Tuberville really wasn't the greatest of coaches. He was good but it is true that he did benefit from Alabama's NCAA sanctions. His tenure at Auburn went as follows:

1999: 5-6
2000: 9-4
2001: 7-5
2002: 9-4
2003: 8-5
2004: 13-0
2005: 9-3
2006: 11-2
2007: 9-4
2008: 5-7

Overall record: 85-40 (.680)

He won the SEC West twice, won an SEC championship in 2004, and beat Alabama six years in a row. Auburn was ready to fire him in 2003 and would have done so had Flight Aware not existed.

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Posted by TeddyWestside

Georgia

Member since Jul 2017

2874 posts

Posted on 6/30/23 at 9:53 pm to RollTide1987

Tuberville was a good coach. He took over a really bad situation, had some good years, and then was ill-equipped to compete with Saban and to compete in the new era of college football more generally from a strategy standpoint. He was one of the last of a now dead breed of running game, ball control, field position coaches. You can see it in his games against weak teams. Auburn won a lot of those games 24-0, 28-3, 27-7, etc.

The spread offense and high-scoring game became ubiquitous and the game passed him by. And, of course, Saban coming into the state made it way more difficult for him.

This post was edited on 6/30/23 at 9:56 pm

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Posted by BowlJackson

Birmingham, AL

Member since Sep 2013

52881 posts

Posted on 7/1/23 at 7:22 am to RollTide1987

quote:
Tuberville really wasn't the greatest of coaches. He was good but it is true that he did benefit from Alabama's NCAA sanctions.

Honestly, I agree with this. I feel like Tubs is getting overrated itt by conservative fanboys. If this question was asked 3 years ago, the overall consensus on him was a bit different.

He was at Auburn at the right time to make him look better than he really was.

I'll always be grateful for 2004, and some of my best memories of Auburn football are games that he coached. But for every big upset he had, he shite the bed once or twice to teams that he should've beat. Outside of 2004, pretty much every other season was a disappointment. 02,03, 05, and 06 are all seasons full of "could've beens"

It's no secret that Tubs never put much effort into recruiting, and a lot of great players came to him at Auburn almost by default. Bama was under NCAA sanctions and considered a dead program until Saban came in, both MS schools were jokes at the time, Tennessee was cooling off and starting to trend down, Georgia was good but was still equals with Auburn, we didn't really compete much with LSU for recruits at the time. Florida was a juggernaut and got who they wanted, but other than them Tubs didn't have much competition for recruits. The second Saban came into the state, and other SEC teams started stepping up their game, Tubs immediately wilted. He put up zero fight, just completely quit on Auburn without so much as feigning any effort to appear otherwise.
People might not remember but before Bama hired Saban, Auburn was considered heavy favorites for both Julio Jones and Donta Hightower. A good example is Josh Chapman, he was a guy who grew up a Bama fan, but had been committed to Auburn for nearly a year, largely bc Auburn was a competent program and Bama was in constant turmoil. It took one meeting with Saban a few days after he was hired to flip that opinion, and Tubs didn't so much as call to try and save that commitment.

Gus ultimately shot himself in the foot with failures in key areas of recruiting, but he held his own for a long time against a level of competition that Tubs couldn't even stand to.

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