Gene Chizik Gets Auburn Job

It was a shock for him to leave UT for Iowa State (he could have left for a better job) and it's a shock Auburn would hire him with his record as head coach.

 

Chizik's defensive schemes only work with superior athletes. It something he did not have in Iowa State. Hopefully he can recruit well at Auburn but I doubt it with Saban and Meyer competing with him for talent.

 

Look back at the UT defense while he was there. The athletes were there but the defenses sucked...bad. I've never seen defenses that were so poor against the pass and so susceptible to the trick play. I can't imagine what Auburn fans are thinking. They just hired a coach who took a mediocre Iowa St. team and actually made them one of the worst in the country. That can't exactly inspire confidence...

 

Chizik was the D-Coord for that undefeated Auburn team as well as the UT national championship team which had a pretty good defense. It wasn't until last year that it looked really bad - but this year's pass defense didn't look much better for the first half of the year.

But yeah, his job at Iowa State was not exactly promotion-worthy.

 

Chizik is one of my favs. This is completely out of nowhere though, I thought he lost his luster at ISU. Great though.

 

Those undefeated seasons at Auburn and Texas really put Chizik on the map but that last season at UT was just horrible and I think he stock dropped considerably.

I like Chizik and I think he'll do a good job at Auburn, but this was out of no where.

 

IMO, this shows how desperate Auburn was to hire someone. He didn't deserve this job. Plus, any coach going there while Saban is at Alabama is almost guaranteed to fail.

Auburn fans are in for a rough few years.

 

Keeler: Farewell, Gene, you won't exactly be missed
By SEAN KEELER • sekeeler@dmreg.com • December 13, 2008


In Ames, they introduced Gene Chizik with smoke and a pep band. At Auburn, they’ll have to usher him out there with a police escort.

As long as you ignore the won-loss record and the egregious lack of loyalty to his former employer, it’s a great hire. Why the Tigers would take a flyer on a young coach with a 5-19 record is beyond me, but maybe athletic director Jay Jacobs saw something in the Iowa State football program that the rest of us didn’t.

Like progress.

“I know he coached there and had a good reputation as a coordinator,” Paul Finebaum, the longtime Alabama columnist and radio host, told the Register’s Andrew Logue on Friday. “But I think most people would agree, he’s been a complete disaster as a head coach.”

Disaster? No. In over his head? Probably.

What’s amazing about this is how neither athletic department — right now, at least — comes out of it looking terribly bright. Jacobs is trying to sell a man who knows the area and used to work there, but whose signature win was a 15-13 squeaker over a 6-6 Iowa team in September 2007.

That, and 5-19.

Then there’s Cyclone athletic director Jamie Pollard, who tapped Chizik — then the defensive coordinator at Texas — as his “splash” hire in 2006 to replace Dan McCarney, one of the most successful and popular coaches in Iowa State’s checkered football history. And what does the guy do? Gets throttled by Nebraska twice, beats Iowa once, and gets the heck out of Dodge on the first plane available. (Speaking of planes, according to the Associated Press, when Chizik and other Auburn officials got off one near campus Saturday, a group of heckling Tigers fans were waiting to greet them. Again, wish this Jacobs cat luck pitching this one with a straight face.)

It’s easier to say this in retrospect, but let’s be honest — this was never destined to be a long-term relationship. To McCarney, Iowa was home. To Chizik, who grew up in Florida, it was a job. A steppingstone.

The only thing the man did consistently over the past two years was keep a lot of people at arm’s length.

A guy who labeled Phillip Bates a quitter just quit on his program. This is the same coach who, one month ago, went out of his way to publicly declare his love for all things Iowa State and how happy he and his family were in Ames.

Gene Chizik might be a good man. But he’s a lousy liar.

Let him go. Let ’em have him. Iowa State football is too tough a commitment, too tough a job, for a 1-800 type who’s got one foot out the door.

Pollard gets a mulligan on his most important hire, but if he gets this one wrong, the next plane out of town will have his name on it. Ames is a nice place, but Iowa State is a brutal job in a brutal league. It’s not for everyone.

Turner Gill? Perfect, at least on the surface. Big 12 ties, Nebraska roots. Took Buffalo — Buffalo, people, the Baylor of the Mid-American Conference — to a bowl game.

Brian Kelly? It’s easier to get to a Bowl Championship Series game at Cincinnati than it is in Ames.

Brady Hoke? Brought Ball State back from the dead.

Todd Graham? His Tulsa teams score all kinds of points.

David Bailiff? Winning at Rice is nothing to sneeze at.

Bill Cubit, the Western Michigan coach? Solid. Not sexy.

Tommy Tuberville, the deposed Auburn coach? Fair swap.

Mark Farley? If he learned anything from Terry Allen’s stint at Kansas, it’s that the Big 12 isn’t nearly as easy (or kind) as it looks.

Steve Loney? He’d probably take it in a heartbeat.

McCarney? Hard to picture that one if Pollard’s making the call.

Will Muschamp, the hotshot defensive coordinator at Texas? Fool me once ...

“If he took another job,” Chizik’s mother, Rita, told the Register on Saturday, “that little rascal didn’t call me.”

I’d imagine Cyclone fans would have another word for him right about now. Meanwhile, Nick Saban has to be grinning from here to Tuscaloosa.

 

Whether a coach had a record of success or failure, fans of the former team are almost always bitter when the coach leaves.