gene_chizik

There haven’t been many more head-scratching hirings in college football than that of Gene Chizik, and it wasn’t just because of the name, which is just one letter short of resembling a horrible draw in “Scrabble.” Chizik’s hiring at Auburn over fellow candidate Turner Gill–now the head football coach at Kansas–drew cries of racism. Oh, I should probably mention that Turner Gill was black. And, as far as I know, still is.

Anyway, while Gill is struggggling in his first season at Kansas, Chizik’s Auburn Tigers just came out of the BCS Weekly Sausage Factory** with the No. 1 ranking, and naturally, Coach is pissed about it.

[Chizik] knows he can’t control what they talk about when they’re outside the athletic department walls: “I can only control how we proceed in this building. We just had a team meeting and we talked about being very grounded and understanding that every week is a another new week and another opportunity. It probably sounds to them the same old sad song every Sunday. But that’s what we do. Hopefully they’ll continue to prepare — I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t — like they have every other week.”

Hey, don’t take this as “I told you so,” because I never told anybody so, and if I had, I wouldn’t have remembered. Chizik went to a better program in a more competitive conference. Hell, Kansas won the Orange Bowl three years ago and half their student body doesn’t even know they have a team.

**The BCS is a college football postseason system. It does not produce sausage or any other meats or foodstuffs for human consumption.