Alabama A&M Reax/Bama Preview

I'll be travelling to see the wife's family for Thanksgiving today. I'll be with 20 in-laws, mostly extended family. Auburn goes into the Iron Bowl as a 32 point dog against Alabama. So it goes without saying...

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

First a quick review of the Alabama A&M game: Auburn used superior talent and speed to squash the Bulldogs, proving that Scott Loefler, with Auburn's talent could easily win the SWAC.

It was nice to give the seniors a W in their final home game. Most of them have earned it.

I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on what Auburn has to do to win the Iron Bowl. I have not even made my mind up if I am going to watch the game. Watching the game will be something like having to watch a loved one being repeatedly punched in the face. You can't do anything to stop it. You just have to sit there and take it.

I'll instead give my two cents on the state of the union in regard to our beloved program, and how I think we got where we are.

I have read many theories on what happened with Gene Chizik to get us to this point. Some point to the 2011 Clemson game as the unraveling of the Chizik era. Auburn was humming on all cylinders on offense in the first half of that game. When it became glaringly obvious that Auburn could not stop Clemson on defense, Chizik meddled with Gus's scheme. The ludicrous speed offense throttled back, and really was never the same after that. Barrett Trotter was shouldered with the blame. AU decided to hand the keys to Clint Moseley, who proved to be totally over matched against better teams.

What might be a better theory is the idea that Chizik won because of Tuberville's upperclassmen paired with the greatest college player in a generation led to a national championship in 2010. Bynes, Ziemba, Adams, Zachery, etc all had something to prove. Combine that with one Cameron Newton, throw in a Nick Fairley and you get the magical 2010 season that no one will soon forget.

Chizik received a great deal of credit for 2010. But when all those guys were gone, we were left with a lot of Rivals 4 stars who to this day have not been coached up. Some were/are quite obviously recruiting busts. Others quite frankly have not been coached.

Combine that with the obvious lack of mental toughness and discipline off the field, and we get to where we are today, to a place where no Auburn fan ever thought we would be. We have no hope of beating of biggest rival. We are staring a winless conference record right in the face. Three frickin wins. 3.

And we could tolerate most of the losses if they were competitive. But over last 2 seasons, we have been getting blown out, and regularly. It's too much to stomach really. And at this point all of us know change is coming. It has to.

Rob and I have been very honest the last two seasons. Early on, Rob more than me was chastised on message boards for telling the truth. He's even had members of the current coaching staff call and rip him.

You know what? Rob was right. He was right about the glaring problems last season when many Auburn fans chose to bury their heads in the sand. Those problems just got worse this year.

And all of your worries and my worries that the guy at the airport in 2009 was right were true. Then, Auburn just hired a 5-19 coach. After four years, we've become Iowa State circa 2008.

That's not to say we won't be back. If a 5-19 coach can win a national title at Auburn, imagine what a good coach will do.

Auburn will return to the top quickly. It's who we are. It's what we do.

Happy Thanksgiving. War Eagle.