re: Any of you who are still making excuses for Hugh Freeze

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Tennessee for example had what like 4 coaches until their current one? He was at UCF and they regressed before TN decided to snag him.

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Heupel was far from a top coaching candidate when Tennessee hired him and in a very different place at UCF than Lashlee is at SMU.

I wouldn't have called Brent Venables a top tier coaching hire when we floated him for an opening years ago, but he laid out very clearly how top tier coaches likely look at the Auburn job.

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It's not that.

SMU is a school with a lot of resources, in a major city in a vastly talent rich, football crazy state. They are ranked and rapidly improving. Auburn is a great school but we are hampered by the very money that drives us. Coaches can look over who we have hired and fired over the years and see a clear pattern emerging. Tuberville bucked the system and they tried to stage a coup. The cat and mouse game with Malzahn was an embarassment. When we did "think outside the box" with a coaching hire, we did a VERY poor job of vetting him and then basically tried to nationally embarrass the guy with an investigation rather than just fire him. Then we go hire a head coach who NO ONE outside of us wanted just because he won a couple of games against Nick Saban... after we had recently FIRED a guy who won THREE.

For a top coaching talent, the story is "You will not run your program. Your job will constantly be subject to the whims of a bickering group of rich good ol' boys. If you try and change that, you will be crippled or run out of town."

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Pretty much everything you said about Auburn's past coaching hires can be attributed and mirrored in one way or another to essentially every other SEC school, if you were to honestly evaluate their past coaches. This isn't anything that is unique to Auburn, regardless of how much Auburn fans like to play the victim and pretend like we are some unique special snowflake of dysfunction.

For example, LSU played the "tried to fire, then backed out" game with Les Miles after they grew tired of him. And then when they did finally fire Les Miles, they gave the job to Ed Orgeron who had flamed out miserably at Ole Miss, and who no one else wanted as their HC. At least when we hired Freeze, he was an active HC at another school and was posting winning seasons. Who the hell would have hired Orgeron as their HC in 2016?

Tennessee literally ratted on their own HC (Pruitt) just so that they could fire him. Think long and hard about that one. They chose to let the NCAA impose penalties, so that they could push him out.

You can go down the list. Do you think that Jim McElwain's stint at Florida was peaches and cream?

Tuberville lasted 10 years at Auburn, and Malzahn lasted 8. That is basically the top end of what you expect in the SEC in terms of life-span. The only guys who last longer are the historic "program builders" who are allowed to sail off into the sunset when they feel like it, but those examples are few and far between. Tuberville had the classic Jetgate scenario which was significant, but again, he lasted 10 years. Gus Malzahn won't get anywhere near 8 years at UCF - I can almost guarantee it. He hasn't even made it through his 4th season, and they are already tired of him. And UCF is nowhere near Auburn in terms of pressure or expectations. So its very funny when you see AU fans who like to pretend like Auburn is some unique case where "fans expect too much". It wasn't until year 6 at Auburn that the affairs started getting publicly stale for Malzahn. Again, he reached that point in year 4 at UCF.

Excellent post metafour. Great points and well written.

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I've literally been talking about SMU for a year, since I found out that they moving to the ACC... That and the NIL will make them a power player and SOON

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Yep. They're getting the band back together.

I have a buddy who played there, recently went back this season and couldn't believe the $ being poured in. He thinks it's just the beginning and that they'll be major players in the NIL era.

Thank you sir for making a point I was trying to make in a much better way.