A Tale of Two Tommys: Tuberville at Auburn and Bowden at Clemson

As an addendum to my piece on Tommy Bowden from yesterday, I’m adding another comparison.  Last time, I used Bob Stoops, who has been at Oklahoma the same amount of time Bowden has been at Clemson.  The idea was to give a baseline of a top coach to contrast Bowden’s record against.

It occurred to me today that there might be another coach who had been at his school the same amount of time, and sure enough, there was: Tommy Tuberville.  Like Bowden, he signed up with his band of Tigers in 1999.

They have a fairly similar record, with Tuberville averaging just one more win a year than Bowden does at Clemson.  They both have an undefeated, conference-winning season (though Bowden’s was at Tulane), but after that, they combine to have just one season of fewer than three losses (2006 Auburn).

Bowden has been on the hot seat for about half a decade, and Auburn nearly replaced Tuberville with Bobby Petrino late in 2003.

The difference is that Tuberville’s undefeated, conference-winning season was in the SEC in 2004.  Ever since that year, he has garnered a reputation of being an excellent big game coach.  Let’s take a look at his record to see how he has done.

As with last time, games against I-AA teams have been thrown out. The two neutral site games are SEC championship games.  Tuberville’s home record is slightly better than Bowden’s is, and his road record is noticeably better.

Here is his record broken down by tier.  As a refresher, a top tier team finished the season with a winning percentage of .750 or better, while a second tier team finished the year between .500 and .749, inclusive.

What immediately jumps out is that Tuberville is much better against the first tier teams than Bowden is, and he has yet to lose to a third or fourth tier team.  Their records against the second tier are almost exactly the same.

The question, though, is whether something changed fundamentally in 2004.  That’s the