Coach Dye stands by his man. copypasta al.com
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Pat Dye has a way with words.
OK, sometimes, maybe even most of the time, it’s the wrong way.
Hindsight isn’t 50-50.
Legion Field is not a sand box.
No football player, not even a kicker, should ever be described as feminine, especially if he plays for your team.
Those are just a few of the former Auburn coach’s greatest hits.
Dye mixes his metaphors and dangles his participles and chews his words into submission with enough regularity to make you think that English is his second language, but he never claimed to be a professional orator or an English professor.
If you’ve known him for any length of time, you know it’s not always what he says that counts. It’s what he means.
Even when he doesn’t say what he means or mean what he says. At least not in so many words.
Before, during and after Dye spoke to the Montgomery Quarterback Club the other night, in his attempt to offer some public support for Auburn coach Gene Chizik, he said some things that became easier to pick apart than replacement officials.
“Don’t question the guy we got leading the program,†Dye said. “I wouldn’t swap him for 10 (Nick) Sabans.â€
It would be interesting to poll the Auburn fan base on that hypothetical trade, but Dye, as usual, didn’t stop there.
“Saban is the best coach in the country,†he said. “I’ll grant him that. But he ain’t a better man than Gene Chizik.â€
Parse those words, and it appeared the man whose name is on the field in Jordan-Hare Stadium said the Alabama coach is better than the Auburn coach. I believe the intellectual response to that assessment from any sane football man would be, “Well, duh.â€
Take Dye’s lines at face value, and it seemed the Auburn man who’s been the most outspoken advocate of the current Auburn coach had been reduced to the complimentary equivalent of, “He’s got a great personality.â€
Even there Dye was misunderstood. He didn’t say Chizik was a better man than Saban. He said Saban wasn’t a better man than Chizik.
There’s a difference, but that entire debate is irrelevant. Alabama and Auburn don’t pay their football coaches millions of dollars a year to be Boy Scout troop leaders or Sunday school teachers. They pay them to win football games.
Chizik is 1 for 4 this year on that score, so naturally his job performance is up for debate. No amount of good deeds will keep him employed if his batting average doesn’t improve significantly.
But even that’s not the point in this discussion.
Dye did something Tuesday that he does weekly on the radio, something that no other Auburn man seems quite so willing to do quite so publicly at the moment.
He stood up and spoke up for Chizik.
That’s not so easy to do at 1-3 coming off 8-5. It’s not so easy to do after the worst September in the history of Auburn football. It’s not so easy to look for the virtues in Chizik when even some Auburn fans have begun to debate the virtues of Bobby Petrino.
If that’s not an oxymoron.
In the long run, Dye’s support won’t count for all that much. As admirable as Auburn’s effort against LSU was, the loss dropped Chizik’s record against the Tigers to 1-3. It’ll take a massive upset for him to avoid falling to 1-3 against Georgia and Alabama, too, and not even Dye may be able to save him this year if he falls to 1-3 against Arkansas.
But, by speaking up for Chizik, isn’t Dye doing what family members are supposed to do? As Chizik’s strongest supporter from the start outside of AD Jay Jacobs, isn’t it more important than ever for Dye to stand by his man?
I know some Auburn people would prefer that Dye be seen and not heard in public and not be seen or heard at all in the athletic department, but that’s another debate for another day.
At the moment, Chizik needs all the friends he can get. It appears he’ll have one to the end in Dye.
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