Much has been made of Auburn's decision to rehire former defensive coordinator Gene Chizik over Buffalo head coach Turner Gill. At first glance, this deal seemed a little dubious, considering Chizik's recent record as the head coach at Iowa State, but I neglected to make a first impression. After further researching Chizik, and remembering that he was the very successful defensive coordinator for Auburn's undefeated run in 2004, and he immediately followed that success by leading the defense of the 2005 national champion Texas team.
His career as a head coach has been rocky in the emerging Big 12 north, but it wasn't hard for me to justify hiring a defensive mastermind with SEC coaching experience over any MAC coach. Certainly, there have been some coaching gems to come out of non-BCS conferences, with Urban Meyer being the most notable. Still, Meyer was much more accomplished when he was offered the head coaching position at Florida than Turner Gill is now, leading Utah to an undefeated season in a stronger conference and a BCS bowl victory. On the other hand, there have also been some successful head coaches plucked from the defensive coordinator position at major conference schools (such as Oklahoma's Bob Stoops).
My conclusion: no grounds for racism charges.
I didn't stop thinking about it there though, especially when I recently stumbled across some Auburn students discussing the issue on a web site I frequent. Not being huge football fans, they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other about whether racism affected the hire, but they weren't happy with the reputation their school has received from the incident. Just looking at the argument before, I hadn't considered the apparently lasting effects that this issue would have on the reputations of the school and its students. I know that in the long run, this too won't last, but for the time being, the media has falsely perpetuated the racist southern stereotype at Auburn.
I don't think I've quite proved my point yet though. Going back to Turner Gill, I don't think he's a bad coach. I think it's entirely possible he's a better coach than Chizik. I'll be the first to admit that Chizik's head coaching career hasn't been the greatest success, but let's look at Buffalo. Gill gets a lot of respect for leading the Bulls to a MAC championship, but most people forget that Buffalo was hardly the best team in the MAC. In terms of overall regular season conference records, Buffalo was tied for fourth. They led their division, but four teams had regular season conference records as good or better than Buffalo's, and being in the much tougher division, those teams went through tougher conference schedules. The MAC western division went 14-4 against Buffalo's eastern division. Even Buffalo was 0-2 against western division opponents in the regular season before upsetting Ball State in the championship game.
Buffalo clearly didn't get any top 25 votes, but how well did they do in the computers? They finished at #60 in the Colley Rankings, fourth in their conference. In Massey, they finished at #76 (#68 MoV), third in the MAC. I'll definitely admit that Gill has improved Buffalo's program over the three years he's been there, but is a #60 finish in the Colley Rankings enough reason to think he could succeed in the SEC in the recently upgraded western division? Chizik on the other hand, while not the head coach, played a significant role in coaching two consecutive top 2 teams.
The correct choice remains to be seen. As it stands now though, I would rather stand with Chizik. He's done a great job so far pulling in an impressive recruiting class, always a difficult task for new head coaches. He also gets points for stealing offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn from Tulsa. Malzahn, a former high school coach, has achieved great offensive success in his stints at Arkansas and Tulsa. I just hope this racist reputation Auburn has acquired is soon to pass.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
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I agree with you that there's no outright grounds to charge that the decision to hire Chizik over Gill was racially motivated. Based on their track records, Auburn could reasonably have gone either way.
ReplyDeleteI think though that one of the reasons that someone like Charles Barkley can get so much traction calling it racism, is that objectively, there are very few black head coaches in FBS college football. Without doing any research, I can only think of four from last season: Turner Gill at Buffalo, Randy Shannon at Miami, Sylvester Croom at Mississippi St., and Tyrone Willingham at Washington. Those latter two will not be returning as head coaches next year.
That's not proof of systemic racism, but it's enough to make a reasonable person wonder, and especially with ESPN putting a spotlight on this issue for at least the past five years, it's hard to ignore the possibility.