Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows

No, I'm not going to torture you by linking that song* up, but man, you take my very fondest dream of this whole staff hiring process goes--minus Lucy Griffiths as the Kathy Ireland Memorial Placekicking Coach, of course--and multiply it by a hundred, and I'm still not sure the end product would be as mindblowingly awesome as this:



I would have been thrilled to have Taylor as an offensive coordinator. Now, somehow, Gene Chizik has managed to hire Trooper Taylor to coach receivers for Gus freaking Malzahn. Unbefreakinglievable. This is the sort of statement that might come back to haunt me, but I'm going to make it anyway: if Malzahn, Taylor, and Luper stay through the 2011 recruiting class, Auburn is going to have one of the top-10 offenses in the country the following season. There's a lot of work to do, but there's also just too much coaching talent assembled here for this to fail.

How Chizik managed to haul Taylor aboard, I'm still not entirely sure. With Malzahn here, there's no way this isn't a lateral move for Taylor in terms of the coaching flowchart. I'm guessing there's a raise and a new fancy title and that Luper's defection played a big role. I'm also guessing that Taylor's tired of Gundy yelling I'M A MAN whenever he makes his commute in 30 minutes or less or makes a particularly strong cup of coffee in the coaches' offices or finishes off an especially long piss in the men's room. That would get aggravating after a while.

And, somehow, the result is that Trooper Taylor will be recruiting for Auburn over the next two months and coaching at Auburn next fall. Chizik's going to have to put victories up on the scoreboard before all the pessimism is wiped away, but one of the two things I said he'd have to do was assemble a knockout staff. Assuming Teddy Ruxpin isn't actually hired as our DC, that mission is accomplished.

The best part? Instead of eight months of dread, we Auburn fans get to savor eight months of sky-high optimism again. Welcome back, sunshine. Nice to see you again, lollipops. Until the hitting actually starts again, it's all rainbows from here.

*Look, the Simpsons clip is too damn hard to find, so if you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, here. Don't say you weren't warned.

UPDATE: Garner is staying in Athens, but a) Trooper Taylor and Gus Malzahn, so whatever b) Chizik didn't really seem to have much interest in him, which leads to point c) remember when we were all afraid that Chizik was nothing more than a stooge set up to coach a whole laundry list of Pat Dye favorites hired without his approval by the administration? Here we are, just a few weeks later, and that already seems like the irrational paranoia of an unenlightened time long, long ago, like the Salem with hunts or McCarthy's Red Scare or the hiring of Dennis Franchione. It turns out Pat Dye's been just about as uninvolved as he always claimed he was.