Things I think about when I hear the name "Buster"

1. That weird, dorky kid with the stupid hat and dumb dog who wants to sell me a pair of Sunday shoes

2. Being 10 or so, and my Dad and I turning on HBO to watch Mike Tyson maul some new hapless sap, except the hapless sap hangs in there, and starts landing some punches here and there, and now Tyson's down, what's happening ... holy crap, did he lose?



3. "A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly and is also known as a ..."

4. NEW FOR 2009: Tommy Tuberville, as it turns out.

Tuberville will talk about Southeastern Conference football on BusterSports.com next season. The Web site said Thursday he will contribute on multiple shows each week, including Internet podcasts.

Tuberville said Buster Sports, based in Raleigh, will allow him to interact with SEC fans. They will be able to talk with him through chat rooms, message boards and call-in questions.

Give Tuberville this: apparently he won't be alone amongst the ungracefully-departed at BusterSports, what with them having also signed on Jim Donnan, Dave Odom, and ... wait for it ... Terry Donahue. So he won't quite fit right in--Tubby was miles better than any of those guys ever dreamed of being--but at least he's not slumming it with, say, Curley Hallman.

Still, I can't shake the nagging feeling I should have made him an offer. I mean, come on: "Buster Sports." Whatever you think of the name "The Joe Cribbs Car Wash," you've got to admit it's got more dignity in it than that. (At least, I'm pretty sure it does.)

I got nothin', or almost nothin'

So I sat down a little while ago to bang out a post for this afternoon about the changed landscape in the SEC West after Signing Day ... or maybe a Works post if I could find enough good stuff ... or a Sweet Home Hello of Samford, which I've been meaning to do for a while ... or something.

But it's Friday afternoon and every effort I've made to bear down and focus and produce something worthwhile has failed. Oh well. So here's a few scattered thoughts and then I'm out for the weekend:

1. Good for Tony Franklin, and good for Middle Tennessee State. Obviously Franklin was the wring hire at the wrong time for Auburn last season, and it'll be hard to really ever respect his play-calling expertise after he dialed up that "wideout throw on the end around" trick play on 3rd-and-forever against the Vols.

But here's some crazy spit-ballin' for ya: let's say Malzahn has two insanely productive years and leaves to be a head coach somewhere. Meanwhile, Franklin has two insanely productive years at MTSU. Wouldn't this possibly leave Auburn in the market for a successful coordinator well-versed in an up-tempo spread scheme, and wouldn't by that point Franklin again be the most qualified and available candidate who would fit that description? I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'. (For the record, it'll never, ever happen, and I think we all know that. But while we're getting ridiculously ahead of ourselves, I think Taylor will deserve his shot at the OC's chair if AU's offense blows up and Malzahn is hired away.)

2. Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I thought this was a really interesting analysis from Michael at Braves and Birds:

Saban's offenses are going to need to be a little better in order for Alabama to truly achieve parity with Florida. We know that Meyer's offenses and Saban's defenses will be top shelf, so it's quite possible that SEC titles in the near future will come down to whether Meyer's weak suit is better than Saban's. As long as Meyer has Charlie Strong and a pile of defensive talent, his defenses will be almost as good as his offenses. Saban is assembling excellent talent on offense, but if he is going to continue to go the conventional running/play-action route with game manager quarterbacks, he is going to be half a step behind Florida.

I think Michael maybe sells short the fact that Florida's defense was atrocious as recently as 2007 and that Georgia had a phenomenal offense this year without being a whole lot more complicated than Alabama was, but it makes you think ... and wonder if Jim McElwain should watch his back if this assessment looks any more accurate at the end of 2009.

3. Certain reports to the contrary, I think it's relatively safe to say that Deangelo Benton got dumped by Les Miles because of Rueben Randle's hissy fit. First, we've got we've got Miles's "hard, fast decision" statement about it, and second, that timeline of a) Benton reportedly commits b) Randle pitches a fit c) Benton instead commits to Auburn d) Randle commits to LSU just looks a little too neat to me to believe it didn't break down that way.

My question is this: Miles either totally caved to a demand by a high school kid, or the public perception is overwhelmingly that he totally caved to a demand by a high school kid. Is that really the precedent you want your head coach to be setting? I know that can't help but come across as post-Signing Day sour grapes, but you have to admit there's a distinctly Mike Dubosian whiff to it.

4. Every now and again Tubby gets mentioned as a future DC candidate--that apparently isn't happening. A nice reader also e-mailed me to say that Tubby said on-air at some point that he'd be looking for a job in ... the Pac-10? The guess here is that long-term, Tubby winds up being what we've all kind of assumed he'd be ... just too damn good at TV to do anything else.

5. And lastly, I give you this:



You're welcome. Some hoops content likely over the weekend, the last words on the recruiting season hit Monday. Enjoy your weekend.

In Tubby news ...

Even before he hooked up with a trucking company, Nall had experience in transporting expensive cargo.

"Mutual"? We touched on Jay Tate's interview with Hugh Nall yesterday, but Tate's full story for the paper had a few more tidbits worth taking a look at. For me, this is the money quote:

"It's a tough business competing against Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee and everyone else in the league. Everybody has to be on the same team and thinking the same way for you to even have a chance. Tommy realized that wasn't going to happen. It probably was more of a mutual thing." (emphasis added--ed.)

This is someone who's about as close to the situation as you're going to get who doesn't have an ax to grind--well, actually, Nall does have an ax to grind, as we'll see in a sec--stating that it wasn't 100 percent the administration's decision nor 100 percent Tubby's decision. As I've stated repeatedly: the truth is somewhere in the middle. It probably was more of a mutual thing. As Tate writes in the story, the 100 minutes in which Tubby went from expecting to return to leaving the program for good aren't going to be understood any time soon.

However: I'm still not arguing that the administration should be blindly let off the hook, certainly not if this is the truth:

His contract -- and those of all Tigers assistants -- are predicated on Tuberville's employment with the program. Once he leaves, the school no longer is obligated to any coach lacking a multiyear deal. Administrators offered each assistant a 1-month contract to help bide time while Jacobs searches for a new coach.

Nall rejected the offer. He didn't like the terms.

"They wanted me to agree to give them a month, then they told me I couldn't pursue another job," Nall said. "They wanted to know why I didn't want to keep recruiting these kids. I told them that I'm not an employee there anymore. They didn't have to wait on me -- my locker was cleaned out and my stuff was packed up and out of there by the time we met the next morning."

Asking the Auburn coaches to continue recruiting certainly isn't out of order--several assistants have continued doing just that, of course--but demanding that Nall couldn't pursue another job? Why? Love him or hate him, Nall's given Auburn 10 years of service. We couldn't have let him make a few phone calls or spend a day or two looking into what he's going to do next while he's pounding the recruiting trail? Especially when the recruiting class hangs by a thread already? And now Nall is long gone, the opportunity to have him help keep the class together--for whatever that's worth--is lost. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, dumbasses.

No help here. Contrary to what Charles Goldberg declares at the top of this post reproducing Tubby's letter of resignation to Jacobs isn't going to come close to ending the firing vs. resigning "speculation" tug-of-war. I mean, does it get any more contradictory than this?

After long consideration, I have decided to resign. I understand that, notwithstanding my resignation, the University will make a total payment of $5,083,334 as outlined in Section 21 of my contract.

No, no it doesn't. This is the debate in a perfect nutshell, Tubby writing I have resigned in one sentence and in the next writing, essentially, I have been fired. Until Tubby actually decides to speak, we're not getting any closer to resolving this thing, and I doubt Tubby's going to speak any time soon. $5.08 million will buy a lot of silence.

Because I forgot to mention it in the last post. Offensively, Auburn's an out-and-out rebuilding project, but Tubby's at leas left the cupboard stocked elsewhere: Durst, Pybus, and Thorpe were selected to the SEC All-Freshman team. And here's where he make another testament to Tubby's eye for talent: Durst was a walk-on who'd never punted competitively in his life, Pybus and Thorpe lightly-regarded prospects who nobody expected on Signing Day to even see the field as freshmen, much less make the SEC's All-Freshman team. I hope you've already raised your glass to Tubby a couple of times since he left; it's time again.

Feedback, 12/9 (now with Olive Tuberville discussion!)

As you might imagine, the comments section here at the JCCW has been positively brimming lately, what with Tommy Tuberville departing as Auburn's head football coach in mysterious and ill-defined circumstances and the subsequent search for his replacement devolving into the quagmire of rumor and innuendo we all knew was coming. Yes, Auburn fans are, in fact, interested in these developments. So for those of you who haven't been clicking through to the comments, I'm going to pull a few out and offer a few responses for your reading pleasure to help burn off a few more minutes until the end of the work day.

We start with this post yesterday on the Garner and Nix interviews, which drew a couple of responses wondering aloud if maybe Garner wasn't really being interviewed for the head coaching position, but for the defensive coordinator's role under whoever does become the new coach. Acid Reign put it like this:

.....You have to wonder if "The Powers that Be" are planning to try and force Garner on whomever the new coach turns out to be. "You're hired, and Rodney Garner IS your defensive coordinator. Period." It wouldn't surprise me. And we KNOW Garner wants to move up.

.....Garner's recruiting prowess is proven, I think. He joined Dye's staff on the downhill slide, and got guys like Frank Sanders, James Bostic, Stephen Davis, Dameyune Craig, Takeo Spikes, Willie Anderson, Wayne Gandy, Anthony Redmond, Victor Riley, Karsten Bailey, Robert Baker, and the list goes on.

.....When Bowden tried to move Garner off the field, he jumped to Tennessee. Within three years, UT had ramped up their talent level, won two SEC titles, beat Florida and got a BCS crystal trophy. Then, Garner jumped to Georgia, and UT slid back down into mediocrity.

.....Garner's track record at Georgia speaks for itself, too. He's been a D-line coach for the entirety of the Richt's tenure, and I think he's probably ready to try his hand at running a defense.

.....I wouldn't think Garner's ready for a shot as a head coach at a BCS school, but you never can tell.

As I've said a couple of times now, I seriously doubt Garner's actually in the running for the head job, but the hypothetical "Garner comes aboard as the DC" scenario is worth discussing. The first question to ask is if Garner would be willing to make the jump out of Athens; given his oft-stated goal of becoming a head coach and how useful the Auburn DC position has been in achieving that goal in recent years, I can't imagine he wouldn't.

The other questions are thornier. Would the New Auburn Head Coach be willing to start off his Auburn tenure by accepting a mandate from on high about who his DC would be? My completely uninformed guess would be it depends on the coach--someone well-established like Johnson or (sigh) Fisher would likely have the capital to demand their own guy on their own terms, but for an up-and-comer like Gill, Auburn might--might--represent the kind of opportunity he'd be willing to make certain concessions to take advantage of. That Garner is in much the same situation Gill found himself in for so long--position coach and recruiter extraordinaire unable to nab a coordinator's chair of his own--would also probably make Gill a little more amenable. Then again, a new DC means Gill would be abandoning current DC Jimmy Williams, an old Nebraska friend who came with Gill to Buffalo three years ago. Assuming Buffalo didn't want to hand Williams their vacant head coaching gig ... awkward.

Nonetheless, this is the biggest question: would this be a good idea? As AR points out, Garner's presence would undoubtedly be a huge boon to Auburn's recruiting, and it's not like he hasn't had time to learn the defensive coaching ropes by now. The problem is that the last couple of years he's been learning the ropes from the coach Georgia fans see as most responsible for this year's failings. If Garner did deserve to be passed over when Martinez was hired to replace Brian VanGorder back in 2004, what's changed between now and then? What if Garner couldn't hack it?

It would be a gamble. But given the inevitable upside (and maybe necessity) of hiring a recruiter of Garner's stature to help (one would assume) a head coach with few-to-no recruiting ties in the area, it seems a gamble well worth taking. If New Auburn Head Coach will approve, so will the JCCW.

Further talk about the future of Auburn's defense comes from commenter Harrison, who left the following in response to the Gill profile:

i feel you jerry, but i dont understand your worry about the defensive statistics of gill's team. i mean, paul rhoads hasnt left, has he? and it was the offensive assistants that were under fire, not don dunn, terry price, or james willis.

It's certainly true that no one was calling for the defensive assistants to leave with Ensminger, Nall, and Knox, but I think the assumption has been that New Auburn Head Coach will want to bring in his own guys rather than just inheriting the old crew. Rhoads, in particular, seems likely to me to want out: he's not "settled" in Auburn the way the assistants are, has few (any?) ties to the area, and the coach who hired him is gone. Then again, I could have it backwards, since it's the other guys who'd worked with Tubby forever and may not to have to try and win the new guy's approval. Who knows?

I'll say this: if Rhoads and the other guys are willing to stay at Auburn and the New Auburn Head Coach wants to keep them around, the continuity would likely be a huge help during the transition year. I'd prefer both of these scenarios--Garner, Rhoads--for the DC position substantially more than Gill plugging Williams into the spot, that's for sure, and the more Tubby defensive assistants that do stick around, the better.

We had dueling comments in response to the Jimbo Fisher profile, one from Brandon that suggested Fisher would bolt for Auburn if offeres, the other coming from Kevin Donahue of Fanblogs fame. Although disagreeing with my take on the likelihood of Fisher accepting a potential Auburn offer, Kevin's comment was good news for those of us unsold on Fisher's candidacy:

Jerry - respectfully... there is absolutely no chance in Hades that Jimbo comes to Auburn. Let's explore....

1- Jimbo has wanted to be at FSU his entire life. A classic shot of Fisher on the sidelines as a QB at Samford wearing an Noles ballcap is the only proof I can offer above his own words for the past three years.

2- Jimbo is a Bowden, for all intents and purposes. He's played for a Bowden and coached with two. Taking over for Bobby may seem like losing battle, but for Jimbo it is almost like succeeding his own father.

3- If money were his goal, Jimbo could get as much (possibly more, I'm not sure) by staying at FSU. Forget the buyout, Jimbo is guaranteed a top salary in two years when he takes over for Bowden. His contract is rumored to be guaranteed at $3.5 for 10 years. Cha-ching.

4- Perhaps above all, Jimbo has an extremely close friendship with Terry Bowden. To even interview with Auburn would be a serious affront to his longtime friend and mentor.

There are probably other reasons, but I can't think of them right now.

Those are enough for me, particularly considering how tall a hurdle that buyout must be in the wake of paying Tubby, Franklin, Borges, other assistants, new assistants, etc. I think Auburn fans can probably chalk Fisher's non-denial denials as Jimmy Sexton-planned intrigue for the sake of intrigue, and safely assume Auburn's next head coach will be someone else.

In response to this Works post from last Friday, Sean writes the following:

My problem with the administration isn’t the tepid support which likely caused Tuberville to decide he was better off leaving this year than getting canned next year. I think you and some others have made the case that decline was present and the, shall we say, inconsistency Tuberville’s teams displayed over a ten year period was the norm. So the cases for and against Tuberville were equally strong.

Where I think the adminstration is in the wrong is not having the cojones to fire the man and then stand up and say what he did was great, but they felt that the next step could be achieved by someone else. Instead, the administration offered little support to him and hoped he would come back so they could spend the next year looking for a coach and fire Tuberville when he lost two out of the first four games in 2009 and when they had a coach lined up and ready to go ...

... I'm not saying this isn't the norm pretty much everywhere. I just wish it wasn't.

I think these are some valid points, and they're echoed in the angry post War Eagle Atlanta put up yesterday at Track'Em. Certainly, even if I stand by my contention that Jacobs wasn't a bald-faced liar at that press conference, both the administration and Tubby could have been a lot more forthright about what took place in those meetings.

But for me, exactly how angry we need to be--if at all--at Fail Jacobs and the Powers that Be* boils down to exactly how much or how little "support" they actually offered Tubby. If all they asked of Tubby was a new offensive staff and he refused to either can the BBQ crew or resign without his buyout ... to me, that's enough support. Even if the closest technical term we have to the Auburn admin buying him out at that point is "firing" him, the decision here was Tubby's--he could come back or he could stop coaching, and he chose the latter. In that sense, he "resigned." If the conditions for his return were different, however, everything changes.

It's the slipperiness of the terms we're using and the deep uncertainty about what actually went on between Jacobs and Tubby that make me awfully uneasy about handing out blanket blame to the administration and blanket absolution to Tubby. Of course, not everyone sees it that way, including the JCCW's old friends at the Capstone Report, who responded to this post defending the administration with the following:

The analysis ignores a valuable source of information(:) the O-A News story filed last night reporting the situation at the Tuberville home.

When Tuberville's mother says he was fired, you should probably believe what she says. She doesn't have a reason to play nice. Tuberville does--he looks better to posterity and future employers to behave graciously and with dignity. The way he behaves now cements his legacy in a good way.

Furthermore, Tuberville didn't accept a reduction in the buyout—it was prorated based on the months completed this year. The $5.1 million means nothing other than Auburn is paying what it would be obligated to pay him if it terminated him.

When you take two pieces of evidence, a statement from Tuberville's family and the fact Auburn is paying him—it isn't a leap of faith to say the AD lied today.

First, yeah, I screwed up the buyout thing. It was a long couple of days.

But as for Jacobs' lying ... look, it would be great if this was a simple situation that could be explained in simple words. But it's not simple. It's complicated, way, way too complicated for statements as simple as "Tubby resigned" or "Tubby got fired" to be accurate. Neither one of those reflects the truth. The truth is hiding somewhere in the icky gray murk between them, and it's probably never coming out. Jacobs wasn't honest, but he wasn't lying, either. Sometimes, the truth's just that complex, and unless someone (Tubby) offers some hard evidence about what went on in those meetings, this is one of those times.

Unless, of course, you take at face value the word of an exceedingly unbiased, completely neutral judge like Tuberville's Mom. (A word she refused to repeat, incidentally, for the benefit of the AP.) I mean, of course she's going to paint Tubby's bosses as the bad guys and her son as a victim. She's his Mom. Moms are awesome, 'cause they'll say anything if it'll make you look better or feel better. Why, I bet if you asked the Capstone Report's mothers, they'd even tell you their blog was worth reading.

*First album: Absolutely. Tracklisting: 1. "We Will Have No Constraints" 2. "Willingness and Assurances" 3. "You'd Have to Ask Tommy" 4. "The First Time I've Thought About That" 5. "What His Title May Be" 6. "Three Times of Asking" 7. "Tough Business" 8. "Dr. Richardson (When I Interviewed)" 9. "Call These Commitments" 10. "We Just Thought That Was the Best Way to Treat Him."

What Auburn needs

To be honest, well, a guy kinda like this ...



That's Tubby, and as you can see from the fact the hair on the top of his head was still dark and not winterized by the job, it was still pretty early in his Auburn tenure (it may be from his introductory press conference; I don't know). Young (well, Younger) Tubby was pretty much everything an Auburn program reeling from Bowden mismanagement needed. If Auburn strikes this kind of gold again, we're all going to be very, very fortunate.

What made Younger Tubby such a good coach for Auburn? What attributes did he bring that New Auburn Head Coach will have to bring? Here's three, ranked in order of importance according to the JCCW's always-humble opinion:

1. Players playing above their talent level.

Let's not mince words here or lie to ourselves: it's not easy to recruit to Auburn. Our home state isn't talent-rich as Florida, Louisiana, or Georgia and what talent there is grows up supporting our rival more often than not, an effect which becomes even more severe when said talent is coached competently. We have to battle Georgia and Georgia Tech in our traditional recruiting grounds in west Georgia, and again, those battles become more difficult when those teams have competent coaches. Ditto the Florida panhandle. Ditto, well, everywhere. There's a sad and unfortunate reason both stars from the 2007 class (Burns and Ziemba) arrived from Arkansas.

The point of all this: as long as Saban's at Alabama, Richt's at Georgia, Meyer's at Florida, and Miles is at LSU, Auburn is not realistically going to recruit as well as those four programs on a year-in, year-out basis. How wide the recruiting gap could actually become is, obviously, debatable, but I think the following statement is just about fact: Auburn will have to make up a talent deficit to compete for titles in the current SEC.

By-and-large, that's what we want as Auburn fans, right? We're not really that demanding, despite what they're saying about us out there right now. We don't need to go to Atlanta every year, don't need championships every other year the way some people (*cough*LSU fans*cough*) apparently do. We just want to be in the mix, and we're happy. To stay in that mix going against the likes of our current rivals, Auburn is going to have to play over their heads on a regular basis.

That's what Tubby's teams did. Not always. But often enough that Auburn stayed in the mix, and stayed there long enough to pull out a couple of trips to Atlanta and more remember-this-one-forever kind of victories than some programs get in their entire existence. This is certainly an attainable goal for whoever steps into Tubby's shoes, no matter who happens to be sitting on the throne in Tuscaloosa.

This is where success at Auburn starts: in the coaches getting every last drop of execution and effort out of their players, regardless of how talented they might be.

2. Recruiting.

Of course, it helps just a wee bit if the players you're getting the most out of have, um, a lot in them to get out. Or something.

Anyways: since recruiting to Auburn isn't always easy, Auburn needs someone good at it, someone who can both win a few battles for the studs and who's got a good eye for overlooked prospects. (Tubby? Boy howdy could he be good at it.)

3. Scheme and Vision

This was always the most underrated aspect of Tubby's tenure: the dude could coach some defense. He had his plan for it: recruit smaller, faster, more athletic guys who could knife into the backfield and swarm to the ball, rather than getting a bunch of wide bodies out there to muck things up. And between this vision, Tubby's already sturdy X's and O's from his coordinating days, and the good work of the DC's he would hire and collaborate with, Auburn has had one of the best defenses in the country.

Auburn's next coach doesn't have to be a defensive genius or an offensive guru. But he should probably be one or the other. Ask Ed Orgeron: all the recruiting in the world doesn't help if you can't get your players into the positions they need to be in to win.

Vetoes

Auburn's coach doesn't has to be a saint. His players don't have to be saints. But he and his players have to act like they are--if not all the time, the overwhelming majority of it--or it's not going to work.

Auburn's coach has to have his players graduate. He can't cheat or have other kinds of run-ins with the NCAA. From the JCCW's perspective, he can't overrecruit to this kind of degree. I'd distinctly prefer it if he didn't embarrass his opponents.*

And while it's not a requirement, if he could be on good terms with the press and his subordinates and not act like football was some kind of all-consuming brain disease--so I could go on holding those things against Alabama's head coach to irrational levels without being a total hypocrite--that'd be swell.

Tubby did all these things.

The search for his replacement--for Tubby, actually, just a different, more energetic version of him--starts now.

*Tubby was generally pretty good about this, but remember that fake field goal in the fourth quarter of a runaway against Sherill's Miss. St. team? I still kinda wish he hadn't done that. Nobody's perfect, I suppose.

One-tenth

Tuberville as of this morning:

"I'm going to work a little bit with Dr. Gogue and see if there's anything he wants me to do. I'm an Auburn person and I believe in this school. They've done a lot more for me than I've done for them, so I'm going to try to give back as much as I can as long as I'm not really doing anything. But I'm not going to be in the way."

Here's to hoping whoever Auburn hires as its next football coach will have one-tenth as much class as Tommy Tuberville showed today.

War Eagle, coach.

Good Morning, Auburn

Wake up, Auburn! It's about 8 a.m. CST Thursday morning. Do you know who your head coach is?

Before moving on to the business of the day--profiling Auburn's alleged and maybe-not-as-alleged coaching candidates--obviously we need to wrap up some of the news and reaction from yesterday. And because I can't think of any organizing principle for this, here, have a list:

1. When the story broke, the knee-jerk reaction I expected from the nation's punditry and the majority of Auburn fans--to the former's ignorant shame and the latter's loyal credit, as unfair as that seems--was that Jay Jacobs and the Auburn Board were about to wind up the butt end of a thousand stupid, impatient, ungrateful, meddling bumblers-type portrayals. To date that's pretty much been the case.

As I essentially said yesterday, I think that's unfair at this point, seeing as how if the Auburn admin and Tubby came to an impasse over what to do with his current staff, it's not like Jacobs and the Board would have had a lot of options. Leaving things status quo after Auburn's worst season in 10 years was never an option.

But in trying to cut that criticism off at the pass, I don't think I emphasized enough yesterday how much this outcome truly saddens and disappoints me, because it did. I liked Tubby. I think he did a phenomenal job. I think we are all in agreement on this: He deserved better.

Yesterday I wrote "If this was ultimately the administration's decision, I won't endorse it. But I can respect it for being forward-looking enough to see the handwriting on the wall," which prompted the following comment from reader Charlie I completely cosign with:

I disagree a lot with this, because Auburn already has an image problem regarding loyalty to a coach. It makes the school less appealing to potential hires and it will make people quicker to jump when another opportunity arises (not just in football -- across the athletic department).

Let's say Tuberville has lost his fire, and he's not the same coach he was before, and next season is a six or seven win mediocrity, and then he gets fired. Would that be so much worse?

No, it certainly would not. You give me a choice right now between Tubby coaching his way to 6-6 next year and the current fracture within the Auburn family and scalding media portrayals outside, and I take the former every single time. As I've said before: regardless of how 2009 might have turned out, giving Tubby a chance to do better was the right thing to do.

Assuming that the weeklong peace talks were not just a fait accompli intended to gauge Tubby's willingness to accepting a reduced buyout, I can accept what happened yesterday. But let me make clear: I'm not happy about it. Tubby was a good man and a good coach. It should not have ended like this.

2. All that said, I've seen an awful lot of comparisons between the current situation and 2003's, and I think I need to state this as plainly as I can:

2008 MAKES 2003 LOOK LIKE 2004.

I went back into the NCAA's stats database to build on my earlier look on Auburn's yearly net yards-per-play (offensive yards-per-play minus defensive yards-per-play allowed), so I can now give you Tubby's entire tenure laid out in easily digestible statistical form:

1999: -.6 (4.40/4.99)
2000: +.5 (5.25/4.72)
2001: +.04 (5.33/5.29)
2002: +1.1 (5.84/4.78)
2003: +1.1 (5.66/4.66)
2004: +1.6 (6.4/4.8)
2005: +1.0 (6.0/5.0)
2006: +0.6 (5.5/4.9)
2007: +0.3 (4.8/4.5)
2008: -0.2 (4.6/4.8)

In other words: this is not like bouncing back from 2003 at all. This is like going forward from 1999, like starting the rebuilding process all over again. When you hear media critics haranguing Auburn for deciding to "start from scratch," remember: Auburn would be starting from scratch in 2009 regardless of who's the head coach.

3. The most important bit of reporting the guys on the Auburn beat can produce over the next couple of days, in my oh-so-humble-opinion, will be a complete report on what happened in those meetings between Tubby and the Jays ... so I'm a little surprised we seem to get our first taste of it on page 2 of an article detailing the reaction from the "Auburn family":

Auburn trustee Paul Spina said Tuberville and Auburn officials had reached an agreement for him to remain as head coach on Monday, but that by Wednesday it was Tuberville who had changed his mind.

"He met with (Athletics Director) Jay Jacobs on Monday and said he (Tuberville) wanted to start over and fix it, and they talked about who he could go after for assistant coaches," Spina said. "Then he went home (Tuesday), and called Jay and said, `Let's have lunch.' They weren't supposed to meet until after lunch.

"But at lunch, Tommy said he'd talked with (his wife) Suzanne and she wanted him to get out of the business. And Tommy said, `If Auburn will take care of me, that's what I'd like to do.'"

Spina said it was at that point that Jacobs and Auburn President Jay Gogue agreed to work out a satisfactory resignation package for Tuberville.

"These are Tommy Tuberville's terms," said Terry Henley, a former Auburn running back. "His and his family's terms. He wants to stay in Auburn."

If this is true--and while Spina and Henley obviously might have an agenda, it would take some serious cojones to lie this bald-facedly--a lot of the barbs sent Jacobs' (and Gogue's) way over the last 24 hours by Auburn fans need to be retracted. I'm afraid I can't share Jay's anger with the Auburn admin; I wish it had worked out differently, but I'm just not convinced at all Auburn's leadership is deserving of this kind of animosity. (Unless, of course, they hire Petrino, at which point: open season.)

4. Seriously, spare me the crocodile tears.

5. The recruiting class is going to shatter. But coaching transitions are hell on that front whether they happen today, next year, or the year after.

6. One thing that hasn't changed though all of this, courtesy of the Pigskin Pathos:



Lowder still blows.

The JCCW starts breaking down the candidates to become Auburn's next head coach soon.

Tubby out

Goldberg, like so.

How in the hell did it come to this, this soon? How?

First of many UPDATES, 5:44: the OA-News reports that Tubby resigned rather than having been fired outright, which would seem to lend credence to the "Either your assistants go or you go with them" thread of belief. Jay G. Tate now also reporting that he's gone.

More knee-jerk reaction coming soon now that we've got multiple-source confirmation.

UPDATE 6:15: OK, so, the JCCW's instantaneous reactions to finding out--holy crap, man--that Tommy Tuberville will no longer be Auburn's football coach:

1. First, despite the fact that there will be time for eulogies later, a massive thanks to Tubby for what he's done for Auburn. I have serious doubts that anyone, anyone would have put together the kind of 10-year run at Auburn he's had. Make no mistake: Auburn is a difficult job, and perfect or not Tubby performed it as well as it could have reasonably been performed.

2. Assuming that Will Muschamp is indeed committed to remaining Mack Brown's understudy, the JCCW's preferred shortlist reads like so, in no particular order for the time being: Mike Leach, Paul Johnson, Brian Kelly, Charlie Strong/Dan Mullen.

3. If Bobby Petrino is hired as Auburn's coach, I will keep a bucket beside my couch during all Auburn games the way you kept one beside your bed when you were sick as a kid, and between each quarter I will induce vomiting into the bucket as a commemoration for Auburn's decision to hire him. Petrino is obviously a terrific coach, but he will care nothing for Auburn and nothing the Auburn admin could do would crap all over Tubby's memory and dignity by replacing him with this mercenary. UPDATE, FWIW Petrino's agent says he's "not a candidate." I know, I know, it's Petrino, but I think even he might balk at abandoning one SEC West job for another after a single season. HT to GSB, who also provides a potentially relevant quote from Barnhart on Leach.

4. Prepare yourself, Auburn fans, for an onslaught of negative press the likes of which we haven't seen since 2003. Remember two things:

First, we still don't know the details. If Tubby walked away in response to a demand that he fire his current staff members, that's on Tubby. Said demand is a perfectly reasonable one for the Auburn admin to make. Keeping an offensive coaching staff as unproductive as the current one has been for the previous three seasons would mean putting Tubby's personal loyalty above his loyalty to the program and the institution. We don't know that's what happened, but we also don't know that Tubby was shoved out, either. We will have to wait.

Second, even if this move was the wrong one from a standpoint of fairness or "doing right" by Tubby, it's the right one from the standpoint of what's best for Auburn's football program. This program was in the kind of decline it would have taken a miracle OC hire to pull itself out of, and frankly none of the names I've seen bandied about were going to be that miracle.

If this was ultimately the administration's decision, I won't endorse it. But I can respect it for being forward-looking enough to see the handwriting on the wall. Need more convincing? Read Jay Coulter's account of one Auburn recruits' experience and tell me if a coach with Tubby's current energy level is still the optimum choice for a program that shares a state with a Saban-coached team.

I won't argue this the right thing for Auburn, but it probably is the best thing for Auburn.

UPDATE, 6:22: From the Track'Em comment thread, a name I honestly hadn't thought about but that makes some logical sense, especially if Papa Bowden is bound-and-determined to beat out JoePa: Jimbo Fisher.

UPDATE, 7:24: I can tell already, I'm going to end up a broken record on this over the next several weeks (or months, or years), but: this was NOT a case of Auburn having "one bad year." Statistically, the 2006 team was in no way an 11-2 team and represented a substantial step down from the 2005 quality team. 2007 was another dramatic step down, this time with the losses to accompany it. And the 2008 record is not a fluke: Auburn is tied for 107th in the country in offensive yards-per-play and was a missed Miss. St. field goal and a botched Tennessee handoff from going winless in the SEC.

Again: I wish Tubby had remained in charge another year, or possibly longer. But the Season of DEATH wasn't a random slip-up. It's the culmination of a host of problems within the program that have produced a consistent three-year decline. If during these meetings with Jacobs, Tubby wasn't willing to address those problems, Auburn is better off having moved on.

All right, the "breaking developments" phase seems to have passed, so unless something huge happens, the JCCW will be back tomorrow to start breaking down the coaching search and perhaps write the Tubby eulogy if I'm feeling up to it (probably not). 'Night.

Clarifying Tubby

So, as you may have heard, in last night's latest episode of General hAUspital Tubby got together with the Jays for a meeting that resulted in the following statement from the Auburn athletic department:

"President Gogue, Jay Jacobs and Coach Tuberville did meet Monday to have their annual end of the season meeting. Further conversations between Jay Jacobs and Coach Tuberville will take place in the following days to discuss Coach Tuberville's plan to make improvements for the program moving forward under his leadership."

Like Jay (uh, Coulter), it's my read that the "under his leadership" implies that the operative plan is for Tubby to return in 2009--if not yet exactly setting it in stone. As I've stated repeatedly before--and as recently as yesterday--this is the course I'd like Auburn to take.

But I want to make clear: after watching the Iron Bowl, the reason I want Tubby to return doesn't have a whole lot to do with my assessment of what he'll be able to do with Auburn's football program going forward. Rereading the same Jay post I quoted yesterday afternoon, I find myself in (almost) the exact same ambivalent boat:

I've been outspoken in my support of Tuberville. He's been the perfect ambassador for the university. He's won on the field, his players have stayed out of trouble and they perform in the classroom. It would be hard to ask much more from a coach than what he's given Auburn during the past 10 years.

But the future of this program is not about the past. It's about tomorrow and that's an ugly picture at the moment ...

This is not a one year job. This week's discussion should not be about giving Tuberville another season, but rather do they have faith he can rebuild the program over the next couple of years. With the team in its current state, it's hard to see things getting significantly better next season.

Do Auburn officials, alumni and fans have a strong enough stomach to go through this process with Tuberville? ... Saturday was no aberration. Alabama passed Auburn so quickly that none of us saw it coming. This falls squarely on the shoulders of Tuberville.

Does he deserve another chance? Perhaps. Would it be an outrage if he were fired this week? I'm not so sure anymore.

Jay and I differ on the "perhaps"--I am decidedly behind Tubby getting his shot at making amends. But if I believe (as I do) that it truly is "hard to see things getting significantly better next season," that (as I wrote yesterday) "I'm past the point of genuinely expecting Tubby to accomplish much" with that shot, I realize it does beg the question: with Auburn at such a critical juncture, with decisive action needed ASAP to slow Saban's momentum and pull Auburn out of the muck they've slipped into, why wait? Why prolong the inevitable? If a change is coming, why not make it as early as possible, when it can make the most difference?

One very simple reason: it's the right thing to do.

Even in college football, there are bigger things than college football, most of which fall under an umbrella we might call "fairness." Fair play, coaches being fair to the players, administration being fair to the fans, etc. Even in college football, what's fair is fair.

And what's fair is to give Tommy Tuberville his chance to make amends. He's earned that much. Is it the best thing for Auburn football in terms of wins and losses, in terms of the bottom line? I'm going to go ahead and say probably not (though there are few times I've hoped so badly to be wrong). Is it the best thing for Auburn football in terms of what ought to be done, in terms of what's fair and what's right and good? Yes. Certainly, unequivocally, yes.

And hey, who knows? Maybe Tubby will earn himself a second mulligan all over again.

Hope, again

This is the last post for today. Check in tomorrow a.m. for an update on last year's "Win" post, and check below for thoughts on the Coachbot, thoughts on the attitudes that shape the rivalry, and a look at what other Auburn bloggers are saying. See you then.



In an unfortunate number of ways, the song for this week's game remains the same as the one we sang two weeks ago: there's precious little honest, rational reason to expect anything but a loss. Alabama has the better team. The better team wins this rivalry substantially more often than it loses it. That's about all there is to it. From that standpoint.

But there is another standpoint: the standpoint that Tommy Tuberville is too proud, too good a coach, too Tommy Tuberville to fail to win this sort of game once again. This is, again, the same standpoint we took two weeks ago. And Auburn did improve. Auburn did give Georgia a better game than Auburn on-paper was supposed to. But they didn't win.

What's changed? Why this Saturday instead of two Saturdays ago? Two reasons:

1. A loss tomorrow would mean an entire season without Auburn having played the complete game, an entire season without one of Tubby's trademark rabbits-out-of-the-hat.In his nine complete seasons with Auburn, Tubby has never failed to give us one of these. 9-for-9. He has only one chance left. He will take it.

2. The Story. The narrative of Auburn's disastrous early season, ho-hum midseason, and slow grind back to unexpected triumph in the late season can only have one climax. The plucky underdogs never win the sorta-big game against the mild-mannered, easygoing head coach. They win the biggest game of the year against the borderline-evil head coach. That's how these things work.

Of this I have little doubt: Auburn is going to go to Tuscaloosa and play their best game of the year. They have to. Otherwise their best game of the year will be one of two four- or five-point losses at home to the two biggest non-Alabama rivals on the schedule, and ... what? What kind of season is that?

No. Auburn will play well. They will play like men, like Tubby's men, like Tigers. Logic tells us it won't be enough, and if that's the case, there won't be any need for forgiveness because they'll be no injury.

But something beyond logic--let's go ahead and call it faith--tells us it may very well be enough. The presence of Tommy Tuberville--even now, at the end of the long and treacherous road this season has become--tells me it will be.

Until the final whistle blows tomorrow, I'll listen. I'll believe. It will happen. War Eagle.

Um ... not so much

The recent run of optimistic posts will resume shortly. But this one needs the Smiths. Rename it "Football Program in a Coma" and it fits perfectly ... well, except for the murdering part.

A large part of Tubby's job these days is selling fans, players, recruits, admin, etc. on his continued tenure, so I don't blame him for taking the following tack on why 2008 has been so infected with DEATH ...

Tuberville nodded in agreement that Auburn is just a handful of plays away from having a lot better record. He added, "it's the same season we had last year. There's really no difference, other than we made a few plays at the end of the game. This year we didn't make any. We just didn't get it done; didn't finish. We had a couple of balls in the end zone, extra points missed, field goals. There's really not a lot of difference, other than last year we made a few more plays."

... but yeah, it's not quite the case. Auburn has, in fact, made a few plays at the end of games this year. But they came on defense against Mississippi St. and Tennessee, so it's hard to blame Tubby for forgetting them (willfully or accidentally).

Nonetheless, Auburn in (regular season) single-possession games in 2007: 3-3. Auburn in single-possession games in 2008 thus far: 2-4. So Auburn's maybe gotten a little less lucky, had one game's worth more of end-game failure, but it's not like the 2007 team was crazy clutch and 2008's is a bunch of chokers.

More damningly, of course, is that however Tubby might see it, Auburn's just not as good as they were last year. The 2007 team lost only one game by more than a score, for instance, while 2008's lost two. The hardest evidence of the decline comes in Auburn's yardage totals: in 2007, Auburn gained 4.8 yards a play while giving up 4.5 for a net yard-per-play of +.3; in 2008, that number has slipped to -.2.

Chillingly, this isn't exactly a new trend:

2004: +1.8 (6.4/4.8)
2005: +1.0 (6.0/5.0)
2006: +0.6 (5.5/4.9)
2007: +0.3 (4.8/4.5)
2008: -0.2 (4.6/4.8)

There's some statistical noise in the varying quality of the schedule each year--that this year's squad allows less per-play than the 2006 version is directly attributable, I suspect, to the sucktacular qualities of the offenses at Mississippi St., Tennessee, and Vandy--but accounting for those kinds of variable only changes the picture so much. It's not just a few plays here and there. This is the direction Auburn's football program has taken over the past four years, laid out as starkly as it can be.

I fully support another year at the helm for Tubby regardless of what happens at the Iron Bowl. But let's not kid ourselves about to the amount of work that has to be done, to the depth of the turnaround that has to take place. It won't just be about rebounding from 2008. It's about reversing a marked decline that's spanned four seasons now. And while I suspect that in private Tubby doesn't really believe the Season of DEATH is a fluke just waiting for a handful of fourth quarter plays to be completely undone, if he does believe that, Auburn is in trouble.

As Morrissey sings in the video above: I know, I know, it's serious. Forgive me, but there are times even I have to ask: Do you really think she'll we'll pull through? Do you really think we'll pull through?

Election Day stunner: Tide fan believes Auburn is in trouble

I quite honestly did not want to write yet another post about the Auburn head coaching situation. This one marks like the 345th one of the last three weeks and by the time the book is finally closed on the Season of DEATH, I'm sure I'll have written 345 more. But there are certain times when, as an Auburn Blogger, you hear the clarion call of Tide bias and Auburn-smearing and know you have to stand up and fisk for what is right.

This is one of those times. That post is written by the Fanhouse's Pete Holiday, that noted dispenser of even-handed, rational analysis of all things college football in the state of Alabama. Wait, that's wrong: I meant the slavering Tide zealot who regularly uses the ostensibly neutral-ground Fanhouse platform to, say, talk smack about Auburn fans' CRAZY IDEA that our football team probably should focus on winning its own state before it starts worrying about national titles, a CRAZY IDEA that might just have something to do with which team has actually won said state for most of this decade. (Nevermind the omnipresent irony whenever any Tide fan claiming they don't care about Auburn goes out of their way to build up an [unlinked, you'll notice] Auburn straw man, point at it, and scream "OBSESSED! LOOK HOW OBSESSED!", a maneuver about as convincing as Richard Simmons in Wranglers. Nevermind, of course, that their own idols have stated without much equivocation what they thought of the importance of the Iron Bowl. But I digress.)

This time around, Holiday is asking "Will Fulmer's Departure Force Auburn's Hand?", a question that might actually have some merit if not handled by someone who, metaphorically speaking, is doing the handling simultaneous to clutching the giant ax they're grinding and without opposable thumbs. But let's see what he has to say:

Yesterday, Phil Fulmer became the third BCS conference coach to lose his job during the middle of this season. That leaves the hottest seat in the country the one directly below Tommy Tuberville's rear end.

Well, actually, I'd say the very hottest seat belongs to SDSU's Chuck Long, who's basically a dead man walking at this point. But maybe Holiday is being BCS-specific and obviously Auburn's job does carry a good deal more pressure, so sure, hottest seat in the country. Let's continue.

The question the Auburn trustees certainly must be asking themselves is this: are they going to be at a competitive disadvantage if they wait until the end of the year to fire Tuberville?

The answer is a resounding "yes".

Or, rather, a resounding "possibly." For there to be a competitive disadvantage, Auburn would have to be pursuing an identical two- or maybe three-candidate pool as the other BCS schools and there would have to be a genuinely sharp dropoff in candidate quality from that pool to the next and the other BCS schools would have to be successful in getting their ducks in a row before the end of the season and you're assuming an already-burned once man like Bobby Lowder and the other powers that be are incapable of gauging and/or expressing back-channel interest in other candidates without word leaking out and said candidates would have to be unwilling to wait and see what happens with Auburn's job.

Is all of that possible? Why certainly. But looks to me that's a good several assumptions short of "resounding."

Of course, it's not a guarantee that Coach Tuberville will find himself looking for work come December,

Well, yes, there is the eensy-teensy matter that Tubby might actually hang onto his job, and that to fire him midseason before even giving him the chance to redeem himself against Auburn's two biggest rivals* would be a national disgrace. Since this is a matter that sort of renders the whole "Should they fire him now?" argument completely moot, I'm sure Holiday will spend an appropriate amount of time discussing it ...

but if he is, Auburn will find themselves more than a month behind in their coaching search, and with some heavy competition.

Washington, Clemson, and Tennessee are all in the market right now. That provides a pretty wide range of options for the up-and-coming head coach.

Oh. He's going to gloss over it in the glossiest fashion possible. Nevermind. I will however, agree that our hypothetical "up-and-coming head coach" will have some worthwhile options other than hypothetically coach-hungry Auburn.

At Washington you're a part of a conference that gets a decent amount of respect while also fielding one of the weakest bottoms of the BCS conferences. Granted, you're going to have to play USC every year, but if you put together a nationally competitive team and, many years, the only thing standing between you and a BCS berth is the Trojans.

First off, saying that USC is the only thing that stands between Washington and a BCS bowl berth is like saying that outer space is the only thing that stands between me and my dreams of owning my own luxury apartment complex on the moon. Beyond that: how many candidates are both Washington and Auburn seriously going to look at? The hot names for the U-Dub job are Jim Mora Jr., Gary Pinkel, and current/former USC OCs Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin. (There's also that nutty Mike Leach rumor.) None of these guys would be on Auburn's shortlist.

Over at Clemson you've got a school that is located in the football-crazed southeast, has a middling SEC school on the schedule every year, and finds itself in what is quite possibly the weakest BCS conference in the country. Super-agent Jimmy Sexton even says that Clemson is more attractive than the SEC.

I hardly think "Is South Carolina on the schedule, or not?" will be one of the first questions asked by a prospective head coach when deciding where to play his trade, but eh, I'm not going to take issue with the rest of this. Assuming the salaries were similar, I could see a candidate deciding he'd rather try to fill the power vacuum at the top of the ACC than tangle with Saban, Miles, and Richt on a yearly basis.

Tennessee is a lot like Auburn in terms of what they have there right now, with a few big differences. For starters, the new head coach in Knoxville isn't going to have to deal with Bobby Lowder or the rest of the band of meddling trustees and boosters on the Plains.

An obstacle so daunting Auburn's gone through three head coaches--three! Why, it's like they don't even get the nameplate screwed onto the office door before they have to buy a new one!--in the past 28 years. (Or five in 58 years, if you prefer the longview.)

Maybe the environment is a little more stable in Knoxville, but there's also been talk Fat Phil was on his way out since the day they stuck his crystal football in the trophy case. The difference from the JCCW's (admittedly partisan) viewpoint is negligible.

The Volunteers support a richer football tradition than the Tigers do.

Spoken like the truest of Tide fans. Georgia has truckloads more tradition than Florida; over the past 20 years that tradition has gotten them a boatload of losses and a bag of potato chips.

All that matters is what's the better job now. There are reasons to think Tennessee's the better job: wider fan support; perhaps more cash and better facilities; probably--all things being equal--a little more natural recruiting pull. "A richer football tradition" is not one of them.

Both teams are in the SEC and play both Alabama and Georgia every year, which could either be looked at as a good thing or a bad thing. The SEC might also be one of the most stratified conferences in the country and the normally robust conference has definitely seen some better days top-to-bottom.

These facts explain why Tennessee would be a better coaching destination than Auburn ... how?

You can compare an Auburn opening to any one of these jobs and come up with some good reasons to head to the Loveliest Little Village,

I don't know if "Little" is supposed to be some kind of subtle diss at Auburn or just a screw-up. If it's the former, well, yes, Auburn is not a very big city, how clever to point it out; if it's the latter, it's just "Loveliest Village," thanks. (Also thanks for the brief stab at balance. It is, actually, appreciated.)

but does Auburn hold up to all three of them? And if it does, will it be a big enough difference to offset the weeks/months advantage the Huskies, Tigers, and Volunteers will have in their coaching search?

Eh, maybe not. If all the conditions I listed above that added up to a resounding "possibly" are met, then yes, Auburn's coaching search, should it be necessary, could suffer for having begun after the season. But Auburn's simply not going to be in any kind of position to fire Tubby before he faces Alabama. Surely this fact has to be acknowledged somehow?

Is Auburn facing a situation where they need to decide right now whether to fire Tuberville or wait until next year?

Or, instead of acknowledging it, it can be totally ignored in favor of portraying the situation in the exact opposite light.

With their head coach getting his recruiting lunch eaten all over the conference, can the Tigers afford to wait until next year?

OK, this "recruiting lunch" thing is an outright falsehood. Auburn currently has the top class in the conference according to Scout and the fifth-best according to Rivals. Yes, with all the early commitments those rankings are much more likely to fall than rise. Yes, the firing of Franklin and the increasing Tubby rumors mean that many of those commitments are on shaky ground that will only be firmed up with a top-notch coordinator hire. But for the time being Auburn's 2009 class is both well-regarded and holding together. Only a 'Bama fan could call it a failure with a straight face.

Of course, it's likely that only a 'Bama fan would write this particular post in the first place. The bottom line of Holiday's argument is that Auburn could be making a mistake by not firing Tuberville immediately. Nevermind that doing so would be grossly unfair to both Tubby and the current Auburn players. Nevermind that it would only enhance the coach-unfriendly reputation Holiday acknowledges already exists. Nevermind that Auburn would be making this mockery out of common sense and fairness in the name of blindly pursuing a pool of candidates that's no better than 50/50 to run dry before the end of the year. Nevermind all of that--Auburn's hand is forced!

Please.

Look, I think it's more than fair to discuss what kind of an impact Fulmer's dismissal might have on both Auburn's decision and, should that decision be to release Tubby, Auburn's eventual coaching search. Hell, I did just that myself last week. But that impact is simply that it makes Tubby's dismissal at season's end that much more of a gamble, and maybe that much less likely. It is, no question, one more complication in a situation already very, very complicated.

But that's it. It does not make Auburn's "decision" to evaluate him after this year a mistake, because there's no "decision" to be made right now at all. For Holiday to suggest that not only is there a choice to be made but that Auburn's making the wrong one is to--once again--build an orange-and-blue straw man solely for the purpose of knocking it down.

*FWIW, I think the timing of Fulmer's firing was fine; he's been on the precipice forever and with only the likes of Vandy and Kentucky left on the schedule, there was no way back for him this time. Obviously, Tubby's case is more than a little different.

Tubby for Auburn '09 campaign sees odds dip

Wait, wasn't there supposed to be more yelling?

You've probably read the new Scarbinsky column by now, the one in which the following passage appears:

Wouldn't it be ironic if he left Oxford in a pine box after all?

After Ole Miss 17, Auburn 7, the former Ole Miss coach sounded like a man resigned to becoming the former Auburn coach one day soon.

"What happens at the end of the year happens, and there's nothing anybody can do about it," Tuberville said.

Consider the weight of those words.

This didn't sound like the same coach who vowed, 12 days before, that he planned to be at Auburn 10 more years. But that coach hadn't watched his team lose four straight games for the first time since his first season at Auburn.

What do we make of this?

A loose quote just hanging in the air like that is begging for some context, context just a bit less inflammatory than K-Scar's "sounded like a man resigned" editorializing. Tubby was talking in the immediate aftermath of a fourth straight loss, the first one all year where his team hadn't at least been ahead at the half. It's not like Tubby's exaggerating his situation: as much as he'd like it to be, if the buyout gets scraped together, it's out of his hands. And of course, reading too much into any coach's quotes--particularly a coach as traditionally deft at handling the media as Tubby is--is always a waste.

But K-Scar's sadly, demoralizingly accurate when he says that this sure ain't the same angry, firebrandy, you'll-pry-this-headset-from-my-cold-dead-handsy Tuberville we saw a few weeks back. Tubby's best quality has always, always been his ability to fight out from whatever perceived corner he's felt himself and his team had been backed into. It's not necessarily that I mind him acknowledging the difficulties of his situation, but if he's going to drop his gloves to the media after the Ole Miss loss ... what's he going to do if, say, he finishes at 5-7 after a 30-point whipping at the hands of Alabama AAAAAAAAUGGHHH MY FINGERS IT BURNS IT BURNS MAKE IT STOP PLEASE MAKE THE BURNING STOP? Not to mention to effect on the rest of the team--if they see Tubby slumping his shoulders, how are they going to keep theirs, um, unslumped?

Over the past couple of weeks, I've posited two different scenarios in which Tubby might join the realm of the dearly departed head coaches after this year:

1) He decides he's not interested in coaching Auburn without his friends on the offensive staff, whom I can't imagine he has the coaching capital to retain any longer.

2) The Fulmeresque atmosphere surrounding the program after a 5-7 season culminating in a blowout loss to the Tide GOOD GOSH THAT STINGS becomes so toxic it's best for all involved if he moves on.

I saw the first of these two as substantially more likely, since between the intimidating buyout and the goodwill Tubby's built up over the past several seasons amongst the majority of the Auburn fanbase, I had a hard time believing the "Tubby Out!" factions would gain that much sway even in the event of 5-7. I still do. (The trustees' nonsupport is a nonissue, in my humble opinion; when the entire university has nearly lost its freaking accreditation because of trustees' athletic meddling, "no comment" or "We just support the team" is absolutely the correct response, whatever they actually think of Tubby.)

But hearing Tubby respond "there's nothing anybody can do about it" when asked about his chances to stay on after 4-5 makes me think that maybe, just maybe, 5-7 is going to be harder on him and harder on Auburn than I've expected it to be. If I had to place a bet on Tubby staying/Tubby leaving, the JCCW's would still be on the former. But having watched the anger and defiance leak away from Tubby's public proclamations about his job status over the course of just two losses makes me think that the odds are shifting, however slightly, in the direction of the latter.

Two Tubby thoughts

1. Remember this picture?



It was taken after last year's Iron Bowl, and is the best possible argument to the idea (left in my comments recently) that Tubby only pretends to care about beating Alabama as much as Auburn's fans do because it's the easiest way for him to win over the rabble. It's possible (if unlikely, in my opinion) he'd celebrate by holding up his fingers just to please the crowd. It's not possible, however, he would leap on to his offensive line coach's back with a look of unbridled, boyish joy to please the crowd. The crowd isn't involved here. This is between Tubby, and Hugh Nall, and the Iron Bowl, and when I think about the impossibility of ever seeing the coachbot on the far side of the state caught in a snapshot like this, it makes me more hopeful than ever Tommy Tuberville's tenure at Auburn won't end in this season's cataclysm of frustration and defeat.

But this picture is about more than Tubby's joy in beating Alabama, of course. It's about sharing that joy with his friend. Yep, "friend": as if the countless anecdotes and years upon years spent coaching side-by-side weren't enough to convince you, it's right here in all its unmistakable living color glory. If you are the head football coach of a major Division I college football team, after a major, season-ending victory it would be reasonable to shake the hands of your assistants for a job well done, or pat them on the pack, or even offer a warm hug. But forgive me for being pretty gosh-darned certain you don't take a flying leap onto his back like a 15-year-old whose high school baseball team just won Districts unless the ties run a little bit deeper than head coach/assistant coach.

The question before Auburn fans as we ponder a potentially bowl less offseason and the changes it would demand is this: are those ties too deep? It's a little sad that so many Auburn fans have savaged Tubby in recent weeks for showing the all-too-human qualities of loyalty, trust, commitment, etc. towards his long-time assistants. Yes, true, an offensive staff and a head coach that together earn the colloquialism of "barbecue buddies" risk the head coach becoming unable to evaluate the staff's efforts clearly or act in the program's best interests where their roles are concerned. But barbecue buddies are more likely to have each other's back, more likely to "hold the rope" and keep the entire team afloat for their buddies' sake, more likely to see recruiting trips and yet another two-a-day practice in the August sun and a late-night film session as a chance to work together with people they like and trust, rather than some lonely drudgery. Tubby's friendship with his staff is not, in and of itself, the problem.

The problem arrives, of course, when that friendship comes before the team. And I don't have many qualms about saying it did this offseason. Dumb jerk or misunderstood savant or whatever, Tony Franklin should have been able to bring in his own assistants. Expecting position coaches who have never worked in a spread environment to fully and successfully teach spread techniques (and at the behest of a coordinator who has since made no secret of his willingness to be abrasive when it suits him) seems, in retrospect, like the sort of idea that was doomed to folly from the beginning. It's only logical to expect a change as dramatic as shifting from Al Borges' I to Franklin's spread to require an equally dramatic change in the approach of the staff. And now, after 2008, it's quite safe to label offensive ineptitude the norm for Tubby's Auburn tenure rather than the exception. If the need for a top-to-bottom overhaul of Auburn's entire offensive approach wasn't obvious after 2007, it is now. The downward spiral has to be reversed. All the stops have to be pulled out.

Will Collier has never pulled any punches when it comes to those stops equaling the termination of Nall, Steve Ensminger, and Greg Knox, and unsurprisingly, he didn't pull any after the West Virginia game, either:

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.

I can't bring myself to feeling comfortable calling for firings, but I don't have a problem saying this: whoever Auburn's next offensive coordinator happens to be, he should have the right to put together whatever offensive staff he likes. If he wants to keep Eddie Gran, great. If he wants to keep Nall, I'd be surprised, but I could live with that. (If he wants to keep Ensminger and Knox, I'd pretty much just be confused, to be perfectly honest with you.) But that should be up to him. No demands from Tubby. The cleanest slate possible, because that slate is where Auburn's offense has to start after this year's disaster. If that means that this offensive staff moves on, so be it.

And finally, this is the far-and-away biggest reason I wonder if we really might be watching the final games of the Tommy Tuberville era at Auburn. Despite the I'm-not-going-anywhere stump speech, if after a 5-7 or 6-6 season Tubby is forced to choose--as he should be--between 1. a make-or-break season under Bobby Lowder's microscope battling it out against Saban, Miles, Richt, etc. alongside unfamiliar offensive faces operating in unfamiliar offensive ways or 2. a well-cushioned bought-out landing at the 9,000-square foot house where he can host all the barbecues he wants and never have to face telling the same guy whose back he once nearly hopped clear over he no longer has a place on Auburn's football team ... I would still expect him to take option No. 1. He is, as they say, a competitor, and he won't like the idea of leaving on this note any better than I do. But if he did elect to walk out of door No. 2, well, I'll be disappointed. But I'll have had bigger shocks before.

2.



Does it really matter if TSIB's report that Fulmer is already toast is accurate or not? Whether he's lost his job now or he loses it at season's end, he's lost it. 6-6 with the season's highlight victory coming at South Carolina is the best-case scenario, and even that's on the rosy side. And it's not enough. He's done.

Which is another reason why it doesn't make a lot of sense for Auburn to part ways with Tubby now unless, as Will suggests, his loyalty to his assistants forces the issue. Yes, there are some good coaching candidates out there. But there will be next year, too. There always are. Trying to outmneuver and outbid two Southeastern programs of approximately equal stature to Auburn for this particular year's crop when in 2009 there's no Bowden-Fulmer wobblers and Jacobs might very well have his pick of the coaching litter--noting here I sincerely, obviously hope it doesn't come to that--seems the acme of foolishness.

There's all sorts of reasons now isn't the time to fire Tommy Tuberville. This is just one more.

An Auburn man?

It's not surprising that the immediate reaction to Tommy Tuberville's Monday press conference: Wait--why are we talking about strokes? Did someone mention strokes? Who said that Tubby had had a stroke? Do you think he actually had a stroke? Because, let's face it, when the head coach one of the country's most successful football programs over the last five years or so denies having a freaking stroke, that's your lead.

But for me, the really interesting quote was this one:

I just wanted to let you know. I've been here 10 years. I plan on being here 10 more. I'm looking forward to it. All these rumors get started. I'm 10 years an Auburn man and I'm 10 years more of an Auburn man than most because I put my heart and soul in this thing and we ain't going to stop now. We're going to keep working and striving to get better because we do have a good football team.

If you accept that the entire ramble was one long F you, pal to fans who are trying to rumor him right out of his job--and you should, seeing as how it was apparently totally unprompted and seethes with aggravation in more than one point, the stroke thing included as a quintessential seriously, WTF example--this is where Tubby really comes to the point. More of an Auburn man than most. Meaning, more than you are, buddy. Maybe you've been an Auburn fan for a long time. Maybe a lifetime. But unless you are Pat Dye or a handful of his or Tubby's assistants, you have never spent 10 years putting you and your family's livelihood--your heart and soul--on the line when Auburn's football team takes the field.

Does he have a point? Is Tubby within his rights to flex his Auburn man bona fides? Truth be told, part of me's a little unsure he is. Ever since Jetgate, he's always struck me as a step short of becoming the orange-and-blue shaker-shakin' Auburn lifer, the Dye-style coach still publicly cheering the program on years after he's moved on; I'd be awful glad if years from now a retired Tubby is delivering the fire-'em-up speeches at an Auburn pep rally the way Lou Holtz does for Notre Dame, but it's hard to envision. Whatever you think of the Arkansas reports from last winter, it's hard to argue Tubby couldn't have done more to nip that talk in the bud. And of course, the "pine box" is going to hover just over Tubby's right shoulder forever, always warning us that to take this man completely at his word might be a painful, painful thing for us fans someday.

But ah, screw it: Tubby's got the rights. He is the Auburn man he says he is.

Why do I buy it? Why do I believe him? Because, as that press conference yesterday showed, he takes one hell of an exception to being labeled otherwise. Because he would have been well within his rights to hang on after Jetgate just long enough to half-ass his way through a couple of seasons collecting a paycheck from the bastards that tried to get rid of him before laughing all the way to the bank and his next job, and instead handed Auburn the most thrilling back-to-back seasons I can ever remember. Because of posts like this one, where he meets a few random Auburn fans out on the road and is willing to let his guard down enough to shoot the breeze about the recruit he's sizing up, about the differences in high school football from Dixie to Maryland, about some other stuff which I'm sure J.M. will get to in his next post. If you're an Auburn fan, you're worth Tubby taking a few moments to talk to.

And although J.M.'s (understandably) taken the picture down, also because--if you missed it--Tubby was willing to take a quick shot with six fingers up. Because of the whole seven-finger imbroglio, which of course was pretty well completely forgotten as soon as actual football began but still deliciously rankled the more sensitive of our crimson brethren. Because of the whole finger thing, in short, because of what it says about what Tubby wants for this program. What I believe he wants more than anything as Auburn's coach is to beat Alabama.

This, not so coincidentally, is what I want more than anything as an Auburn fan. With all due respect to my fine Auburn Blogger colleagues at the Auburner and their excellent piece on what their hopes are as Auburn fans, the same list here will always start with "1. Beat 'Bama." Claiming to be the best in the SEC is great. Claiming to be the best in the nation, as rarely as those opportunities come along, is downright awesome. But Auburn can't be either of those things if they can't be the best team in our own state, and so 'Bama comes first. That's why it's worth holding those fingers up. That's why Tubby does it. That's how we know he gets it. That's how I know I'm looking at an Auburn man.

And as an Auburn man, not-so-coincidentally, it's the JCCW's position that Tommy Tuberville deserves the right to fix the mess he's made.