Auburn Wins BCS Championship: Why Auburn Made The Right Hire in Gene Chizik

When Auburn won the BCS National Championship on Monday night, Gene Chizik earned himself a $600,000 bonus. That was in addition to $500,000 he had already received for other performance related bonuses.

Let's recap. In Gene Chizik's second year as coach at Auburn, he led them to 14 wins, an SEC title and a BCS National Championship title.

Wow. If anyone predicted that, well, kudos. 

To put that in perspective, it has been just over two years since people were speculating that Chizik might get fired as head coach of Iowa State. Let's say that one more time. Iowa State wasn't even sure they wanted Chizik.

Chizik won just five games in his two years at Iowa State and was in the midst of a 10-game losing streak when Auburn made the surprising choice to hire him to succeed Tommy Tuberville.

That 10-game losing streak had Iowa State ranked 111th in the nation in total defense, 115th in passing defense and 95th in rushing defense. There are only 119 teams in Division I.

In an attempt to save his job at Iowa State, Chizik fired two of his coaches and demoted two others.

He was in just his second year as a head coach, and if he lost the Iowa State job, who knew when he might get another opportunity to be a head coach again.

Instead, Auburn came calling, and they offered him one of the biggest jobs available in college football that year.

Chizik had been a defensive coordinator at Auburn for three years prior to working at Texas in the same capacity. However, his hire was not exactly celebrated.

Many in the Auburn community felt it was a horrible hire. Chizik was called a "loser" and Charles Barkley, an Auburn alum, went as far as to say that Chizik had the "worst resume" of all available coaches for the job and that he was only hired because he was white.

In his first season as coach the team saw a three game improvement. Then this year they won six additional games and a national championship, obviously.

Well, where are the haters now?

Certainly not speaking up, that's for sure.