Tiger Slide: Chizik Tries to Explain His Auburn Nosedive

If you ever wondered what happened to Auburn football after they won the national championship in 2010, you aren't alone.

Former Auburn head football coach Gene Chizik tried to explain it to USA Today. 

 "As you look back and reflect, there [are] a couple things that I don't want to complicate ... It's pretty simple. It was really the perfect storm scenario and if you stay in coaching long enough sometimes you hit a perfect storm scenario. I think it was that.

"If you start out and look from a roster standpoint, in 2010, after we won the national championship, we lost somewhere in the area of 27 players – 24 seniors and our three best juniors in Cam [Newton], Nick [Fairley], and Darvin Adams. And when you lose that many players, you're basically starting over. So we knew [in] 2011 and 2012, we could take some lumps in both of those years. We felt that. Obviously not to the degree that it happened in 2012, but again, we knew those two years would be basically starting over.

"So you have that on one front. From an X and O front, you had two brand new coordinators coming in, which we knew that takes time and that you have to go through some growing pains. That's just the way it is."

Hmmm, sounds like to me Chizik is just making excuses rather than simply blaming himself for the poor coaching and recruiting job he did. He failed to mentioned that his defensive coordinator from last year was with the Atlanta Falcons and that his defense finished near the bottom of the NFL the previous year.

He also failed to mention that several of his signees were either arrested, kicked off the team, or just transferred during his time there, too.

But most importantly, he failed to mention that his best assistant coach, who is now the head coach, was the genius behind Auburn's turnaround in 2010 and 2013. 

At least he did mention his best player left for the NFL right after that national championship season?

Chizik is like the professor in the Wizard of Oz. Once the curtain was pulled back, you found out he had little to no powers at all.

In short, Chizik's coaching was all smoke and mirrors. And his key player clicked his heels together and said, 'There's no place like the NFL.'