Fiu's Daily Cavalcade of
Whimsy
The Auburn Coaching Situation ... Jan. 7
a.k.a.
Frank Costanza's Festivus Airing of the Grievances ... or the obvious attempt to keep readers coming to the site on a
regular basis during the off-season.
By
Pete Fiutak
What's your beef? ... Fire
off your
thoughts
This Week's Whimsies: Monday -
10 Reasons Why Florida Will
Win
Past Whimsies: Tuesday -
The Andre Smith suspension
Monday -
NFL Mock Draft (top 10
picks)
Tuesday -
Holiday Wish List For All
119 Teams
Wednesday -
Chizik, Gill, & the Race
Card
Friday -
Why Paterno isn't too old
-
10 Reasons Why Oklahoma
Will Win
"Just when I thought you couldn't get any
dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem
yourself!" ... The Auburn hiring of Gene Chizik as its new head
coach still doesn't make any sense. He did nothing at Iowa State to
remotely suggest he has the ability to navigate the SEC's shark-infested
waters, and his hiring sent 94% of all Tiger fans into a state of sheer
panic.
Considering all the negativity surrounding the program after Chizik came
aboard, most painfully from Charles Barkley, who has far bigger fish to
fry now, it's understandable that Auburn might want to fly under the
radar for a little while. But things have changed in a big hurry over
the last week, and now, the program that appeared to be headed for
almost certain disaster has hope. Lots of hope.
If the Alabama loss to Utah wasn't enough, the Tigers very quietly came
up with two excellent coaching moves to all but make up for the
bizarreness of stealing Chizik from the Cyclones. In a major coup,
Auburn got offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn away from Tulsa and took
defensive coordinator Ted Roof away from Minnesota. Combine those two
with Chizik, who still has a ton to prove as a head man, but is known for
being a fantastic defensive mind as a former coordinator, and all of a
sudden, Auburn appears to have the potential to be a player again.
Malzahn became a tremendous Arkansas high school coach before joining
Houston Nutt at Arkansas. While the experiment failed, he caught on with
Tulsa where his offenses led the nation in yards in each of the last two
seasons. Auburn officials, after, ahem, accepting Tommy Tuberville's resignation,
said they wanted more of an offensive coach to come in and take over.
Mike Leach was being talked about. Now
they got their man, and now the rest of the SEC should be worried about
a wide open style that didn't work this year, but will under Malzahn.
On the defensive side, Roof, who wasn't able to do much as the Duke head
coach, helped change Minnesota's defense, the worst in the nation in
2007, to a respectable group that struggled down the stretch but was
hard-hitting, forced a ton of turnovers, and improved by leaps and
bounds.
Combined with Chizik, Roof has the potential to keep the Tiger defense
playing at a high level.
Will Auburn win the SEC next year? No, but considering how bleak things
appeared to be a few weeks ago, there's reason to think that maybe
things might not be so bad after all. If nothing else, Auburn became far
more interesting.