Charles Barley, the former Auburn and NBA star, has weighed in on the recent hire of Gene Chizik and he is not to happy about it. He ripped into Auburn for hiring Chizik over Buffalo's Turner Gill. Barkley believes that Gill was overlooked because he is a black coach."I think race was the No. 1 factor... You can say it's not about race, but you can't compare the two resumes and say [Chizik] deserved the job. Out of all the coaches they interviewed, Chizik probably had the worst resume."
"I just thought Turner Gill would be the perfect choice for two reasons: He's a terrific coach and we needed to make a splash. I thought we had to do something spectacular to bring attention to the program. Clearly, if we'd hired a black coach, it would have created a buzz."
While it is impossible to say with any certainty whether Gill was snubbed because of the color of his skin it does beg the question why Chizik? Granted he does have a connection to Auburn but Gill has shown he can be a head coach and he can turn a program around. He transformed Buffalo from one of the worst programs into the MAC champion, which is no small feat. Big name hires have been the norm the past two years in the SEC (Saban & Kiffin) and Chizik just doesn't create any buzz. Turner Gill would have indeed made a splash and given Auburn some credibility.
2 comments:
You're giving Alabama too much credit. They don't take commitment to diversity seriously. All they cared about was the personal connection, as you said.
I don't care about Auburn and who their coach is. In fact, I root for an SEC west rival of Auburn.
This being said, Turner Gill does not have a better resume. He coaches at Buffalo. Not the NFL's Buffalo but Buffalo the university in the mighty MAC conference. He needs to win for a few more years before we know that he simply did not benefit from a weak league.
Cizik has a National Championship as a DC in Texas. Before Cizik, the same players got their ass whooped by Oklahoma, after Cizik, they took the ultimate prize. Further, he DC'ed Auburn Bad-Ass defenses that led the nation, SEC, and went 13-0. His bad move, he took a bad job at Iowa State (after Texas) and did not have success. Nobody is going to have success at Iowa State.
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