So, it seems that Tuberville “resigned” and wasn’t fired. Right…
At least I’m not the only one that thinks this makes zero sense:
Sure, Tuberville doomed this season to mediocrity the minute he hired that offensive coordinator, the high school guru who promised to install the spread offense. Turns out that knowledge-wise, the guy had outkicked his coverage. Tuberville fired him a month into the season, admitted his mistake, and tried to minimize the damage. He didn’t pawn off the responsibility on anyone else. He took the blame and promised to fix the problem.
Yeah, those boosters, the ones who embarrassed you over Petrino, are still unhappy, but you’re Auburn. You’re bigger than that. No coach is going to win in the SEC every season. Tuberville has delivered for you for 10 years. Surely that engenders some loyalty from you to him.
Besides, you signed a contract that promised him $6 million if you let him go after the 2008 season. In these economic times, with people everywhere trying to hold on to their jobs and their mortgages, you surely aren’t stupid enough to spend $6 million paying a guy not to coach. No one could be that insensitive to the message that would send. Talk about misplaced priorities.
What’s that?
You let him go?
You’re going to pay him $6 million not to coach?
And start over from scratch? Against Nick Saban?
You’re kidding, right? Is there something about Tommy Tuberville that causes you to make agonizingly stupid decisions?
Forget I ever brought it up. Good luck finding a coach better than the one you just forced out.
And people say ND fans have unrealistic expectations…
I can’t even see how anyone even tries to justify this move. Although I’ve seen some “knowledgeable” Auburn fans try.
“His recruiting is slipping.” Really? Ok, so maybe he doesn’t have a blue chip QB in the program right now, but Auburn did have the #5 class for next season before they let Tuberville go, and today it has dropped to #12. Have fun watching that continue to drop as I’m sure this move loses more recruits. Oh and by the way, previous recruiting rankings (Scouts.com only goes back to the class of 2002, which would be the 2001 season’s recruiting):
2002: 11
2003: 16
2004: 31
2005: 22
2006: T-9
2007: 6
2008: 18
People are seriously going to bitch about recruiting? There is only one class in there outside the top 25 (oh and that was for the year Auburn was trying to give Tuberville the boot for the first time — SHOCKING the recruiting suffered then) and two in the top ten. Just wow.
“7-9 in the SEC the last two seasons.” Numbers are fun. Yeah let’s lump in the bad season with this year from the 2nd place finish Auburn had in the SEC West last season. No seriously, it makes perfect sense and I’m not being sarcastic. No not at all.
What a joke. So Auburn, 5-3 in the SEC last year was inexcusable right? Losses that year by the way were to Mississippi State, @ then #4 LSU (oh look the champs for that season), and @ then #10 Georiga. The only “bad” loss there is Mississippi State, but then Auburn bounced back and upset a then #4 Florida team in the Swamp.
“14-11 overall last two seasons.” Yay more fun with numbers. See there is this thing in statistics, in which if you see a major deviation from the mean you tend to toss out the result. This last season was Tommy’s worst since his first season in 1999. Completely forget that from 2000-2007 he went 75-27 (48-18 SEC). Yep those eight seasons shouldn’t buy him any loyalty at all. Hang him after the first bad one right?
“36-0 loss to Alabama this year.” I absolutely cannot believe this is a reason. Auburn had the #1 team in the nation kick you while you were down this year. Like no one saw that coming. Welcome to reality (and one that ND fans have been living for a while). I also love how quickly everyone at Auburn seem to forget Tuberville went 7-3 against Alabama and you just ended an amazing 6 year winning streak on the Tide. In case anyone is having trouble reading in between the lines, that means you just forced one of the most successful Iron Bowl coaches in your school’s history.
If anyone at Auburn seriously believes that starting from scratch is going to magically make Auburn beat a now fine-tuned Nick Saban machine in Alabama, I need to know what you are smoking. Good luck with that mess.
I have no idea who Auburn will hire. There seems to be this thought that Mike Leech will be coming and I don’t know why. I have a feeling that if Texas Tech will actually finish a contract negotiation, he will stay in Lubbock. Even if he goes to Auburn, where is your QB to run his offense? Hell, I’ll be surprised if that offense even works against the tougher SEC defenses. Not to mention, Leech isn’t exactly a defensive guru. Auburn fans did watch the OU/Tech game right?
This just blows my mind. Can I move that Auburn’s boosters, administration and AD are now more insane than ND could ever dream of being?