Auburn entered the 2003 football season ranked #6 in the AP Poll and had Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown. After starting the season with two lopsided losses to Southern Cal and Georgia Tech, Auburn was also beaten by Ole Miss and beaten handedly by LSU and UGA. Due to the unraveling, the infamous secret meeting with Bobby Petrino took place (just for fun, click on the link and read some of the quotes by Petrino. He truly is a snake in the grass.).
The prognosticators were a season off, and 2004 Auburn stormed through the SEC to a 13-0 undefeated regular season. Tommy Tuberville didn’t raise the crystal football, but came awfully close.
6 years later, Auburn was 14-0 and this time, the defensive coordinator on the 2004 staff got to hold up the “whatever sponsor’s name it is this year” trophy.
After Auburn went undefeated in 2004, Auburn had a few decent seasons in 2005 and 2006, before struggling in 2007 and the wheels falling off the wagon completely in 2008. You see this a lot in sports, but Tuberville was at Auburn for 10 years. Fatigue had set in. The administration had already tried to run him off. 85-40 and 10 years was enough to make everyone ready to part ways.
Auburn went: 9-3 in 2005, 11-2 in 2006, 9-4 in 2007 and 5-7 in 2008. That is 16 losses in the four years since Auburn went undefeated.
Gene Chizik has a 29-10 record at Auburn, but 14-0 with Cam Newton and Nick Fairley and 15-10 without. But regardless of whether or not Auburn cheated, which they did, to win the National Championship, they still won a National Championship. And in college football, the way we determine a coach’s merit is based on if they win a national championship, even though the criteria to win one is not uniform from year to year (Mark Richt and Tommy Tuberville in recent memory).
Gene Chizik has 5 losses since going undefeated (with the potential for 6). Tuberville had 16 since his undefeated season before getting fired/force to resign/however you want to sugarcoat it. Chizik is already 1/3 of the way to getting to Tuberville’s loss total. With the mess going on at the Plains right now, next year may not be any better.
