Bizarre hiring decisions, college football edition

This is the weirdest coaching switch I’ve ever seen: Auburn fires Tommy Tuberville, who prior to this year had gone 42-9 in the SEC over the previous four seasons, including a perfect record in 2004, and replaces him with Gene Chizik, whose entire head coaching record consists of going 5-19 at Iowa State over the last two years. Adding to the bizarreness is that Auburn is several miles above ISU in the college football hierarchy. For a top 15ish program to fire a very successful coach in order to hire a guy whose head coaching record is limited to falling on his face at a fourth-tier program is, shall we say, unusual.

Meanwhile Auburn interviewed but didn’t hire Turner Gill, the former Nebraska quarterback who has done such a remarkable job of reviving Buffalo’s moribund program. Gill is currently one of four black head coaches at 119 major college programs. Now for a high-profile program like Auburn not to hire Gill is certainly defensible in the abstract, as his head coaching track record consists of two highly successful seasons at a lower-tier program, and that might reasonably considered not enough evidence of coaching talent. What’s not defensible is to hire Chizik instead of Gill.

Update: A couple of further points. As was noted in the comments, it’s not true that Chizik’s record at ISU has been anything but terrible even when you consider the context. ISU had played exactly .500 ball this decade before Chizik was hired, and had won seven games four times and nine games once. The very best you can assume is that he walked into a major rebuilding job, but it’s not as if his record so far can be counted as anything but a negative in the evaluation process. Simply ignoring his record given that, after all , it’s the only direct evidence there is of what sort of head coach he might turn out to be is ridiculous. The college football landscape is littered with examples of guys who were successful coordinators but failed as head coaches. What evidence is there to this point that Chizik won’t be another one? None.

Further, they’re paying him two million a year! They’ve taken a guy whose most relevant track record is a big negative, and put him very near the top of the college football salary structure. How many coaches will be making more than him next year, a dozen?

This, like the Weis situation at ND, is a classic example of structural racism. It’s not that anyone at Auburn is thinking “let’s hire the white guy.” It’s that some big deal booster or whomever really “likes” Chizik, and is “comfortable” with him, and just has a “feeling” that Chizik is going to be great, despite is actual record, which by the way totally sucks.

Funny how that works!