Out Of Gas
By: Kipp Branch
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The Gus Bus finally ran out of gas at Auburn.
After eight years at Auburn, head coach Gus Malzahn will no longer serve as Auburn’s head coach as he was relieved of his duties, the program announced in a release.
Defensive coordinator Kevin Steele will serve as the interim head coach.
“After evaluating the state of the Auburn football program, we’ve decided that it was time to make a change in leadership,” Athletic Director Allen Greene said.
“We appreciate everything that Gus did for the program over the last eight seasons. We will begin a search immediately for a coach that can help the Auburn program consistently compete at the highest level.”
During his time as head coach, Malzahn had a 68-35 record, going 39-27 in SEC play.
In his first season at Auburn, he led Auburn to a National Championship appearance.
Auburn must pay Gus a buyout of $21 million dollars with $10 million of that coming to Malzahn in the next 30 days. 2021 will start off very nice for Gus and family.
The road seemed rocky at times for Gus at Auburn. Rumors started floating around back in 2016 that he may be fired, but then 2017 happened where Auburn beat number #1 Georgia and then beat #1 Alabama in a three week window, and won the SEC West.
Auburn lost to UGA in a rematch for the SEC Championship, and Auburn rewarded Malzahn with a 7-year $49 million dollar contract extension.
In 2018 Auburn finished 5th in the SEC West with an 8-5 overall record, and followed that up in 2019 with a 9-4 record with a loss to Minnesota in the Outback Bowl.
The 6-4 record this season with a bad loss at South Carolina heated up the fire Gus talk.
Then you factor in blowout losses at UGA and Alabama then the dye was cast.
Since 2014, Auburn has lost 33 football games with highly rated talent on the roster.
Malzahn had a 3-5 record in the Iron Bowl against Alabama, which is very good considering how dominant Alabama has been in the SEC.
His 2-7 record against Georgia in The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry had become a point of contention with the Auburn alumni base.
The 5-12 record against the two biggest rivals was a big factor in his firing. If you are the head coach at Auburn University you can’t consistently lose to Alabama and Georgia. Auburn never beat these two rivals on the road during his tenure at Auburn.
While Gus had overall top ten recruiting classes at Auburn two areas of major concern recently have been the lack of top tier offensive linemen and the QB position.
Auburn has failed to recruit and develop talent in the OL for years now and it shows up in the biggest games when Auburn gets dominated by the better defensive fronts in the SEC.
At QB, other than the great season by Nick Marshall in 2013, Auburn has been average at QB. Bo Nix currently was highly rated coming out of high school, but has been average at best at Auburn.
Gus ran a clean program and will hopefully get another Head Coaching job after he gets tired of spending Auburn’s buyout money.
I believe Auburn had a big name agree to take the job when Gus was let go, but since has backed out, and now you hear rumors of Kevin Steele having the interim dropped from his title, and if that is the case you have a public relations nightmare on the plains of Auburn.
Early signing day has come and gone and Auburn’s early signing period class was ranked 40th.
Whoever Auburn hires has his work cut out for him to try and salvage this recruiting class.
