Former Auburn, Iowa State coach tabbed to be next head coach at Auburn

Saturday 13, December 2008

Nick Vita

Alright, Auburn's new head coach is Gene Chizik.

The fans are not happy.

It stinks.

And the only thing to do now is support him. I don't care if he was miserably bad at Iowa State. He is our coach now, and we need to get behind him. I know he wants to win. Anyone who wants to be a head coach wants to win. This is his big chance. Taking the Iowa State job, in retrospect, was probably a bad idea. You're in the Big XII, and you have a school in Iowa that has much better name recognition when it comes time to recruit, and you are not a traditional power. It's a very tough place to succeed at. Granted, there is no excuse for going 0-8 in conference and 2-10 overall, but it was a tough, tough job.

So don't go to the airport and boo Gene Chizik. Don't go to the press conference and boo. Save your anger for Jay Jacobs, who has singlehandedly run swimming, baseball, and men's basketball into the ground here. He ran off Dave Marsh, who made Auburn a national swimming power. He hired Tom Slater, who took Auburn's top-notch baseball facilities and used them to never make an SEC Tournament, let alone an NCAA one. He hired Jeff Lebo, who has yet to have a winning record in the SEC or even make the NIT.

Point is, getting mad at Gene Chizik isn't going to change anything. He's going to be the head coach that comes out of that tunnel next year in Jordan-Hare.

And whatever you do, Auburn fans, please don't stop supporting Auburn University. Go ahead, stop supporting Auburn athletics. But this place is not just about football. Being a student here, I would be ashamed if people stopped supporting the university because we made a coaching hire they didn't like. It's not the students fault, and there's no need to punish us. In fact, I'm just as angry as most of you are. But I still love this place and believe in it, even if I disagree with the way this whole thing was handled.

So war eagle, and war damn Coach Chizik.