Tommy in trouble? Only if Tigers believe Tide has truly turned
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- More than any rivalry in college football, there has always been a historic ebb and flow to the annual bitter battle between Alabama and Auburn. It might take a decade or more to occur, but for each action by one, eventually there is an equal and opposite reaction by the other:
• When Auburn beat Alabama 40-0 in 1957 and won the national championship, the powers that be at Alabama had seen enough and summoned Paul W. Bryant home from Texas A&M. Over the next 25 years, Bryant would dominate the South and control Auburn 19-6.
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| Things looked a lot better for Tommy Tuberville and Auburn before the Iron Bowl. (Getty Images) |
• Dye won four SEC championships and beat Alabama six times in 11 seasons. But in 1990 Alabama reached out to Gene Stallings, one of Bryant's favorites, to turn the Tide again. In 1992, after three straight losses to Alabama, Dye was forced out and Alabama won the national championship. Stallings went on to win 70 games in seven seasons and beat Auburn in five of seven tries.
• In 1999 Auburn tapped Tommy Tuberville in an effort to get back on top in the rivalry. Tuberville, who in 1985 had given up on coaching to start his own catfish restaurant, got a second coaching life when he was schooled under Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. He gave Auburn its greatest run of success against Alabama, winning seven of the first nine meetings, including an unprecedented six straight victories over the Crimson Tide heading into Saturday's Iron Bowl at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
With Alabama's 36-0 win over Auburn on Saturday, it remains to be seen if there will soon be another seismic shift in this rivalry. Nick Saban, who came here two years ago for an unprecedented $32 million contract, has the Crimson Tide at 12-0 and No. 1 in the nation. He has quickly built a program that looks like it will be good for a very long time. With a win next week over Florida in the SEC Championship Game, the Crimson Tide will play for the 13th national championship in its storied football history.
This, Auburn fans cannot abide.
The question is whether or not Auburn athletics director Jay Jacobs and president Jay Gouge believe the Crimson Tide's re-emergence as a national power constitutes a call to action and that Tuberville, despite his dominance over Alabama, should be let go after 10 seasons.
Auburn's players weighed in strongly on the issue after the game.
"To talk about his job security now is absolutely ridiculous," said center Jason Bosley. "For everything that he has done for this university, it shouldn't even be a topic of discussion. We love the guy and we play hard for him. It's absurd to even talk about."
Asked where such talk comes from, Bosley was more than blunt: "At a university the cream rises to the top. But so does the turds."
"We believe in coach Tuberville 100 percent," said cornerback Jerraud Powers. "He's our coach and there shouldn't be any question about that."
But there is a big question about Tuberville's future in this state. Saturday's loss, the worst Auburn has endured at the hands of Alabama since 1962, was the perfectly awful exclamation point to a perfectly awful year. The Tigers (5-7) won only two SEC games. They lost six of their last seven, the only win coming against Tennessee-Martin. Auburn will not be in a bowl for the first time since 1999, Tuberville's first year as coach.
Tuberville knows he is responsible for this dreadful season. His hiring of Tony Franklin as offensive coordinator and the attempt to install the spread offense was a disaster from the start. Auburn was midway through the season when Tuberville cut his losses and let Franklin go to calm down a staff revolt.
"I put them in a very tough situation and it was totally my fault," Tuberville said of his players and coaches. "I made the change and I thought I did it for the right reasons. But it put us into a tailspin and we never recovered."
Logic would dictate that, after examining his 10-year body of work at Auburn (85-40, 51-29 SEC), the school would give Tuberville a chance to fix what has gone wrong. In the four seasons prior 2008 Tuberville was 26-6 in the SEC with an overall record of 42-9. He has been to three New Year's Day bowls in the same span. And again, there are the six straight wins over Alabama. No other Auburn coach -- not Mike Donahue, not Ralph "Shug" Jordan, not Pat Dye, all of whom are in the College Football Hall of Fame -- has ever done that.
Logic, however, has often taken a holiday under the weight of expectations and sense of urgency that this unique rivalry creates.
But Tuberville is nothing if not a survivor. In 2003 he was struggling through an 8-5 season and Auburn officials embarrassed themselves with a clandestine meeting with Louisville coach Bobby Petrino. When the meeting was made public, Tuberville received more than 15,000 e-mails of support and president William Walker was forced to apologize and announce that Tuberville was safe. Tuberville went on to beat Alabama 28-23 to end that season, and in 2004 Auburn went 13-0. Walker is long gone as Auburn's president but Tuberville is still here.
"I'm committed to turning this thing around," Tuberville said. "If I didn't think I could do it, I'd be the first to tell the Auburn people. We've been here 10 years and I'm still fairly young (54). It's hard to take what we've been through this season. But sometimes something like this makes you even hungrier."
If Auburn fires Tuberville, it will do so knowing his agent, Jimmy Sexton, has the school on the hook for one best buyouts ever negotiated for a college football coach. Auburn will owe Tuberville $3 million within 30 days of his dismissal and another $3 million within 365 days. And let us not forget that it was Sexton who got Houston Nutt the sweetheart deal of a $3.5 million settlement to "resign" from Arkansas, plus a $500,000 raise just hours later when he became the new head coach at Ole Miss.
If Auburn lets Tuberville go, he will be a wealthy man. Given the number of job openings, he could soon be making $2 million per year as someone else's head coach.
