The rapidly shifting college football coaching market has created a plethora of high-caliber jobs in the sport, and the position at Auburn became just the latest to be added into the mix following Sunday’s firing of Hugh Freeze.
Rising stars in the head-coaching and coordinator ranks now have a myriad of Power 4 roles to choose from, and FOX analyst Joel Klatt attempted to sift through the jumble of jobs on Wednesday.
The former Colorado quarterback was brutally honest about the Tigers’ opening, saying that it pales in comparison to other SEC roles and has plenty of potential concerns.
“I don’t think Auburn is a great job, and if you stack it up against the others…it’s not better than the top 3 of LSU, Penn State and Florida,” Klatt said. “It’s probably better than Arkansas, probably, and so it’s probably the 4th or 5th best job in the current cycle of the 8 that are out there.”
Klatt went on to add that the existence of that team in Tuscaloosa will always hold back the Auburn program’s potential,
“It’s not a great job if you’re not even the best, biggest or most important program in your state. Sorry, I’m not sorry,” Klatt said. “It is what it is, and Auburn has a little-brother complex. They’re not Alabama, and it’s not even close. Yet they want to be Alabama. So their expectations and operations are as if ‘we’re Alabama.’ But you’re not.”
The FOX analyst went on to critique Auburn’s championship runs, citing Cam Newton’s Herculean 2010 effort as essentially saving the program’s skin.
“That defense [2009 Auburn] and the 2019 LSU defense are among the worst units to win championships in the past 20 years,” Klatt said. “So I think that the expectations at Auburn do not line up with the reality of what it is.”
Parker is currently the sports editor for the Enterprise-Journal in McComb, Mississippi. He's a graduate from Mizzou who has experience covering the Tiger football and basketball beats for SB Nation, and he's worked for a variety of sports news outlets in the past.
