Do you remember being in high school gym class as the team captains were picking sides for dodgeball? Do you remember how you felt sorry for the little skinny kid nobody wanted on their team?
Well, these days that kid is the Auburn Tigers.
Yes, nobody would pick the Tigers until finally Gene Chizik felt sorry for them and sided with the sorry lot.
OK, Auburn, I'll take you—but only because I feel sorry for you.
How does this happen, you ask?
It happens when you have a powerful trustee with way too much money named Bobby Lowder interfering with your football program to the point that no self-respecting coach wants any part of it.
Why did this happen, you ask?
It happened because Auburn lost to Alabama 36-0 after watching Nick Saban take the Tide back to the top. So Bobby Lowder and Co. mashed the panic button and a trap door opened up, sending Tommy Tuberville into the brier-patch.
And Tuberville said...Skin me, Brer Lowder, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my yeras by de roots, en cut off my legs, but do please, Brer Lowder, don't fling me in dat brier-patch with $5.1 million!
Remember, this is the same Tuberville who had whipped Alabama six years in a row and turned Auburn into one of the top college football programs in the SEC.
How soon they forget down on the Plains of Auburn!
The original list of candidates was impressive, and, according Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs, "Money isn't an issue."
The candidates answered the summons by the Court of Lowder one by one with a resounding..."NO THANKS!"
It would seem that money can't buy you everything, Mr. Lowder.
One by one, the names disappeared—Nutt, Petrino, Muschamp, Jimbo Fisher, Spurrier, Johnson, Turner Gill, Patterson, and a host of others—until someone finally said "yes"...Gene Chizik.
Chizik, now at Iowa State, was the last man standing. If he had turned it down, then Auburn was down to some real big star-quality names like...Patrick Nix...?
Chizik is new to head coaching, and his record is brief and bad! His record as a head coach at Iowa State is 5-19. As my 18-year-old daughter would say, "Oh...my...God!"
In other words, it took Chizik two years to win as many games as Tuberville won in his final fatal season.
I have to admit, I am puzzled. This really seems like a giant step backward.
As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men (paraphrasing): "Please tell me you have something more, Mr. Jacobs—I mean Lieutenant. These men's lives are depending on you. Please tell me that you are not pinning these men's lives on Gene Chizik?"
Of course that not verbatim, but you get my point.
Surely Jacobs is not risking Auburn's football program and its team on some sort of man-crush Bobby Lowder has on Gene Chizik?
It would seem that every time some hot coach leaves the Auburn football groupies broken-hearted, Bobby Lowder and the boys get on a plane and attempt to bring them back home?
Remember Jet-Gate? Bobby Lowder sent the boys to Louisville to bring home Bobby Petrino after he fled; if the story is true, they tried to woo him again this time.
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