Auburn did what??

You gotta love sports sometimes. In what other world of entertainment do you have as many jaw-dropping moments as you do in sports?? Whether it is on the field or off the field, sports are always unpredictable. You never know what is going to happen next. Saturday night, we're over at a friend's house watching the Crosstown Shootout, enjoying the game, when all of the sudden the following headline shows up on the ticker on ESPN2:

"Auburn is expected to hire Iowa State head coach Gene Chizik."

WHAAAT?!! I almost fell off the couch. We immediately flipped over to ESPN News just to make sure we saw it right. And sure enough, there it is under the "Breaking News" section. Gene Chizik...new head ball coach at Auburn.

Just when you thought you had seen it all in college football, Auburn goes out and hires Gene freaking Chizik to take over their football program after he went 5-19 in two years at Iowa State. I still can't get over this hire. You have potential rising stars like Turner Gill and Skip Holtz sniffing around this job, and they jump into the pool with a guy who was close to getting fired by his former employer.

Here are some of the lowlights of the Gene Chizik era. Iowa State went 2-10 this year and went 0-8 in the conference. 0-8!! They lost to Baylor by 28! His only wins this year were against South Dakota State and Kent State. They lost their final ten games.

Not only was he not winning at Iowa State, he was on the verge of getting fired!! I get the impression that Chizik had one more year to turn it around before getting canned.

The reaction from Iowa State fans?? RELIEF! My god, how would you feel as an Auburn fan knowing that Iowa State fans are happy that the guy is leaving?

It would be like Penn State firing Joe Paterno tomorrow and hiring Charlie Weis a week later. I would literally be pouring champagne on myself right now if that happened. And that's basically what has happened at Auburn. They hired a coach who has never been successful as a head coach and who was about to get fired.

Maybe Gregg Robinson should send his resume to Auburn in a few years if/when Chizik inevitably gets fired. If they are willing to hire Chizik, why not go for the jugular and bring in Gregg Robinson after that rousing success he had at Syracuse?? Or maybe Ty Willingham!

Can you imagine Nick Saban's reaction to this hire?? He must have started laughing out loud. Auburn is so spooked by Nick Saban it's not even funny.

Is it possible that Chizik could work out at Auburn?? No doubt, and you never really know in sports. For all I know, he was in a bad situation at Iowa State that was going to take 5+ years for him to turn around, so maybe the Auburn job will give him the talent that he needs to win. Maybe Iowa State was just a bad fit. Maybe he's got better networks and connections at Auburn that will let him hire a better staff and get better players. He went to Florida for college, so maybe he's not comfortable in Iowa and needs to be back in SEC country to be successful. I'm not willing to discount that possibility. If he hires a great staff, recruits his face off, and gets his players to buy in, maybe he'll do well there.

But based on what we know about Chizik, this move is right up there among the worst hires in the history of college football. He's been a complete failure as a head coach so far, and now he's stepping into a hornet's nest in the SEC. The only move I would put down as a more egregiously bad hire was the Bengals' hiring of David Shula almost immediately after Shula got demoted from offensive coordinator to defensive backs coach by Jimmy Johnson with the Cowboys. But Chizik would be in that conversation for me (if you've made it into the "David Shula" category with me, that's the lowest of the low). It makes absolutely no sense to me, especially when you consider that there were a lot of good young coaches out there who they probably could have lured to Auburn. Turner Gill, Skip Holtz, Brady Hoke, etc. All guys who have won at their respective jobs and made their programs better.

Chizik took over a bad program and made them significantly worse. It's not like he's recruiting well or showing some slow signs of improvement. He's brought nothing to the table in Ames. And now he's headed to the toughest conference in football to compete against the likes of Urban Meyer and Richt and Saban and Petrino and Miles and Houston Nutt and now Lane Kiffin. Auburn just went from having a solid coach who was in the top half of coaches in the league to a complete unknown who may turn out to be among the worst.

And the fact that Tommy Tuberville was a legitimate success at Auburn (probably one of the best coaches in their history) is only compounding the problem here. Tuberville won games at Auburn and probably would have won games in the future once he settled the problems from this season. An absolute BEST CASE SCENARIO for Gene Chizik would be for him to be the next Tommy Tuberville at Auburn. A worst case scenario is that he runs Auburn into the ground, Saban completely takes over the state for the next decade, and Auburn football goes through a long term malaise that permanently puts them into the second tier in the SEC. Throw in the likelihoood that their recruiting is going to hit rock bottom this winter, and all bets are off on how bad this could potentially get.

I hate to be banging on Auburn because I like Auburn. They have a good program, and I've enjoyed watching them over the years. The Bengals have drafted a lot of good players from Auburn (Rudi Johnson, Takeo Spikes, Willie Anderson, Pat Sims, etc), so I've always had an affinity for the program. But somewhere along the line, they forgot that they are Auburn!! They are the second best program in their own state and probably the 5-6th most prestigious job in their conference at best. What is Auburn's upside?? I'd say that Tuberville was getting as much out of that program as anyone could. They are a 7-9 win program at their core that can have runs of success when the other heavy hitters in the league are down, but they are never going to be the elite program in the SEC (especially when programs like Alabama and Florida and Georgia are all "up"). I know they are worried about Saban, but why would you make a panic hire as an attempt to counteract Saban?? Why not ride it out with Tuberville until you have a great candidate lined up?? Does anyone really think recruits are going to be flocking to Gene Chizik over Nick Saban?

So what does this say about ND?? It seems like the coaching searches of 2008 were an absolute crapshoot. Auburn hires a coach with a 5-19 record. Washington hires an assistant. Tennessee hires a coach who has never been a head coach in college and got fired from his job in the pros. Clemson hires an assistant. All of these hires could turn out great, but chances are that several of them (if not all of them) will be complete busts.

At the end of the day, even if it is possible (likely?) that ND may not have any clue what they are doing, it will probably benefit us in the long run that we made the decision to keep Weis around for next year. If ND had fired Charlie Weis, the coaching search would have been an absolute train wreck. It would have made the Auburn coaching search look downright shrewd. And the result of a coaching search would have led to a hire that divided the fanbase and killed all the momentum in the program. Recruiting would have taken a complete nose dive, and there were no hires out there that would have made fans excited about this program.

Bringing back Weis gives ND all kinds of options. We get an entire year to really start making critical evaluations of the good young coaches out there, it gives us time to see if any big coaching moves shake out in the offseason (college coach to the pros or some other big move), and it also gives us one last look at Charlie Weis to see if he can revamp his staff and start winning games next year with an experienced team. I have admittedly lost faith in Charlie, but there's at least a glimmer of hope out there that he will right the ship and correct the problems with this program. If ND could get tougher up front, mix in more of those young d-linemen, and get some big stuff from Cierre Wood in the running game and on special teams, maybe this team makes the leap next year. We're already on the hook for $20 million to Weis or whatever. We might as well find out for sure what he's got, and buy some time to get the right coach if Weis isn't the answer. Rushing out and hiring Jim Grobe does us no favors.

Doug Marrone to the Cuse

First of all, congrats to Doug Marrone on getting the Syracuse job. It sounds like he really wanted the job, so I hope he works out up there. On the positive side, he's got the pedigree with a solid background in college and the pros. He has worked under guys like Phil Fulmer and Jim Donnan and Sean Payton. Not exactly Woody Hayes and Lou Holtz, but not a bad resume. He seems to have a good reputation as a recruiter, and it sounds like he had a real shot at getting the Tennessee job earlier in the year. Plus, it can't hurt that he's an alum who really wanted the job. And it's always good to see a fellow "Doug" out there making a name for himself.

On the other hand, Syracuse just hired yet another coach with no head coaching experience!! Holy cow, that is a YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE risk. An NFL assistant who hasn't been involved in the college game for like 15 years, and hasn't recruited the East Coast in his entire career. Can you say Gregg Robinson Part Deux?? I know Marron played at Syracuse, but you are talking about the mid-80s. It's an entirely different world. I'm not going to pretend to know a thing about Marrone, so maybe he's going to be the real deal and win big at Syracuse. But it seems like Syracuse hired this guy as a last resort because they couldn't lure anyone better to the job. If Marrone works out, it will be because of blind luck.

I feel like I've been ragging on this guy for awhile on this blog now, but this hire seems like another potential Darryl Gross disaster. How does he still have a job as an athletic director??

Darryl Gross had well over a year to get this search done and find the right guy. Heck, he's had 2 years, maybe even three, since anyone with any knowledge of the Syracuse program (even an outsider like me) could see that Gregg Robinson was an absolute disaster who would eventually be fired.

You've got BOILING hot young head coaches like Skip Holtz, Turner Gill, and Al Golden sniffing around your job, and yet you can't land one of them?? How is that even possible?? The Syracuse job is a good job. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the 2-3 best jobs in the Big East. Syracuse has tradition, and they have the fan support to sustain a winner in the Big East. For a guy like Al Golden, the Syracuse job would have been perfect. He's already got all kinds of recruiting pipelines set up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, etc. Those are the kind of kids that Syracuse needs to get. Golden could have significantly upgraded that program in terms of talent and prestige. A good athletic director could have sold him on that vision and convinced him that Syracuse was a sleeper program that could elevate his stature to a new level.

Skip Holtz speaks for himself. He's already had success at two different places, and he's Lou freaking Holtz's son. Maybe Skip Holtz wouldn't have stayed at Syracuse for 15 years, but he would have won there and restored their program. And if he leaves, big deal. He'll make the job attractive for the next guy.

If it comes out that Syracuse didn't pursue Turner Gill, Darryl Gross should offer his letter of resignation immediately for failing to land him. That guy just won the MAC at Buffalo. BUFFALO!! I honestly didn't even know they had a D-I football program. Gill has built ties in the New York recruiting areas, so he seems like he would have been a natural fit at Syracuse. I don't know, maybe he wasn't interested.

I sort of get the impression that Darryl Gross was afraid of hiring an "up and comer" out of fear that he would eventually leave for a bigger job someday. Man, that is a really dumb way to approach your coaching search as an athletic director. You gotta shoot for the moon and get the best guy even if it's possible that he might leave someday. It's worth it to have a great coach for 4-5 years over a mediocre coach for a decade. And if you have a good athletic director, you can be confident that you'll continue to make good hires to keep the program strong. Xavier basketball is the perfect example. They went from Gillen to Skip Prosser to Thad Matta to Sean Miller, and the program is stronger than ever. It stunk to see Thad Matta leave for Ohio State, but he did enough good things at Xavier (good recruiting, took the team to the Elite Eight, etc) that he left the program in better shape than when he started. Because the program is stronger, it makes the job more attractive for future candidates.

Cincinnati football is also a good example. They hired Dantonio knowing that he'd probably someday try to get a Big 10 job, but Dantonio made that program better and laid the foundation for them to get Brian Kelly. Cincinnati football is and always will be a steppingstone job, but it doesn't mean that it can't be a good program or an attractive job for "up and comer" young coaches.

A school like Syracuse is always going to be in the second-tier of college football programs. They are in the Big East with a 35,000 seat stadium in a bad recruiting region. If Syracuse has a great head coach, there's always a chance that he might leave for a bigger school. But it's absolutely crazy to flinch from taking a great young coach because you are afraid he might leave.

I think that's what happened here. Syracuse went for an alum who "really wanted the job" (where have we heard that before?) instead of going for a proven young head coach who may have left after having some success at Syracuse.

Don't get me wrong, I hope Marron works out at Syracuse. I don't know anything about him, and maybe Darryl Gross really believes that he is going to be a star at Syracuse. I hope he turns them into a consistent Big East winner, recruits well, and restores the luster of Syracuse football. I just think Syracuse is taking a huge leap of faith here. They needed a sure thing (or at least a guy with some track record of success as a head coach in college), and Marrone is far from it.

--- As for the Heisman Award this weekend, put me down for a vote for Timmy Tebow. He won the SEC, it's the toughest conference in football with the toughest defenses, he makes plays, he's the best leader in all of college football, and I'll admit to having a soft spot for his missionary work and all that. I was having a tough time making up my mind until watching that segment on Tebow's missionary work last night on the College Football Awards show. I have to say it was a little dusty in the Riddell household! Guess I'm just a sucker for Tebow and the Tebow family!

Of the three frontrunners, I'd say the one I'm least intrigued by is Sam Bradford. Nothing against the guy (all three of them seem like real good guys and I'm amazed that Bradford is a scratch golfer) and he has put up the best stats, but I guess I'm just tired of seeing system OU qbs winning the Heisman. Josh Heupel, Jason White....blah blah blah. Oklahoma has become the new Houston Cougars with the run n shoot Andre Ware/David Klingler (that name is still a curse word among Bengal fans) offense against these paper defenses of the Big 12. Bradford goes back to throw and there are 4 guys wide open for him to choose from. The Big 12 is like backyard football these days. I think Bradford has had a great year obviously, but I think there are a lot of QBs who could put up huge stats in that offense.

I'd probably put Colt McCoy as my #2 because he carries that team. Texas' offense is completely built around McCoy making plays for them, so it seems like he has done more with less this year (although what does it say about Texas that they have "less" than OU when Texas gets the best recruits out of Texas every year while OU gets the Sean Avery-style "sloppy seconds"??? Bob Stoops is one heckuva coach.)

Doesn't matter though. I'm still voting Tebow. He is the only "Superman" in college football these days, and that's why I think he should win it.
But knowing how these Heisman voters think, Sam Bradford will eek it out to win the Heisman and then throw 4 picks in the Orange Bowl. Just go ahead and mark that down.

---Finally, continuing with the theme of Syracuse sports, I have to laugh at Jim Boeheim's defense of Eric Devendorf after Devendorf was suspended for the year for hitting a woman in the face at a party. Boeheim thinks the suspension is too harsh.

Yo Jim, your point guard HIT A WOMAN IN THE FACE!! He's lucky he didn't get charged with felonious assault. That doesn't constitute a year suspension?? Really??

I have always been a fan of Jimmy Boeheim, but there's no reason to defend Eric Devendorf here. Devendorf is a punk, and the Cuse are better off without him if you ask me.