Worst Season Ever??Written by Van Allen Plexico and John Ringer Columns, Featured, Football, Sports, The Wishbone Oct 26, 2012We have to preface this column by saying, no, we are not enjoying the negativity either. But, unfortunately, that is precisely what this season is giving us, and we have no choice but to react to it and try to work through it as best we can, in a thoughtful and analytical and above all else realistic way. If you want sunshine and rainbows rather than cold, hard reality, that’s fine—but it won’t make things get better in the short term or the long term.So—just how bad have things gotten for the Auburn Tigers? Is this really the worst season ever, or does it just seem like the worst because we’re currently stuck in the middle of it? This week, your intrepid Wishbone columnists dug deep into the record book to answer this important question.What are the Worst Seasons in Auburn History—and Why?Auburn has been playing football for 121 years. Looking back at the records, the following seasons stand out as the absolute worst:1894: Auburn finished 1-4. (We did beat Georgia Tech 94-0, though, which warms our hearts a little bit.) That season got Coach F.M. Hall fired and resulted in the hiring of new coach John Heisman. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.1906: Heisman had packed up and moved on to Clemson a few years earlier, and Auburn ended up with a record of 1-5-1. The Tigers beat Maryville (who?!) and tied Gordon (who?!) and no, we don’t believe either of those schools currently fields a Division 1 football team*. Coach Mike Donahue was let go after this season but then came back one year later and proved to be very good.1927: Auburn finished 0-7-2. The Tigers scored 30 points the entire season and were shut out in four games. Coach Dave Morey was fired. (One would hope so!)1928: Auburn went 1-8. Other than in games against Tulane and Samford, Auburn did not score a point all season.1929: Auburn finished 2-7 and fired Coach George Bohler during the season. (Which seems crazy—the dude got us 100% more victories in each of his two seasons than we had the year before! Seven more seasons and we would have been undefeated! Hah.)1950: Auburn went 0-10 and 0-7 in the SEC. This season included losses to Tulane, SE Louisiana and Wofford. (Auburn lost to Wofford?!) The Tigers scored 31 points all season and were shut out in seven games. Coach Earl Brown was executed after the season—err, we mean, he resigned after the season—and the new coach Auburn hired was a fella by the name of Ralph “Shug†Jordan.1952: This is the most utterly recent horrendous season that folks point back to. Auburn went 2-8 and 0-7 in the SEC in Shug’s second season as coach. Fortunately, the Powers That Be didn’t pull a “Bohler†on him and blow him out at that point. Eisenhower won the presidency, the Korean War was winding down, and Shug was getting his groove. Good times were ahead.1980: The Tigers ended up 5-6 overall and 0-6 in the SEC, even with James Brooks in the backfield as a senior. This was the final straw for Doug Barfield and led to the hiring of one Patrick Fain Dye.1998: Auburn finished 3-8 and 1-7 in the SEC, the year after winning the SEC West and falling by a single point to UT in Atlanta. Coach Terry Bowden resigned mid-season and Defensive Coordinator Bill Oliver finished the year as interim head coach. Injuries plagued the team—at one point the Tigers were down to their sixth string center. Additionally, true freshman Gabe Gross had to start on the road in Starkville and that didn’t go well. (Having a QB wearing the jersey number “22†never seemed like a recipe for good mojo, either.) The victories came over Central Florida (in a very close game), Louisiana Tech and (in a shutout) Ole Miss—coached by the man who was about to replace Bowden/Oliver, Tommy Tuberville.So there it is: A parade of ugly. What was the ugliest of the ugly? It’s hard to say. We can toss out those very early ones and probably agree that 1927-29 and 1950-52 were bad runs, but football wasn’t quite then what it has become in the modern era. And, in any case, the 1952 ugliness was just a symptom of Shug turning things around—it represented a beginning, not an ending. In 1980 Barfield was already on thin ice—that season didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. He’d turned in mostly subpar results in each of his five seasons, even with the Cribbs/Brooks/Andrews triumvirate in the backfield. That leaves 1998, which may well be, pound for pound and all factors considered, the worst season in Auburn history. It led to the departure of not just one but two coaches (Bowden and Oliver), and caused a shocked Tommy Tuberville to exclaim, upon accepting the head coaching job afterward, that he was surprised at just how bad the situation he was walking into had turned out to be.
These guys are pussies. Sorry, just their language in that article smells of "read the creed" and "they are young men" bullshit.
Didn't come across that way to me. But OK. Read as "just the facts ma'am." to me. Honestly, I don't know anyone still in Chizik's corner anymore.
We are a brain fart (by the ULM coach) away from being winless this season. I'd rank 2012 on equal footing with 1950. Drop either of our remaining "creampuffs" and one could argue that this one rivals 1928 in terms of futility.
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