The Auburn Tigers haven’t had a season above .500 since 2020, yet they could be primed to be one of the best teams in college football this go-round. Such fluctuation is typical on the plains, On3’s Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman explained.
Why Does Auburn Have a Wide Range of Expectations on a Yearly Basis?
Behind Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton and head coach Gene Chizik, Auburn won the BCS National Championship game in 2011. They made it back three seasons later, falling just short of another crown, and have had a mixture of subpar and impressive seasons since.
Current head coach Hugh Freeze enters the upcoming campaign having gone 11-14 over his first two seasons in charge.
“The thing is, at that level — this is the highest level — if you wanna win at Auburn, if you wanna be successful at Auburn, because Auburn, they expect national championships,” Staples said Tuesday on “Andy & Ari On3.” “They’ve won national championships. They won a national championship this century. They played for another one three years later. They went undefeated in 2004. So it’s not like this is a program that never gets there. Like, Auburn can do this. But to do this, you gotta do both. You can’t just stack talent, you have to be able to coach it on the field once you get there.
“So it’s a hard job. It’s not saying, ‘If you get fired from Auburn that you’re a failure of a coach and you’re a terrible coach and you don’t know what you’re doing.’ Gus Malzahn was a good coach. Bryan Harsin has been a good college coach. Hugh Freeze, we know, has been a good college coach.”
Staples compared the difficulty of Auburn’s head coaching position to that of Heisman mode on EA Sports’ college football video game.
“What’s interesting about Auburn to me is always that you don’t have to be in the national championship conversation every year, which is what I think is the expert Heisman level,” Wasserman said. “I think it’s a rung below it, but I think you have to be able to be in that conversation once every four years. Like, if Auburn has got a badass team that can win a national title once every 4-5 years, is that enough?”
KEEP READING: Paul Finebaum Criticizes Hugh Freeze: ‘At Some Point, You Have to Start Winning’
Staples said Auburn’s fans have had to endure “super low lows” along with enjoying views from the sport’s mountaintop. It probably doesn’t help that the Tigers have to measure themselves against the bitter in-state rival Alabama Crimson Tide, who have won five of the past 14 national championships after Newton carried Auburn to the pinnacle.
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