Can the media just shut the fuck about Auburn hiring Gene Chizik already?
I'm tired of this garbage about race in this. Auburn is getting a lot of flack for not hiring a black coach and quite frankly, none of it makes any sense.
The major complaint was Turner Gill, though Sly Croom is a more accomplished coach and a better fit. Croom played for Bear at Alabama, so I doubt he'd coach at Auburn anyways, so moving on to Gill.
8-4 in the MAC? Okay, Buffalo was one of the worst programs in the country and yes, three years later they won their conference. I get that. But it's the MAC. They aren't even a top mid-major conference (woefully behind the WAC, Mountain West, CUSA, at the very least.)
And look at Chizik's resume at Iowa State. It sucks. This should've be a cut-and-dry decision, right?
Bullshit. Look at it from an AD's standpoint. He already knows Chizik. Chizik was the mind behind Auburn's shutdown defense in 2004 when they ought to have been National Champions. Will Muschamp was a good replacement, but he was just a substitute. He went to Iowa State, which was a decent program in a decent conference and didn't do well. But he was at Iowa State.
He already knows how it works at Auburn. He knows what Auburn has available for him. He knows high school coaches in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi. He has relationships established with assistants, scouts, and administrators at Auburn. He's coming back for a job that would've been his if Tuberville had left a couple years earlier.
Most importantly, Chizik knows the SEC. This isn't the Big 8. This isn't the MAC. It's been the stand-out top conference in the country for this decade. It's a conference full of destinations, not resume builders. And it's fucking tough (just ask LSU, Florida, Alabama, or Georgia about how quickly a season can change.) Is Turner Gill ready for that? No. He's ready for a job at Boston College. You don't put unproven coaches in historic programs; you let them prove themselves somewhere else before you let them reach your destination school.
I don't think Chizik is going to have immediate success, because I don't think there was a coach available this year who is going to out-recruit Saban. I think Alabama's success has made Auburn awfully unattractive for top coaches, who don't have to go very far to see Spurrier's misery in Columbia.
Hey Turner Gill, I hear there's a coaching job open at Iowa State.
