Was Auburn Racist Over Turner Gill? NO! Now SYRACUSE, on the Other Hand...

But the national media didn't care about that. To them, it was just the same fellow who ran off their beloved progressive Terry Bowden because they wanted to stay in the stone ages running off Tuberville.

Tuberville's going 0-4 against UGA and USC? Well, to them that was a good thing. After all, they like Richt and UGA and especially Pete Carroll and USC anyway. So why fire him over that? It isn't like Auburn is ever going to beat those teams anyway. They're just Auburn! So be glad that Tuberville is beating Alabama...while they aren't any good.

But lo and behold, again the Lowder faction was proven correct. Bobby Petrino proved to be a fantastic coach at Louisville. Tuberville, meanwhile, has since burned through two more offensive coordinators, switched offensive philosophies three times, and was trying to hire yet a third offensive coordinator when he was forced out.

Also, the window that Tuberville should have taken advantage of to make Auburn into one of the top two or three programs in the SEC is closed. LSU, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia have great recruiters and proven coaches. As a matter of fact, so do Ole Miss (which by the way is a sleeping giant; there is a lot of talent in that state which usually goes elsewhere), South Carolina, and oh yeah, Arkansas hired someone named Petrino.

If Tuberville only won one SEC title when the SEC wasn't that strong, he had no shot at competing in the strongest collection of SEC coaches in history. They had to upgrade.

But the media depicts this as another out of control situation at Auburn. Never mind that Auburn has continued to drop off from that 2004 team as the talent left, as the Lowder faction knew would happen. Never mind that Tuberville has continued to mess up the offensive side of the ball, as the Lowder faction knew.

And never mind that Petrino has since proven himself to be an incontrovertibly better coach, as the Lowder faction knew. Petrino finished with the same record, 5-7, in his first year at an Arkansas program with much less talent (Petrino didn't even have a viable QB).

Where Arkansas beat LSU, Auburn had everyone thinking that they were a threat to get back to the title game. Oh yeah, Petrino's Arkansas also beat Auburn. Not that anyone but the Lowder faction seems to have noticed.

So now, the group that the national media has hated because they forced out Terry Bowden (never mind that all the Bowden legacies are now out of college football) is blaming Auburn over this Gill hire. Some are calling them racist.

Others are calling them incompetent, such as Stewart Mandel and Matt Hayes. If it were up to Hayes in particular, Neuheisel would still be at Colorado, Bowden would still be at Auburn, and Turner Gill would have taken a lateral move to New Mexico.

That's right: Matt Hayes actually suggested in a recent column that Turner Gill should resign from Buffalo, where he could have three losing seasons in a row and still keep his job, in favor of New Mexico, who just forced out Rocky Long, who had that program bowl eligible every year from 2002-2007!

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