It's Totally Gonna Work This Time

The offseason hangs over the Auburn faithful like the specter of Rush Limbaugh over whatever the fuck is left of the Republican party (actually i have no idea if that anology even works. that's what i get for trying to be smart and topical). it is a strange and unfamiliar time for fans of the Tigers. this is the first offseason in many years when Auburn will be entering the next year not only not being considered a contender for the SEC West, but also unsure if the team will be good enough to actually make a bowl game. going into 2008 Auburn was picked by most of the media to be the SEC West champ and a darkhorse national title contender. and why wouldn't they? they returned a young and talented defense, almost their entire offensive line, and a stable of great runningbacks. we were promised an exciting and highpowered spread offense attack that would rescue us from the boring/predictable smash mouth/play action passing of Al Borges' West Coast scheme. instead we got one of the most painfully hilariously bad offenses in recent memory. in the end Auburn was a 5 win team with no idenity and no ability to move the football or score points and it cost the entire coaching staff their jobs and left Auburn the laughing stock of the SEC.

when Auburn hired coach Gene Chizik he promised (much to my dismay) to return Auburn to the smash mouth style that we all knew them for. but then something funny happened, he went out and hired ANOTHER spread guru in the form of Tulsa offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn. if you read any of the the other Auburn blogs you will know that a lot of fans were none to pleased by this, where others (like myself) were optimistic that this was the right move for the program and hoped that a new coaching staff would actually give the chance for this offense to work.

now i don't pretend to be a football analyst or expert (and if you saw how poorly i did in my college football pick em you'd probably just say i didn't know what the fuck i was talking about period.) but i do realize that Auburn is reaching a point where a talent gap is emerging between itself and the elite schools of the SEC. Florida, LSU, Georgia, and Alabama all have more 4 and 5 star recruits on their teams than Auburn and will continue to have more of those Blue Chip prospects. this talent gap means the Auburn can't just rest on what has worked in the past and must instead embrace the spread offense. Northwestern and Purdue have shown that running a successful spread attack could make them competitive in the Big 10 against the much more loaded schools that they face and both of those teams road Spread offenses to Rose Bowl berths. Oregon (who has about the same talent level as Auburn) has been a perennial top 25/top 15 school the past decade thanks to their spread offense...and if it hadn't been for Dennis Dixon's knee they likely would have been playing for a national championship 2 seasons ago. Auburn needs to recognize that it's got a lot more in common with Oregon and Purdue than it does with Florida and LSU and it needs/must/has to make the Spread Eagle work this time or else it's gonna drift back into the darkages of college football irrelevance that existed before i was even born.

so this is a call for those voices of dissent to shut the fuck up for a couple of years and let's see how this thing plays out. i don't care if we only win 4 games next year, this has to work...no strangling the offense in the cradle like last year or i'm gonna burn all my Auburn shit in effigy and just start watching baseball again.