re: What I’m hearing (coaching search)

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I'm afraid many are sleeping on Franklin. 2 nine win seasons at Vandy 6 or 7 10 win seasons at Penn State.

I see a lot of people complaining about him not winning big games but keep in mind he was stringing together those 10 win seasons when the Big10 was pretty damn good. Michigan Ohio State Minnesota hell Michigan State and Iowa were good.

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No, we're not sleeping on him. You need to do some actual research.

The two 9-win seasons at Vandy were a joke once you actually look at the schedules. His best SEC win over those two seasons came against an 8-win Georgia team. They beat no other ranked opponents during those two seasons, and basically feasted on an SEC East that was in utter turmoil. Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky were all hot garbage. When he played SEC West teams, he completely lucked out and got to play the abysmal 3-win Auburn team in Chizik's final season in 2012, but missed the 2013 Auburn team that nearly won the Natty. Apart from Auburn he got to play Ole Miss in Freeze's first two seasons there and went 1-1 against Freeze.

Your understanding of the Big Ten and Penn State's relation to it is not up to par. Penn State was the ~3rd most talented team in that conference, and nearly equal in talent to Michigan on a year to year basis. Go and actually look at those 9-10 win seasons he had at Penn State. They would normally play just 3-4 ranked opponents per year - two of which were OSU and Michigan. He would routinely lose both of those matchups, and would beat a team like ~#20 Illinois. The rest of the wins would come against weak Big Ten teams like Indiana, NC State, Maryland, etc. which would routinely float around with 5-7 win seasons. The important thing to understand is that none of those teams had anywhere near as much talent as Penn State was fielding. So he would beat the teams that he could out-talent, but would almost always lose whenever the talent differential was comparable (ie: Michigan) or against his favor (ie: OSU). That is why his record against ranked opponents is so horrible.

Gus Malzahn had a considerably better record against ranked opponents at Auburn than Franklin did at Penn State, and Malzahn had a much harder path to achieve that record. Why? Because we played more ranked opponents in a stronger conference, and Auburn's talent level relative to the rest of the conference was worse than Penn State's was in the Big Ten.

What you need to understand is that Auburn will never "out-talent" the rest of the SEC. At best, we will field seasons wherein we have comparable talent to teams like Bama, LSU, Texas, Georgia, A&M, etc, etc. In most seasons we will have less talent than those teams. Therefore, a successful coach at Auburn absolutely has to be able to do "more with less" to some degree. James Franklin is the literal opposite of that. The only teams he beats with regularity are the ones that he clearly out-talents. That isn't likely to work in the SEC where there are a half-dozen teams that will field at least equal (and usually greater) talent than Auburn does. Again, Michigan fielded only marginally better talent than Penn State did during Franklin's tenure and yet they beat him 7 out of 10 times.

What? Nothing says we are serious like Neal Brown

Neal didn’t work at WVU so it makes him a bad OC candidate?

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but I want the HC to freely pick their assistants.

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That worked out so well for Harsin and Napier. That's one of the things with the G5 coaches, alot of the time they want their G5 assistants.

That being said I'm not so sure Muschamp, Garner, and Steele were Gus Malzahn's hires. Doesn't that just feel like the program itself pulling some strings? I think this is being overblown as an issue.

Was always led to believe that he/she worked for Pat Dye Jr.

Great point. Coach Kill is old. He will retire soon. Can he continue replicating high quality of coaching and performance?

Another thing Lea mostly operates under conditions of low NIL for their lesser regarded players that for the most part plays to win and not for a check.

When NIL kicks up a notch are they going to be able to handle the locker room?

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have no idea why any Auburn fan would want him. He had not done well against good teams and he basically is a dud. No personality.

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Would honestly be the worst hire we could probably make

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Would honestly be the worst hire we could probably make

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Anybody that can get Auburn to 8 wins is an automatic upgrade already.

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Sumrall
OC Neal Brown
Dc DJD

Defensive staff probably stays largely intact.
I’d expect Craddock to follow Sumrall likely as qb coach.

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Welp, at least we'll know definitively who has a stranglehold on the program.

We can go ahead and just concede to UA, UGA, Texas and Texas AM.

Maybe we can start our own championship cup / series with Missouri, Ark, South Carolina.

Never in my life did I imagine I'd be so lucky as to see Hal Mumme AND
Chad Morris disciples on staff to develop QBs.