Auburn Football: Gene Chizik Didn't Look Like a Winner at SEC Media Days

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer) For someone who should have come into the SEC Media Days smiling like the cat that ate the canary. Gene Chizik never looked like a winner, never sounded like a winner and never acted like a winner.

Instead he looked, spoke and acted like a man who was on trial and trying to sway a jury.

Few asked him about the joy of winning a national championship, and nobody asked the question if this was the beginning of a great era for Auburn.

Because the joy of winning was oh-so-short-lived with all the questions about its validity and every reporter worth his salt knew that the Auburn program was going to fall off a cliff this season compared to last season.

Unlike Alabama's year after championship campaign which resulted in a 10-win season filled with much early season talk of a repeat, everyone knows Auburn will be lucky to win enough games to avoid the SEC's worst bowls.

He rambled the same tired lines over and over in each interview like a politician hitting his talking points. If I never hear one more time about how he feels when his head hits the pillow, it will be too soon.

No one wanted to know how Auburn will deal with the loss of 30 players or who will ultimately replace Cam Newton. Most of the questions were about the problems with the NCAA, the effect it's having on recruiting and so forth.

How bad is Auburn looked upon by the SEC media?

Auburn joined Vanderbilt as the only teams in the league that didn't receive at least one vote to win its division. That makes it kind of hard for anyone to point a finger and call a reporter out as an Auburn basher, since not even one Auburn beat reporters cast a vote for the Tigers.

That and the ongoing questions about varying NCAA investigations and Chizik's very public slap down by an NCAA official who informed him that their investigation was not over were all reasons that Chizik was not seen as a conquering hero, but as a man on trial.

For Chizik, there's little to do but what he has already done once, keep his nose to the grindstone and pull out another miracle season. If he can do that, it will solve all the other problems.