The Birmingham News
Friday, October 12, 2007
Slow down. Buckle your seat belt. Pay attention to that blinking yellow light. It could be a bumpy ride.
We're approaching the intersection of Tommy Tuberville and Houston Nutt. Through the years, it's been the scene of one fascinating collision after another.
Road signs indicate this could be the last time Tuberville and Nutt cross paths at an Auburn-Arkansas football game.
Arkansas fans continued to turn on their coach last weekend in Little Rock when they hired a plane to circle the stadium carrying a banner that read, ``There's Nuttin' Like Being 0-2 in the SEC."
Texas A&M officials just turned in their coach, Dennis Franchione, for selling secrets to friends of the program in a $1,200-a-pop newsletter.
What does this have to do with Auburn? Don't you read the Internet?
It means Arkansas and Texas A&M will fire their coaches and stage an auction - harking back to Southwest Conference days - with Tuberville going to the highest bidder.
There's always a chance Tuberville could take the high road out of Auburn, but there are several problems with the unattributed, unsubstantiated theories that have people talking.
At Arkansas, hard as it is to believe, the retiring Frank Broyles may be out of the decision-making loop, which makes pinning down Nutt's future more of a challenge than bringing down Darren McFadden.
New AD Jeff Long takes over for Broyles in January. Long comes from Pitt, where he hired Dave Wannstedt.
Long and Wannstedt are friends. Wannstedt and Nutt are friends. Wannstedt has told Long that Nutt is a good football coach.
Wannstedt's not the only one who believes in Nutt. Nick Saban has said for years that no other coach in the SEC gets more out of his talent. When Saban left LSU, he recommended Nutt to LSU officials as his successor.
None of this may help Nutt if he continues his struggles against Tuberville, who's prevailed in five of their last six head-to-head matchups. Tuberville's won three of the last four games between them, plus the last two recruits in Kodi Burns and Lee Ziemba.
If Auburn keeps winning, Tuberville's stature as one of the better coaches in the business keeps growing. So does the conjecture that, given a chance, he'll beat the inner circle to the first jet out of town.
But those dots don't quite connect.
Auburn clearly is a better job than Arkansas. Auburn arguably is a better job than Texas A&M. And then there's a little true fact the coach's critics and opponents don't get.
Tuberville and his family like living in Auburn. He wouldn't have agreed to that post-Jetgate contract with the huge two-way buyout if they didn't.
The coach's eyes lit up two weeks ago when he told me about watching in person the day before as his older son, Tucker, threw the winning TD pass in the final two minutes of a junior-high game.
One of Tuberville's closest confidantes told me this week that he's not going anywhere unless Auburn wants him to go somewhere.
Everything can change in 60 minutes in this business, but right now, the people that matter the most at Auburn want their coach to go to Arkansas.
They want him to go today.
They want him to win Saturday.
Then they want him to come home where he belongs.
Kevin Scarbinsky's column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Write him at kscarbinsky@bhamnews.com.
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3 comments:
Do you want Tuberville at A&M?
No, not particularly. I wasn't really sold on Fran initially either. It's a pretty good bet we'll be looking for a coach, but I don't know if Tuberville is the guy. That's a lateral step for him, not a step up, although A&M will throw out some big money.
Our AD (from Nebraska) has made some great hires so far, so he'll make a good choice.
Nutt may be available.
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