Examining the Tuberville era ...

By Tim Cottrell
Sports Writer/Designer
Published: December 5, 2008

***The much-promised something special in the previous post.***

It’s now been around 48 hours since Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville’s resignation, and the news has been hit with quite a bit of scorn from across the nation and within the Auburn family.

All the talk of Tuberville’s “body of work” and so many people saying he deserved another year (which I think he did, for the record, although since it was apparently his decision to go that’s not really the point), made me want to examine Tuberville’s tenure just a little bit.

Here was his year-by-year record, including his time at Ole Miss, which I compiled Wednesday afternoon.

Ole Miss
1995*: 6-5 (3-5 SEC)
1996*: 5-6 (2-6 SEC)
1997: 8-4 (4-4 SEC)
1998x: 6-5 (3-5 SEC)
Auburn
1999: 5-6 (2-6 SEC)
2000y: 9-4 (6-2 SEC)
2001: 7-5 (5-3 SEC)
2002: 9-4 (5-3 SEC)
2003: 8-5 (5-3 SEC)
2004z: 13-0 (8-0 SEC)
2005: 9-3 (7-1 SEC)
2006: 11-2 (6-2 SEC)
2007: 9-4 (5-3 SEC)
2008: 5-7 (2-6 SEC)

Record at Ole Miss: 25-20
Record at Auburn: 85-40
Overall Record: 110-60
SEC Record at Ole Miss: 12-20
SEC Record at Auburn: 51-29
Overall SEC Record: 63-49

*-on NCAA probation
x-did not coach in bowl game
y-won SEC West
z-won SEC

A 110-60 record is certainly pretty good, and his 85-40 record at Auburn would seem to speak for itself.

But, just for the sake of argument, look at those 14 years as a head coach.

Outside of his three losing records, what years absolutely stand out as different from the others?

2004-2006.

The 33-5 record Tuberville compiled in those years is certainly impressive, but it stands in stark contrast to his more common theme of eight- or nine-win seasons.

In 14 seasons, Tuberville won more than nine games twice. Bobby Bowden, by contrast, didn’t win less than 10 games over a 14-year period at one point in his career, and he has spent 30 years at a little brother school, as Auburn is often known.

If you subtract those years, his overall record is a more pedestrian 77-55, and his Auburn record would stand at 52-35.

I’m going to come back to the 2004-2006 years in a little bit, but I also wanted to delve into another part of his record.

Tuberville’s SEC record over 14 years, counting his two SEC title games, was 64-50. Now, part of his 12-20 conference record at Ole Miss obviously stems from the fact that he inherited a program in shambles, and his 51-29 (52-30 counting title games) SEC record at Auburn is pretty good.

But let’s take a look at his record against every SEC school.

Alabama: 7-7 (0-4 at Ole Miss)
Arkansas: 6-8 (1-3 at Ole Miss)
Auburn: 0-4 (all at Ole Miss, obviously)
Florida: 3-5 (0-1 at Ole Miss)
Georgia: 7-7 (2-2 at Ole Miss)
Kentucky: 2-0 (no meetings at Ole Miss)
LSU: 7-7 (2-2 at Ole Miss)
Ole Miss: 7-3 (all at Auburn, obviously)
Mississippi State: 9-5 (2-2 at Ole-Miss)
South Carolina: 3-0 (1-0 at Ole Miss)
Tennessee: 4-3 (0-2 at Ole Miss)
Vanderbilt: 9-1 (4-0 at Ole Miss)

Now this metric might not be entirely fair when including the Ole Miss time, but I think it gives a decent picture. If you take away Vanderbilt, South Carolina and Kentucky, Tuberville was 50-49 in SEC play.

That’s kind of average.

So when you look at Tommy Tuberville, in many ways you’re looking at a good coach with an OK record.

So what explains the 2004-06 seasons, and what explains the quick dropoff since then?

Well, that’s what I’m going to try to talk about a little bit, and here is where I go to a little bit of the coaching community pipeline that occasionally trickles down to me (full disclosure: my uncle, Ronnie Cottrell, is a former recruiting coordinator at Florida State and Alabama).

Auburn has always had three major areas for its recruiting: Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

From Tuberville’s second season, Alabama was available to him in a way that probably no Auburn coach since Shug Jordan (in his pre-Bear years) had.

From late 2000 until 2002, Alabama was under the cloud of an NCAA investigation. From 2002-2004, they were on probation. From 2003-2006, they were under the stewardship of a less-than-stellar coach in Mike Shula.

And Auburn took full advantage of the situation, and you have to credit Tuberville for doing so. The man’s not dumb.

But that wasn’t his only advantage.

From about 1998 until the middle part of this decade Florida State was not recruiting very well, which opened up South Georgia and North Florida to Tuberville’s staff in a way it never would’ve been in the 1990s. And the Tigers have landed numerous players from that area, as any Auburn fan would know.

But that’s still not all.

While Ron Zook was at Florida, he may have recruited well but he left a lot of Florida more open than normal, and it didn’t hurt that he was being portrayed as a buffoon by every recruiter looking to land a player from the Sunshine State.

Just think of some of the players from Florida Auburn had from about 2002 until last year. A lot of those would not have been available in the 90s when Spurrier was there and Florida State was still a major player.

But Tuberville also made a lot of hay in Georgia during Jim Donnan’s final two years, and in Mark Richt’s first few years before he locked the state down.

But what is the main thread coming through all of those areas?

Richt, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer are now getting everyone they want, and making getting the ones they don’t want tougher on everyone else.

The last two recruiting classes were a bigger challenge than anything Tuberville had faced in his time. And when you factor in his pipeline in Mississippi beginning to dry up when Ed Orgeron showed up, as well as Steve Spurrier locking up the few cast-offs they could get in South Carolina, finding players became more and more difficult.

If you’re looking for a reason in the drop-off, look no further than all those names.

Now none of this is to say Tuberville wouldn’t have righted the ship. A successful spread offense certainly could have opened up more recruiting inroads, if not in their normal hotbeds then certainly nationally.

But if you’re looking for the best way to sum up the Tuberville era, it might be to say that he was a good football coach who knew how to play a winning hand (which he got in a way no Auburn coach has before, and may not ever again), and misfired when the cards he was dealt weren’t quite as good.