The Sports Corner

Chizik set to replace Tuberville at Auburn

Remember when Hugh Grant pulled one of the dumbest moves in the history of mankind when he decided to pick up Divine Brown while he was dating Elizabeth Hurley?

This is the situation that immediately came to mind when I heard that Gene Chizik is going to be the next coach at Auburn.

What the hell is Auburn thinking?

Auburn had a good thing going with Tommy Tuberville. Sure, this year was a mess. The Tony Franklin experiment was a complete disaster and it would be back to square one on offense next season.

But things were good throughout Tubbs’ run at Auburn. Sometimes it was even great. Before this year he had beat Alabama six times in a row. You think that would count for something.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some underlying issues with the relationship between the coach and school. So it wasn’t out of the question that it could’ve been time to move on.

Tuberville was like a Hurley though. He was a coach worth bragging about. There might be some other coaches who are younger and some that are better, but there aren’t many.

Gene Chizik isn’t one of them. He has proven that he can coordinate a defense.

He hasn’t proven that he can be a head coach.

The SEC is not a conference where you can afford to hire a coach who is learning on the job. The day after your first loss in the SEC your school’s alumni and fans are counting down the days until you are gone. Patience isn’t a concept that they understand.

If you’re going to dump someone like Tuberville, do it for someone who has a track record and a little bit of promise for the future. Do it for a Turner Gill or a Skip Holtz. Don’t do it for a Gene Chizik.

Don’t do it for a guy who has been a head coach for two years and has gone 5-19. Don’t do it for someone who actually had a worse record in his second season than his first.

The boosters and administrators at Auburn are experiencing what many refer to as Grant’s Law. It really doesn’t matter what Tuberville did while at Auburn. To them, it never would be good enough.

What else could explain this hopeless fling that they are about to have with Chizik?

Hugh Grant got lucky. He made this terrible mistake and Hurley still stayed loyal to him for another five years. That kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. Grant was able to atone for his mistake and try to make good out of it.

Unfortunately for Auburn, Tuberville is not Hurley. He isn’t going to be around in five years for Auburn to come back to. It might take them awhile, but it won’t be long before they realize that they are making a mistake even bigger than the one that Hugh Grant made.