In Saturday’s Iron Bowl, Gus Malzahn failed to beat Nick Saban for a third time in six tries, losing 52-21. Auburn officially proved they were not nearly good enough to play with Bama in Tuscaloosa this season.
The Iron Bowl has no standings ramifications this year. Auburn was only playing for one or two things: pride, and maybe Malzahn’s job. It doesn’t appear that a firing is imminent, but Auburn’s tough year on top of one of the worst Iron Bowl defensive performances in history has left him appearing much less secure in his job than he did a year ago. Auburn coaches are judged in large part on how they do against Alabama, and giving up the fourth-most points in an Iron Bowl does not help his case.
Malzahn ended the Iron Bowl exactly where he’s spent a lot of time over the last few years: on the hot seat, even though the exact temperature is unknown.
Malzahn’s been under fan and media pressure for years, but it’s ratcheted up as his 2018 team has underachieved after a top-10 preseason ranking.
Malzahn’s first year, 2013, was great. The Prayer at Jordan-Hare and the Kick Six happened. Auburn came within seconds of winning the national championship.
Malzahn’s next three years were bad. Auburn lost five or six games in all of them. Its only postseason win was the 2015 Birmingham Bowl against Memphis.
Malzahn’s fifth year on the job was great for a while. After two early losses, a five-game win streak culminated in embarrassing Alabama on the Plains to win the West. But then Auburn lost to Georgia in the SEC title game and UCF in the Peach Bowl. That’s a four-loss season, though putting it that way doesn’t credit how good Auburn looked for a long stretch of it.
And now Malzahn’s sixth year’s been ugly. The No. 9 Tigers beat No. 6 Washington in a Week 1 that looked huge at the time, but is now a cautionary tale about hyping Week 1 games. The running game, the thing Malzahn’s most known for being good at, has declined badly. His team will finish with no less than five, and possibly six losses.
It now looks like the Kick Six raised expectations to a point Malzahn couldn’t meet. Auburn has only even gotten close to replicating 2013 once, and it finished a few steps short.
Typically, a coach who’s just had five years like Malzahn’s last five at a school like Auburn would not get to stay around a lot longer. His successor, Gene Chizik, got fired two years after winning a national title, albeit on the heels of a 3-9 season. But that was just one horrible year. Malzahn’s extended plateauing has been a different kind of thing.
In early November, Auburn’s AD said Malzahn would return in 2019.
Allen Greene told reporters back when Auburn was 6-3:
“He’ll be the coach next year, and I’m confident that he’s going to — he’s already proven that we can get through adversity,” Greene said. “Every team has it, and I’m looking forward to working with him for a long time.”
There’s no reason to think Greene was lying there. But these things can change quickly, and athletic director votes of confidence don’t historically mean a whole lot.
Malzahn has a huge buyout. At a lot of schools, that would make him impossible to fire. But Auburn has considered it.
After Malzahn got to the SEC Championship Game in 2017, retiring AD Jay Jacobs gave him a seven-year, $49 million contract with a Malzahn-friendly buyout. If Auburn fires him, it owes him 75 percent of the total money left on the deal, with half of that due within a month. Cutting ties at the end of this year would mean about a $32 million payout, which is obscene. Even firing him in three years would yield one of the priciest buyouts in the sport.
You’d think that would automatically insulate Malzahn, but it doesn’t. SB Nation’s Jason Kirk reported Malzahn could’ve been fired if he’d lost to Ole Miss in mid-October:
One lesson about this sport is that we shouldn’t ever underestimate how much money rich sports fans are willing to spend in order to make their teams slightly less likely to lose games. Auburn boosters can afford to help eat Malzahn’s contract, though that still won’t mean anyone will be delighted by its size.
University president Steven Leath is under fire as well, I’m told by a person who’d know, as Leath helped negotiate with Malzahn’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, for that fat contract. The Auburn AD at the time, Jay Jacobs, was heading into retirement.
Maybe the buyout protects him for now. But that’d be a big assumption.
For years, Malzahn’s gone back and forth between being a marked man and the toast of the town.
That’s sometimes happened within the same season, like when Auburn blew a huge lead to lose to LSU and drop to 5-2 (“Fire Gus!” many yelled) but then had that winning streak and Bama upset (“Extend Gus!” Auburn’s admins apparently thought). Before that 2017 Bama game, Malzahn was seriously considering going to Arkansas if the Tigers lost. Some Bama fans were legitimately worried that a win might get Malzahn chased off the Plains:
“Most Alabama fans at this point hope that Auburn keeps Gus for a really long time, I think,” Roll Bama Roll’s Josh Chatham told me before that game.
We’ll update this post as Malzahn’s status clarifies.
That might take a while to happen. Who knows.
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