The guys at Friends Of The Program unearthed this gem of Auburn football coach Gene Chizik at some Greek life event called a “Fall Woodser.” This was taken November 11, 1983; Chizik would have been 21 years old when this was taken.
I’m guessing that shortly after this photo was taken, a guy in a hockey mask with a machete killed off all of his friends, one by one. Who would have thought that Chizik would spend his later years fretting over something called a “laptop?”
Last week, Tucker Carlson’s spinning bowtie propelled him back into the news after he said that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick should have been executed for his role in a dog fighting ring. For some reason, Charles Barkley took a moment during last Thursday’s game between the Dallas Mavericks and Oklahoma City Thunder to address Carlson’s comments in a way that only Chuck can.
Said Barkley:
“Now Tucker Carlson, who’s a nobody … he used to work for us over here. We fired him because he sucked. Now he goes over there and he says that Michael Vick should be executed, which is total BS. You know, TV is a very powerful thing and you can’t just go on there and say anything.”
Carlson apologized shortly after his comment became a big deal, but Charles didn’t know that and he elected to rant instead. And really, his rants make the world a better place. Like, I loved his rant in 2008 about how the Auburn Tigers shouldn’t have hired Gene Chizik. Hmmmm, what did he say again…
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.
