AU FOOTBALL: Chizik remains under microscope as kickoff approaches

Since his charter plane touched down in Auburn to a handful of supporters and administrative brass 266 days ago, Gene Chizik has had a straightforward — yet seemingly scripted — answer to every question tossed his way.

Worried about a lack of support from a disappointed fanbase?

There’s no time to worry about what outsiders think.

Who do you look for on the recruiting trail?

Auburn men, of course.

Injuries?

Don’t even think about it.

Yet when he was asked recently if he’d be overcome by nerves — some first-game jitters — before his Auburn head coaching debut against Louisiana Tech, Chizik cracked a smile, sat back in his chair and delivered a Tommy Tuberville-esque quip.

“I’m nervous right now in front of all you guys,” Chizik said.

His monthly allowance of public humor out of the way, Chizik returned to the stone-faced, all-business demeanor that has defined his second go-around with the Tigers.

“You have the natural nerves, but you’ll never know it,” said Chizik, who was the Tigers’ defensive coordinator from 2002-04. “We’ve been waiting a long time for game week. To be honest with you, it’s been a long eight-and-a-half months.”

Responses, all right
Jay Jacobs didn’t need to hear the words out of Chizik’s mouth.

Before the Auburn athletic director’s nationwide search landed him in Dallas for his last necessary interview, Jacobs remembered what he used to hear from players on the undefeated 2004 team.

“It wasn’t as much as I saw in him as much as I saw in the players he coached,” said Jacobs, who was a senior associate athletic director at the time. “They always talked about him. They always talked about Coach Chiz.

“I’d ask what’s up with that guy. ‘Hey, he loves us, he works us hard, he teaches us and he cares about us.’ Those are the things that people like Junior Rosegreen and Carlos Rogers, Travis Williams would say.

“It’s one thing to love a coach, it’s another thing to respond.”

Oh, there was a response, all right.

Google search “Jay Jacobs Auburn.” Scroll past his official athletic bio page, his Wikipedia page and a couple other blog entries and you’ll arrive at the most infamous YouTube clip involving Auburn since former cornerback Jerraud Powers had a police dog bite part of his hand.

Yes, when Chizik, himself, first landed in Auburn, the vibe was nothing but positive. But when Jacobs and his leadership team touched down shortly before sunset on that Saturday afternoon, the immediate Internet message-board backlash was personified into two angry fans.

“We want a leader not a loser! Five-and-19 is not what we need!”

Jacobs remained unfazed through it all. If anything, it gave him more respect for the unsatisfied Auburn fanbase.

“We’ve got a lot of passionate fans, but when our student-athletes start responding like they have the last few days, the Auburn people will adjust to that,” Jacobs said on the day Chizik was officially introduced to the Auburn media. “Here’s a guy who went undefeated here as a defensive coordinator, went to Texas, won a national championship as a coordinator, and he’s had two years as being experienced as a head coach making some tough choices at a tough place.

“I like all that. It’s not an easy business.”

New staff, new beginnings
The transition has been slow for places like STAMP, a local T-Shirt shop on College Street.

The “I love Tommy” T-shirts hung on windowsill mannequins long through the winter.

Slowly but surely, the memory of Auburn’s third-winningest coach has faded.

With the exception of James Willis, Chizik told Tuberville’s entire staff to move on with their coaching careers. When Willis abruptly bolted for Alabama, Chizik had a staff composed entirely of guys he gave the first-and-final approval to.

It was the first, and biggest, step toward winning over even the biggest Tuberville supporters.

The coaches came from all over the country, from different times in their career and in all shapes, sizes and personalities.

There was the offensive guru-on-the-rise, Gus Malzahn, whose dry, bookworm demeanor seemed to directly match Chizik. There was the reborn defensive coordinator Ted Roof, whose brief head-coaching career had about as much success as Chizik’s.

The charismatic recruiters from Oklahoma State, Curtis Luper and Trooper Taylor, and North Carolina’s Tommy Thigpen signified that Auburn’s new staff would have a modern feel — something pundits acknowledged that Auburn lost during Tuberville’s final years.

The hiring of Tracy Rocker touched on Chizik’s soft spot for the Auburn of old, a place he only associated with hard-nosed — and most importantly — winning football teams.

“The last year that I was here was a very good year in 2004. I was really lucky to be a part of some things that were really, really good,” Chizik said. “That year we were very physical on offense. We were really good defensively — we were No. 1 in the country.

“Hopefully, we can get back to that.”

Months remained before Chizik could do any of that on the field, so the focus was directed toward the recruiting trail.

It would be a place Chizik jumped into headfirst. The few players left on this year’s Auburn team who were recruited by the former defensive coordinator were sure of that.

“The first thing I remember was he asked me for a glass of water,” senior cornerback Walt McFadden said. “None of the other recruiters asked my mother for a glass of water. I thought this guy was rude or something.

“He was a honest guy. He came and got straight to the point with me, let me know what I needed to do to make it to Auburn and what he was looking for when I get here.”

Auburn became one of the headline stories on National Signing Day when it was able to lure highly touted receivers DeAngelo Benton and Emory Blake from schools like LSU, Texas Tech and Colorado.

But the summer, when college football news is usually buried beneath baseball box scores, was when Chizik and his staff got Auburn some facetime on SportsCenter — the first since the whole YouTube thing.

The Tigers rolled into high schools across Alabama in style, ditching the one-man rental cars for a whole-staff stretch limo.

That was called Tiger Prowl.

A few weeks later, fans, recruits and Aubie gathered for an impromptu pep rally to toilet-paper the trees at Toomer’s Corner. Controversy ensued when a handful of secondary violations may have occurred, but the overwhelming response from the people who mattered — the prospects on hand — was positive.

It would be remembered as Big Cat Weekend.

The tactics seemed to buck what Chizik was all about. Some described it as cavalier or renegade.

Chizik disagreed.

“As far as being cavalier and things of that nature, I don’t see that at all,” Chizik said. “We’re just trying to do our job and work hard.”

Time, perhaps, served as the biggest healer to the wounds left by Tuberville’s questionable departure, but the recruiting push certainly didn’t hurt, especially during an era when recruiting Web sites are reeling in the subscribers lost by newspapers.

So STAMP has followed suit. On display right now, patrons can pick up their very own “Chizik Republik” T-Shirt.

Interesting expectations
The expectations from Chizik have been sky-high since he spoke with reporters for the first time in December.

Mentions of the 2004 season, his final as defensive coordinator before he took the same position at Texas, have been commonplace. It’s tough to top 13-0.

That attitude has trickled down to his players.

McFadden said Tuesday that he truly believes Auburn will finish the season undefeated.

The realistic outlook, though, has been significantly tempered.

Chizik inherited a team in constant transition with a sputtering identity as a defensive force. Depth issues plague both sides of the ball and question marks dot a number of positions, including quarterback. The Tigers have just 78 players on scholarship — seven less than the NCAA maximum 85 — and a number of true freshmen poised to see significant playing time this season.

Chizik went through a similar stage at Iowa State, especially during his second year when 11 true freshman got starts at some point during the season.

The Cyclones lost their final 10 games of the 2008 season to finish 2-10.

“There’s just so many unknowns until we get out there,” Chizik said.

History isn’t on Chizik’s side for a strong first season.

When Tommy Bowden went 11-0 in his first season at Auburn, he was the first Tiger coach to put together a winning first year since Dave Morey, who went 5-3-1 in 1925. Ralph “Shug” Jordan, Auburn’s winningest coach, went 5-5. Pat Dye finished 5-6 in 1981. Tuberville did the same in 1999.

“I just know that we’re a couple years away from being the caliber team that we should be, that all of us as Auburn people expect and deserve,” Jacobs said. “But I know we have the right guy and the right assistant coaches getting us back to where we want to be.”

Today, even after eight-and-a-half hectic months, is the true start to the Gene Chizik era.

“I don’t know where we’re at right now,” Chizik said. “We’ll strive to get better each week. But it’s going to be interesting.”

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