re: Strange 8 Years

quote:

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Five coaches. Five very different yet similar scenarios.

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The most remarkable part: all five of those HCs - every single one of them - had a year in which Auburn received first place votes in the AP polls at the end of the regular season.

Dye: 1983
Bowden: 1993
Tubs: 2004
Chiz: 2010
Gustav: 2013

Offhand I can't think of a single program who can make that claim over the past 32 seasons. And as bad as things have been at times, we've finished with losing records only five years during that stretch as well ('92, '98, '99, '08, '12).

I grew tired of Tubs because he seemed to settle into what appeared to me as a smug complacency, and his tendency to blame external factors for almost every defeat. But I'm coming to realize that his career (save for '08 when he appeared to give up) pretty much epitomizes AU's maximum level of gridiron competiveness: good-but-not-great almost every season, with occasional breakouts to the upside.

I could probably learn to live with that again. I just wish we could do it without paying our staff more than anyone else in the history of college football.