USA Today's Misery Index points out the obvious.

Is Auburn headed for another debacle? Auburn has a history of "falling off the freaking cliff, setting the stage for a rise from the ashes and then another tumble."
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An excerpt:

Maybe it's just reality that when Auburn goes bad, it really goes bad.

Bad for Auburn isn’t mediocrity. Bad for Auburn isn’t hanging in there and being proud to just make a bowl game. Bad for Auburn is falling off the freaking cliff, setting the stage for a rise from the ashes and then another tumble.

It happened to Terry Bowden, who went from 10-3 to 3-8 in an instant and got fired. It happened to Tommy Tuberville, who had a machine going in the early 2000s and then was gone after one disastrous year in 2008. It happened to Gene Chizik, who overachieved in each of his first three years, including the 2010 national title, then went 3-9 in 2012 and was suddenly living the buyout life.

Now here we have Gus Malzahn, who raised expectations to an insane level in his first season by coming within a play of winning the national championship, then regressed to 8-5 last year and now faces the potential for another major disappointment after starting 2015 as the favorites to win the SEC. ...

Without the previous Auburn crash-and-burn jobs following some of its most memorable seasons, it might never even enter our minds that this program might be headed for the basement in the SEC West. But it kinda is what Auburn does, so now it’s up to Malzahn and Co. to figure things out and prove that history won't repeat itself.