Sunday Scarbinsky Article...

[AuburnChopper 3.0]

Scarbinsky: Auburn a loser no longer with Gene Chizik as coach KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Auburn and Tennessee don’t have a lot in common.

Auburn plays in the SEC West, and Tennessee lives in the East.

Tennessee is THE state university, while Auburn isn’t THE university of Alabama.

They both count orange as one of their colors, but each has a different and distinctive shade.

Their paths crossed more than once last year. During the season, they played an ugly excuse for a football game. Later, they each wrote a sad ending to the story of a successful but tired head coach.

In that sense, the Tigers and Vols became mirrors.

Broken mirrors.

They found different ways to fix their cracks, but in the opinion of a lot of outsiders, each repair job looked like a recipe for years of bad luck.

Look at them now.

Look at Auburn 26, Tennessee 22.

Look at Auburn at 5-0 and Tennessee at 2-3.

You tell me. Which program hired the right head coach?

I don’t know about Lane Kiffin, but I know this about Gene Chizik: He’s been a leader, and Auburn is a loser no more.

Oh, I know. Five games don’t offer enough near-enough evidence for a final verdict, and a career can change in 60 minutes, but five games are still significant.

That’s how many games Auburn won all of last season, and that’s how many games Auburn has won this season in one month and one weekend.

The distance from 5-7 to 5-0 can’t be measured in months or miles. Chizik and his staff had to convince their players that they were not what their record said they were last year.

They had to convince quarterback Chris Todd that he could make the throws his shoulder wouldn’t let him make last year. The reconstructed Todd made more than enough throws Saturday and his reinvigorated teammates made more than enough plays on both sides of the ball to take the lead in the first quarter and never give it back.

Don’t discount another victory by dismissing the competition. Don’t tell me Tennessee is a bad football team. OK, Tennessee is a bad football team, at least when it has the ball and tries to throw it.

Who was the wise old coach who said three things can happen when you throw the ball and two of them are bad? He never saw this Tennessee team, so he didn’t realize that three bad things can happen to the Vols when they pass.

Incompletion.

Interception.

Utter embarrassment.

One example: A Tennessee receiver can run a slant, but fail to look back at the quarterback, who can bounce the ball off his unsuspecting noggin.

But that point is not as important as this one:

It doesn’t matter who they’ve played. It doesn’t matter where they’ve played. The Auburn Tigers are a good football team. They’re a better football team than almost any of us imagined they would be or could be when this season began.

How good? Who knows? How about playing 20 quarters this season and scoring points in every single quarter? How about being one of only four undefeated teams in the SEC after five weeks?

The other three: Florida, which won the 2006 and 2008 BCS titles; LSU, which won the 2007 BCS title; and Alabama, which ran the table in the regular season a year ago.

Good company.

"That’s a good team,” Kiffin said.

Good call.

Join the conversation by commenting below or e-mail Kevin at kscarbinsky@bhamnews.com.