Scarbinsky: Who wants to bet against Chizik now?Published: Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 5:30 AMKevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham NewsFirst things first. The No. 1 college football upset of 2010 is Auburn moving to No. 1 in the BCS. Nothing else even comes close.Auburn had never been No. 1 in the BCS. Auburn hadn't been No. 1 in a legitimate poll since the third game of the 1985 season. For historical reference - and eerie coincidence - that was Bo Jackson's Heisman year.Auburn has started just five games as a No. 1 team in the AP poll, the granddaddy of 'em all, which elevates Ole Miss from trap game to one of the most important outings in school history.You win as No. 1, especially in the BCS, and barring a flood, locusts or some other biblical event, you stay No. 1. You know what that means?Auburn can see its way clear to the crystal football.This would be a significant development if it were authored by Shug Jordan or Pat Dye, the other Auburn coaches who've guided the Tigers to the top of the nation at one time or another.Those guys are legends. Jordan has his name on the stadium, and Dye's is on the field.That it happened with Chizik as the pilot, and so quickly, has to be the greatest example of a head coach proving his critics wrong in this state's rich football history.All the award talk at Auburn this season has centered on the players. Cam Newton for Heisman. Nick Fairley for the Outland and Lombardi.The humble Chizik likes it that way, but don't leave him out of the discussion. Is there a stronger candidate at the moment for national coach of the year?I can answer that. No, there isn't.Chizik isn't just winning games and influencing people to change their misguided perception of him. He's making history.There have been a lot of college football coaches in this state, but since 1936, when the AP poll started, only five of them had led their teams to a No. 1 ranking by either the AP or BCS or both. Besides Jordan and Dye at Auburn, Alabama's Paul Bryant, Gene Stallings and Nick Saban did it, too.Fun facts. Stallings never coached a game with Alabama as the No. 1 team. He got there after beating Miami in the 1993 Sugar Bowl. Saban's put the Tide on top for three straight years. That matches Bryant's record from 1978-80 for consistency in performance.But none of them did it the first time as fast as Chizik. You can look it up. Here's the list of those No. 1 coaches and how many games it took them to get there.Jordan: 72.Stallings: 37.Dye: 35.Bryant: 32.Saban: 22.Chizik: 21.Anytime the category is winning and you one-up Saban, you've done something.Chizik still has to beat Saban head-to-head. Chizik has yet to coach a No. 1 team to a single victory with that target on its back. The coach who hurdled low expectations with the ease of SuperCam leaping the stadium fence in a single bound now has to handle great expectations.Living up to the hype isn't exactly an Auburn tradition, but this team, like this coach, may be different.Fairley, the best player on defense, had to put in time at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Wesson, Miss. Newton, the best player in college football, got a taste of the big time at Florida and then spent a year in exile at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas.Chizik himself did two years of hard labor in Ames, Iowa. So it's hard to imagine this coach or these players getting too big for their khakis at 8-0.For Chizik, every step along the way has been an upset to the outside world, from getting the job in the first place to getting the job done in a big way.The only thing left to do is finish the job.Who wants to bet against him now?
Fairley, the best player on defense, had to put in time at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Wesson, Miss. Newton, the best player in college football, got a taste of the big time at Florida and then spent a year in exile at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas.Chizik himself did two years of hard labor in Ames, Iowa. So it's hard to imagine this coach or these players getting too big for their khakis at 8-0.
Hadn't thought about that aspect, but hopefully it will ring true and they can stay grounded through all of this.
AUBURN – The transformation began in Gene Chizik’s first week on the job as Auburn’s head football coach. In December 2008, after being introduced as the face of Auburn’s football program, Chizik wasted no time going to work. He and Phillip Lolley, who now coaches Auburn’s cornerbacks, spent most of that first week flying around the Southeast and beyond in the school plane. Chizik visited recruits. He called potential assistants. The building of a program had begun. Lolley had coached cornerbacks for Chizik when Chizik was defensive coordinator in 2002-2004. They share mutual passion for their game and mutual respect. “He and I got on the plane together, and I don’t know if we got off the thing that first week,†Lolley says. “He said ‘I’m going to assemble the best staff in the country.’ He said ‘We’re going to outwork everybody. Other people talk about it, but we’re going to do it.’†As far as Lolley is concerned, Chizik has been true to his word. Chizik inherited a reeling football team and dispirited fan base. Picked to win the Southeastern Conference West, the Tigers had gone 5-7. Their six-game winning streak over Alabama had died in a humiliating 36-0 loss at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Tommy Tuberville had resigned after 10 seasons as head coach. The hiring of Chizik, who had gone 5-19 in two seasons at Iowa State, had been widely criticized. But Lolley had worked with him closely for three years. He knew better. “He told me, ‘Phillip, I promise you we’re going to get it done,’†Lolley says. “I didn’t doubt that. I knew what kind of coach he was, what kind of person he was, how hard he worked.†Just more than 22 months later, Auburn is 8-0, 5-0 in the SEC, No. 3 in the polls and No. 1 in the BCS standings that decide who plays for the national championship. It’s been a dizzying ride. In those early days, Chizik focused on holding together a recruiting class and hiring a staff. He had a plan for Auburn football, a plan that had impressed athletics director Jay Jacobs and the Auburn search committee looking for a replacement for Tuberville. Graduate assistant Travis Williams knows what greatness looks like. He was an All-SEC linebacker on Auburn’s unbeaten 2004 team. When he finished playing with the Atlanta Falcons, Chizik called him home. What he found was very different than what he left, but things began to change. “It was Coach Chizik and the coaching staff,†Williams says. “When he got here, he really wanted the kids to know the Auburn tradition. He’s brought former players back, NFL players back and things like that. A lot of the kids didn’t know the Auburn tradition. He did a great job of letting them know the foundation of what was built years and years ago. He’s done a great job of embracing former players and bringing them back.†On the field, Chizik’s first Auburn team went 8-5. Then came a recruiting turnaround of epic proportions, a consensus top five class that included quarterback Cam Newton, now leading Auburn's football team and the Heisman Trophy race. And Chizik's second football team has answered every challenge. For Lolley, it’s been a refreshing change from the contentious final days of the Tuberville regime, when he was director of NFL relations. “It’s just consistency in everything you do,†Lolley says. “Everybody comes to work. Everybody totes a lunch pail. It doesn’t matter how long we are here. No coach worries about that. They are spending all their extra time watching film, recruiting, whatever. We just all want to win. “The players are doing the same thing. I think a lot of that comes from losing that year. A lot of those kids didn’t like that feeling. They are still fighting to get there. They know we’re not there yet.†It all starts, Lolley says, with Chizik. “He’s relentless,†Lolley says. “He’s a relentless recruiter, and I mean relentless. Every coach on this staff works hard at recruiting. There’s not one coach on this staff that’s not hungry. Not hungry for notoriety. Hungry for victory. They all want to win, want Auburn to win. We’re not satisfied at any point. Nobody is.†Chizik wanted his players to understand that playing football at Auburn would be hard, but the reward could be great. He wanted them to know each other as something more than teammates on the field. Senior linebacker Craig Stevens saw the change almost immediately. “I just think it’s the togetherness as a team,†Stevens says. “That year, once we lost that one game, it started to go downhill from there. You started to lose a little faith. That’s what it fell like, like the team wasn’t that close. Now, whether we are up or whether we are down, we always feel like we can come back.†Chizik had the locker rooms upgraded, added video games, pools tables, Ping-Pong tables and other amenities. There were offseason outings to the water park, to go bowling, to movies. “We spend a lot of time outside of football together,†Stevens says. “I feel like those types of events they have brings the team closer. It allows us to get to know each other a little better, not just out there on the football field but know each other man-to-man.†Williams says it’s all about Chizik’s vision of what Auburn football should look like from the inside. “We say ‘family, family, family,’†Williams says. “It’s really true here. He wants the kids to stay around here. We’ve got the video games, pool tables and everything. They can watch film all day and study. They can go upstairs and see their coaches. He’s really created a comfortable atmosphere.†Leaving Bryant-Denny Stadium on Nov. 29, 2008, Lolley didn’t know what the future held for Auburn football, but he it was at a crossroads. “Last season, to me, was a remarkable season, how far this team came in a year,†Lolley says. “The players started having fun again. Even though we didn’t have the depth most folks had, the kids were playing hard. That’s what they expect here at Auburn. I’ve been here long enough to know that. “Our fans can accept a lot of things. One thing they won’t accept is not playing hard. That’s the way it should be. If you get beat and you’ve given everything you got, you can live with that. That’s an old cliché, but it’s the truth.†Williams recognizes the obvious. For all its success, this Auburn team doesn’t have the depth and talent across the board his Auburn teams had. But that doesn’t mean, he says, it can’t accomplish as much and more. “Our 2003 team was way more talented than our 2004 team,†Williams says, “but 2004 was a better team.†The day is coming soon, Williams says, when all the pieces are in place again. “We are on pace to really, really do some great things,†Williams says. “The coaches recruit so hard. They recruit guys that fit what they are looking for – great guys in the community, guys that have grades, guys that love football. At the end of the day, you need guys that love football.†Williams was a key part in what some would say was the greatest season in Auburn history, but his team was never No. 1 – not in the polls, not in the BCS standings. This team got there last Sunday after beating LSU 24-17 a day earlier. “Nah, it doesn’t make me jealous,†Williams says. “As long as it’s Auburn, that’s what matters.â€
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