Back to this pile of shit. I will be borrowing snark from The Auburner's tweets.
There's an expectation that the Texas job will open in the next few weeks. According to a source, Malzahn has told friends privately that coaching the Longhorns is his dream job.
There you go with your sources again...
If confronted with the choice between Auburn and Austin, it's a no-brainer move for Malzahn to bolt. The best job in the Big 12 is a much more stable place than The Plains, as even a play-caller of Malzahn's acumen isn't likely to make adjustments to historical trends.
No brainer. Right. To follow the only coach to win a National Championship since Woodstock, which is when their only other coach in the history of their program won one. After that Championship nearly a decade ago, he proceeded to run the program into the ground. Their only competitor bolted for the one unequivocal best conference, which is where Malzahn is now. The Big 12 is on the verge of extinction. Getting
INTO the SEC is the end goal. Even if it's Vandy. USC for all their perceived dominance. Franklin told them thanks, but no thanks.
Meanwhile Malzahn is well on his way to being the guy that usurps Saban's crown and replaces him as the greatest coach in college football.
No brainer, my ass.
History tells us that Auburn coaches -- no matter how successful -- don't have long and stable professional careers. Just ask Terry Bowden, who started 11-0 in 1993. Or Tommy Tuberville, who went 13-0 in 2004 after a failed coup to hire Bobby Petrino. Or Gene Chizik, who got fired two seasons after going 14-0 and winning the national title.
They don't have long and stable professional careers. Now here's some guys that have long and stable professional careers. What is your measuring stick for "long and stable professional careers"?
The average tenure of a college football coach is about 4 years.
Bowden, six years. Tuberville, a decade. Chizik, an average 4 years. As I already mentioned above, all of them had great careers. Tubs is still coaching in D1. He would love to still be at Auburn if it were up to him, but we moved on. Bowden has been coaching college football for decades. Chizik's story's really still yet to be written. I'd be shocked if he remained a head coach, but I highly doubt if he had tried his hand at coaching at Texas instead, he would have had a long sustainable career.
Eventually, serendipity meets reality. The pendulum of good fortune swings the other way. Charmed runs meet market corrections. There's a lot about the way this season unfolded that has been a unicorn. And unicorns don't often travel in packs.
"Unicorns are not real. 1993, 2004 and 2010 actually happened." - The Auburner
Meddling boosters have been a huge problem at Auburn in the past, and the Tigers coach is seemingly always a 7-5 campaign away from a millionaire batting his eyelashes at the next hot name. That booster may just charter a plane to go talk to him.
"Seemingly" is code for "not at all". As discussed, it took a lot more than 7-5 campaigns to bring any Auburn coach down. It took not making a bowl game, or in Chizik's case, not winning a single game in the SEC and dropping your only halfway decent non-conference.
In the 14-team SEC, Auburn will never be better than the fifth-best job, as Alabama, Florida, Georgia and LSU are widely considered a notch above the Tigers' position. So if Malzahn gets a chance to go to the Longhorns, he should jump at the opportunity. That's in part because of the boundless potential in Texas, where recruiting talent is flush and national championship expectations are realistic. (Think the Texas high school coaches wouldn't all love Malzahn?)
This is based on absolutely fucking nothing but his own bias.
"The Thamel piece is someone trying *very* hard to rationalize Auburn's success with a belief that Auburn is an inferior program." - The Auburner again.
Look at the careers of Bowden, Tuberville and Chizik, all of whom atrophied since leaving The Plains. There have been too many prying boosters, too many NCAA investigations and too much off-field tumult the past two decades to think that it can all be cleared away with a few improbable victories.
What prying boosters? Lowder has been gone for over a decade. This is a boogieman. Too many NCAA investigations? There was ONE in the history you mentioned, and it was complete bullshit fabricated mostly by YOU. And the NCAA agree.
That's what's been the most striking part of Auburn's 2013 season -- the near absence of off-field issues. From the time Auburn won the national title in '10 until the firing of Chizik last November, nine Tigers players were arrested. While that total isn't jarring relative to the rest of the SEC, four of those arrests were for armed robbery in March '11. That incident, along with the murder of two former players near campus in June '12, cast a pall over the program.
Again, completely irrelevant, and as you said, not at all unusual. Also using completely innocent players being murdered in cold blood as proof the program is run amok is deplorable. This is basically Pete saying "I tried super hard to come up with ANYTHING to latch on to as an off the field issue, and I just can't come up with SHIT! DAMMIT! Let me bring up the past then."
An analysis by AL.com in January 2012 showed that 43 percent of Auburn's 2009 and '10 signees left the program. The school had enough concerns about its players' off-field behavior that it paid an outside company nearly $75,000 to monitor its players to uphold an 11 p.m. curfew last season.
Again, the curfew thing is exaggerated. A coach is literally chastised for having an undisciplined team for disciplining his team. And the 2009 signees left because most of them graduated. That's a novel idea. Many in both classes left for the NFL. This is nowhere near as sinister as it sounds.
Since Malzahn has taken over, all has essentially been quiet off the field. He has thrown three players off the team, including the leading returning tackler from 2012, Demetruce McNeal, who was arrested in August for marijuana possession. But that's been the closest thing to controversy, a far cry from the 13-month NCAA investigation into allegations relating to Cam Newton and four other Auburn football players.
What four other players? First I've heard of that. Are you talking about the HBO 4? Who were from the Tuberville era, and also clearly proven to be liars?
SEC commissioner Mike Slive credited Auburn for the recent spell of stability. "I've been impressed with [athletic director] Jay Jacobs and [president] Dr. Jay Gogue and how they have made two decisions on the football side that have served them well," Slive said. "They deserve a whole lot of credit here. Needless to say, so does Gus. It's certainly a historic turnaround."
Slive added about the lack of trouble: "It shows you there's real stability at the highest levels here."
Betting on that lasting would be betting against history. Perhaps this is the start of a long and prosperous run of success on the field and a lack of issues off it. But history has shown that impatience and power struggles are the norm. Bobby Lowder, the infamous mega-booster, has decreased power since his fortune shrunk late last decade. But there's still enough pockets of booster power that some agents steered their clients away from pursuing the Auburn job last year. (Chizik's time at Auburn, even with the national title, still seems to haunt him. His name rarely comes up in job searches.)
Again, Lowder is made out to be some boogie man, like he was doing anything nefarious outside of jetgate. Which is hardly a monstrous offense.
Malzahn deserves all the credit for cleaning things up off the field and reviving the Tigers' fortunes on it. His offense is imaginative, his recruitment of Nick Marshall showcases his eye for talent and his leadership has been exquisite in transforming the team's culture. In less than a year, he's changed the image and fortunes of the program more significantly than even the most optimistic Auburn fan could have envisioned.
Who could have guessed this summer that Malzahn may be more likely to go to Texas than Nick Saban? Meanwhile, Alabama is having a season that includes an uncharacteristic number of off-field issues.
University of Texas' regents have made it clear that Saban is their top target, but there's little optimism in Austin that he'll jump. While Alabama's presumed absence from the national title game increases the slim possibility of Saban leaving -- it eliminates the awkward timing element if he's playing for a BCS championship -- it's hard to envision that happening. (Ironically, both Malzahn and Saban have the same agent, Jimmy Sexton.)
And that's arguably the biggest reason Malzahn should jump. One 109-yard field goal return doesn't supplant Alabama as the premier program in the state, country and SEC West. Chasing Saban isn't a wise way to spend one's prime coaching years.
Yep. That 109 yard field goal scored us 34 points, you know. We had no chance until then. It is 100% fact that they would have won in overtime, despite Auburn having the momentum basically the entire game.
So if Texas calls Malzahn, he would be foolish not to listen. Considering the combination of Texas' potential and Auburn's history, it could be Malzahn's savviest escape yet.
Keep wishing douche.
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