to the 1998 group but that team is light years ahead of this bunch.  I have never seen anything like this.  Let's review shall we?  MISSISSIPPI STATE 28 AUBURN 10, LSU 12 AUBURN 10, ARKANSAS 24 AUBURN 7, OLE MISS 41 AUBURN 20, VANDY 17 AUBURN 13, TEXAS A&M 63 AUBURN 21 and now... GEORGIA 38 AUBURN 0.  WE HAVE BEEN OUTSCORED 223 TO 81 IN SEC PLAY SO FAR.  All that is left is for Bama to put one giant exclamation point on this worst season ever.

What the heck are we talking about here?  SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY.  EVERYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS DEBACLE SHOULD BE FIRED.  I MEAN LOOK AT THOSE SCORES!!!  AUBURN'S LAST TWO CONFERENCE GAMES AT HOME WERE OVER AT THE END OF THE FIRST QUARTER!!!!!!!  THE WORST EVER.  It is going take years to clean up this mess if someone does not act quickly.  There is a BIG difference between a bad season and THE WORST SEASON EVER.  Tuberville's last team goes 5-7 and gets blown out by Bama.  That is a bad season but yes you can get over that but a team that goes 0-8 and is this bad, that is another story entirely. 

I will repeat again what I said last week: "I do not care if Jacobs or anybody else is an "Auburn man" if he is completely failing at his job. At this high level, if you mess up this bad you lose your job, it is as simple as that. It has been one thing after another with Jacobs and his group. It started with running off maybe the greatest college swimming coach ever, it continued through two seasons of continous unprofessional bickering with Tommy Tuberville and has finished us off with this even more unprofessional relationship with his "chosen one" Gene Chizik not to mention many other things (like "associate athletic director in charge of football" Tim Jackson). 

There is no point even discussing the merits of Coach Gene Chizik any more. You go 0-8 and get skunked in conference with this team then you lose your job. Again it is as simple as that. You cannot make 3.5 million dollars with the highest paid assistants in the nation (or close to it) and be this bad. Nobody in the country at any BCS school would keep a coach that did that. End of story."

I CANNOT BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE STILL DEFENDING JAY JACOBS.  Again this is not just a bad season it is THE WORST EVER.  Everyone associated with this debacle needs to be fired.  The entire program needs to be disinfected.  I am going to PUKE if I hear one more time what "a good man" Jacobs or whoever is.  Listen people there are lots of "good men" who are Christian and love Auburn but they are not qualified to be athletic director.  You want a job with stability?  DO NOT GET INVOLVED IN SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE ATHLETICS THEN.  It is a multi-million dollar all-out arms race.  Whether that is right or not is IRRELEVENT.  That is the way it is.

Anyone who gets involved in big time college athletics should know the score.  Is there anyone in leadership at Auburn with any guts and vision whatsoever?  Is there anyone or any group willing to do what needs to be done here?  I do not care if it is hard to rebuild an athletic department and hire a coach at the same time.  Whoever is at the top and right now that appears to be President Jay Gogue needs to do what is best for Auburn.  I believe last night made it clear that  the best thing for Auburn is to completely clean out the group of people who have brought this debacle about.

I cannot emphasize enough the need for swift and decisive action.  I will continue to repeat that this is not just another bad season, this is THE BAD SEASON.  As I have said the last few weeks, wrong choices could lead to a prolonged down period for Auburn football.  My gosh, we have not been even competitive against anybody good except for a couple of times the last TWO seasons while we have been absolutely run out of the stadium over and over again.  The last two games in Jordan Hare have been outright disasters with the bulk of the crowd gone at halftime.  THE TEAM HAS COMPLETELY QUIT along with their HIGHLY PAID COACHES.

Oh and by the way I feel like the media is trying to slam our fans because they leave before the game is over.  Give me a break, there were plenty of early exits in 1997, 2000 and 2003 in Tuscaloosa so give it a rest.  Frankly I think all of the fans deserve awards for even showing up to see an Auburn game this year.  What is the point in wasting good money going to see this team?  In fact, not going and not spending money is the only way to show the powers-that-be that we will not stand for this and a complete house cleaning is needed.

There is precedent for this at Auburn.  Auburn was 0-10 in 1950 and headed toward the abyss till THERE WAS FIRST A CHANGE AT ATHLETIC DIRECTOR.  Jeff Beard came in and then hired Shug Jordan, arguably Auburn's greatest football coach, and became Auburn's greatest athletic director.  The official Auburn web site states: "Garland Washington "Jeff" Beard could generally be considered the father of modern Auburn athletics".  THE SAME NEEDS TO BE DONE NOW OR AUBURN IS IN BIG TROUBLE.  But of course that would be just par for the course in this season... THE WORST EVER.

Game 9 Review: Irrelevant

Auburn 42 New Mexico State 7.  It sounded like a nice day and it is definitely good for the players to enjoy a win but unfortunately this game in the big picture is completely irrevelevant.  Those in leadership at Auburn have a lot of decisions to make and the clock is ticking.  So far off the field around Auburn has been a lot of noise and fury signifying nothing.  A new rumor about this or that comes out every hour yet so far no official action has been taken.  That in and of itself may not be that surprising but there is no clear indiciation of what actions may be taken later and that has become increasingly frustrating for most Auburn fans.

I might not know what those at the top are going to do but I do know that Jay Jacobs and his merry band are going to fight for their cushy jobs.  I guess I do not blame them because I do not think anybody else will hire them for any job remotely close to what they have now.  Yes these architects of this colossal failure that is now Auburn football appear to be working a lot harder to save their sorry butts than at their jobs at Auburn. 

I saw this week an official e-mail campaign to save Jay Jacobs.  Multiple published reports confirm associate athletic director Tim Jackson combing the luxury suites yesterday to drum up support.  Let me be real clear here, these men are the problem and completely cleaning out the athletic department is the only way for Auburn to start anew.  I do not care if Jacobs or anybody else is an "Auburn man" if he is completely failing at his job.  At this high level, if you mess up this bad you lose your job, it is as simple as that.  It has been one thing after another with Jacobs and his group.  It started with running off maybe the greatest college swimming coach ever, it continued through two seasons of continous unprofessional bickering with Tommy Tuberville and has finished us off with this even more unprofessional relationship with his "chosen one" Gene Chizik not to mention many other things. 

There is no point even discussing the merits of Coach Gene Chizik any more.  You go 0-8 and get skunked in conference with this team then you lose your job.  Again it is as simple as that.  You cannot make 3.5 million dollars with the highest paid assistants in the nation (or close to it) and be this bad.  Nobody in the country at any BCS school would keep a coach that did that.  End of story.  Some of us realized that Chizik was done after the Arkansas game and just about everyone else got there between Ole Miss and Vanderbilt.  The stragglers just about all came in after the Texas A&M massacre but for those very few left who are somehow still on the fence the Georgia and Bama games should take care of them.

Yes it is time for "Amen Corner" and we go into these games with no chance at all to win them.  The only thing that matters is the answers to these questions and I will keep posting them till they are answered...  "Who is in charge at Auburn? Will that person or group do what needs to be done and completely clean out the atheltic department? If not, how will they handle the inescapable fact that Jay Jacobs is a failure as an athletic director? How will a football coach be hired in the midst of all this? Can Auburn get a decent coach with all this going on?  Wrong answers and choices could lead to a prolonged down period for Auburn in football."

Game 8 Review: End Of The Line

End of the line folks...  For those who still had any doubts that Gene Chizik was done at Auburn, Saturday night's all-time historic low should take care of them.  I did not mean to be a prophet a few weeks ago when I said "This team has already proven there is no bottom.  Whatever your worst scenario is for next week and the rest of the season this team can top it."  However this statement appears to be the theme of the second half of this historically bad season.  There is no bottom.  Auburn is also likely going to do something historically bad against either Georgia or Bama or both.

First, kudos to all those fans who spent their time and money to go down to this travesty of a game yesterday.  They put a lot more effort into the game than the players and especially the coaches.  When we finally get to the end of this long nightmare I think I can safely say this coaching staff will have put up one of the worst college coaching jobs ever done.  The numbers from yesterday are staggering.  First the score, Texas A&M 63 Auburn 21, the most points permitted by an Auburn opponent since Georgia Tech steamrolled the Tigers 68-7 on Nov. 29, 1917.  The worst margin of defeat since Auburn's last winless season in-conference in 1980 when Tennessee won 42-0.

It just goes on from there...  Texas A&M had 400 yards by halftime and a staggering 670 yards for the game.  Auburn had negative total yards on offense till into the second quarter when the game was already over.  Other than the clock running out on them in the first half, Texas A&M scored a touchdown ever single time they got the ball till almost the fourth quarter.  Other than one punt and the end of the half and end of the game, the Aggies scored a touchdown everytime they got the ball.  Auburn now joins Kentucky as the only teams in SEC history to give up 42 points in a half.  It is the worst defensive performance I have ever seen by an Auburn team. 

This team has completely quit on these coaches... and we have four games to go including our big rivals.  It is sad to see and hard to watch.  The only bright spot, if you can call it that, is Jonathan Wallace showing a spark at quarterback.  However that was mostly against the Texas A&M second team with them knowing they had the game won.  I really do not think that you can take a lot away from that.  Jonathan Wallace will be knocked out of the game if he tries to run the ball like that against Georgia or Bama just like he was in the LSU game.  It shows just how bad the defense was to steal the show from this awful offense.

It is going to be hard to take what is going to happen against Georgia and Bama.  Knowing that it is going to happen still does not prepare you for how bad it feels.  We have no chance of winning.  We have no chance of even playing a competitive game.  Even in 1980 and 1998 those teams played somewhat competitive games against Georgia and Bama.  In 2008 Tub made his last stand against Georgia before collapsing at Bama.  I do not think this team is capable of doing even that.  I just have never seen anything like this at Auburn especially on a team that does have some talent.

Fortunately I guess we will get a couple of wins over New Mexico State and Alabama A&M.  Auburn is lucky that New Mexico State is terrible and that they play a FCS team like A&M.  Auburn will end the season at 3-8 and 0-8 in the SEC with a brutal no-mercy beat down in Tuscaloosa.  Auburn must then rebuild their entire athletic department or find a way to do a coach search with out using the athletic director.  They must do this on a year when there is not a whole lot of obvious great coaching prospects and with several other big-time SEC schools looking for coaches as well. 

The same questions will stay at the forefront until they are answered...  Who is in charge at Auburn?  Will that person or group do what needs to be done and completely clean out the atheltic department?  If not, how will they handle the inescapable fact that Jay Jacobs is a failure as an athletic director?  How will a football coach be hired in the midst of all this?  Can Auburn get a decent coach with all this going on?  As I said last week, wrong answers and choices could lead to a prolonged down period for Auburn in football.  Hope will never completely die out though because I also believe what I said three weeks ago and that is that Auburn will not be be down forever, it will just feel like it.

Read more here: http://www.wareagleextra.com/#storylink=cpy

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.