Chizik Had To Go

Of course it was not a matter of if it was going to happen, but when.

Following Auburn's abysmal 49-0 loss to arch-rival Alabama on Saturday in Bryant-Denny Stadium, many speculated that it would only be a matter of days at the most, or a matter of hours at the least, before the reign of Gene Chizik as the Tiger head football coach would be ended.  That answer came Sunday as Chizik was informed that he will not return to lead the Tiger program in 2013.

While it is still somewhat stunning how far the Tiger program has fallen since Cam Newton and Guz Malzahn led Auburn to a 14-0 record in 2010 and the program's second national championship, there can be no argument that the move to oust Chizik had to be made, especially after the Tigers showed absolutely no fight in a 49-0 loss to a No. 2 Alabama squad that can have even been much more humiliating had Tide coach Nick Saban not shown a tremendous amount of class and mercy...Seriously, the Tide could have probably reached the 70-point plateau against the woeful Tigers.

I will be the first to say that Chizik seems to be a total class act, a nice person and a person who no doubt felt in his mind that he could restore a Tiger machine which had totally reached the malfunction stage, but I also felt he was overwhelmed as a head coach, especially in the SEC, where the Tiger program was beginning to fall further behind programs such as Alabama, LSU, Georgia and Florida.

In this state, where Saban's Crimson Tide is playing for a shot at its third national title in four years, and second in a row, the divide between the Crimson Tide and Tigers has grown so wide that there was little choice but to stop the bleeding and begin immediately searching for a coach who can at least hope to compete with Saban's Bama juggernaut.

Chizik seemed to have lost touch with how far his program had fallen, and I have little doubt that Tiger fans had grown weary of his robotic postgame speeches where he continued to spout off the same tired and generic statements to explain yet another demoralizing Auburn defeat.  Speculation had already begun about Chizik's possible replacement and names such as Jimbo Fisher of Florida State have begun to surface.  One name the Tiger program should avoid at all cost is Bobby Petrino.  Despite his prowess as an offensive mind and the success he has enjoyed before the turbulent turn of events which ended his reign as Arkansas coach, the Auburn program does not need the negativity which a Petrino hire would invariably cause.

Auburn is in desperate need of all the positivity it can find at this point.