Charles Barkley apparently lobbied for Turner Gill to get the Auburn head coaching job. Hard.

After they hired Gene Chizik from Iowa State, Chuck had this to say about the situation:

"I think race was the No. 1 factor," said Barkley, who played basketball
for three seasons at Auburn during the early 1980s. "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."

Yowza.

But is he wrong? Chizik clearly sucks as a head coach. And I don't want to hear that "he was only there for two years, what do you expect, miracles?" argument. Turner Gill wasn't ask to do anything other than make Buffalo competitive, and went ahead and performed miracles anyway. Anyone who is worth a poop as a coach can win *a* conference game.

There are some other interesting notes from this article:

Barkley, who works as an NBA analyst for Turner Network Television, said he
spoke with Gill before Gill interviewed with Auburn officials last week.

"We talked about the whole race thing in Alabama," Barkley said. "I told him it's
there and it's going to be anywhere you go. I told him you can't not take the
job because of racism. He was worried about being nothing more than a token
interview. He was concerned about having a white wife. It's just very
disappointing to me."

Those comments are very sad. Very sad. How the hell is Turner still getting "token" interviews? He won the flipping MAC Championship at Buffalo against an undeafeated, ranked team! People were talking about if he could win 4 or 5 games a year, it would be a success--and he's winning conference championships at year 3. Unreal.

This was the best point, I thought:

"My biggest problem with the black coaches is they're not getting jobs and
they're getting [expletive] jobs when they are hired," Barkley said. "They're
not getting good jobs. They're not getting jobs where they can be successful.
That's why I wanted Turner to get the Auburn job. He could win consistently at
Auburn. You can't win consistently at New Mexico. You can't win consistently at
Kansas State. He could have won at Auburn."

I think this is basically true. It is strange; it is almost as though Tyrone Willingham was the only guy that is going to get a shot--and since he screwed it up, people are tepid. This, of course, is ridiculous.

Ultimately--Turner Gill or not--how Gene Chizik got the Auburn job is just beyond me. How you are on the edge of being fired at Iowa State leads to getting a SEC job is insane.

Oh, and one more thing: LOL at Chuck's comment about Kansas State. You suck, K-State. Even the Chuckster knows it.

Labels: Auburn Football, Charles Barkley, Gene Chizik, Kansas State sucks and everybody knows it, Turner Gill

A few "updates" on the circus that is Nebraska Football right now:

**EDIT: It is now being reported that Tom Osborne is going out on the recruiting trail. This would seem to jive with what we are reporting here. I don't see why T.O. would be stopping his interviewing to go out and recruit if he doesn't already feel comfortable with who he has found. Perhaps it will be announced after the SEC Title Game. This would seem to make sense.

1. It is being reported by several places now that they are not, in fact, going to announce anything at the players meeting today at 4:00pm.

2. A contact for Heavy Soul is reporting that he has two very "plugged in" sources saying that Pelini is indeed the guy that will be the head coach at the University of Nebraska. However, working out the contract has been more of a challenge than they originally thought. So the reports that we have been hearing about knowing who the coach is by tomorrow may not, in fact, be true. We might not hear anything official on this until Monday.

3. The Sporting News is reporting that Jim Grobe from Wake Forest was indeed interviewed by Tom Osborne and Harvey Pearlman in Atlanta.

3. All that said, and as I elluded to in the phantom post about the Parker Executive Search firm, all this could be for naught. This is the firm that Minnesota used when searching for a basketball coach this past spring. Needless to say, NO ONE--including Kentucky--knew that Tubby Smith would end up at Minnesota. In fact, Tubby got on a plane (if memory serves correctly) the day after UK lost in the second round of the NCAA (AGAIN) and was announced that afternoon as the Gopher's new coach. The media found out maybe two hours before he was officially announced. An even more extreme example was at Iowa State last year. When ISU called a press conference to announce the new football coach, no one knew who the hell the hired. This search firm is very good, and very professional. There is a hell of a chance T.O. interviewed people in Atlanta that not only no one knows about, and we'll never know about.

Parker specializes in finding candidates that are available, and no one knows about it yet. I'm sure that if people would have known that Tubby Smith was interested in leaving Kentucky, a lot more schools would have called about him. Instead, Minnesota got him LITERALLY without even interviewing him.

And that is the other thing Parker specializes in: they find out everything a candidate wants out of a contract and how much the school looking is willing to put in it, background checks, checking on references, etc. They do all the annoying (and time-consuming) busy work for their clients. So even if they don't have the magic candidate that no one knows about, Osborne and NU could just be using their firm to free up time on their end to be getting other things done. Which makes sense. I have heard a lot of people on the radio and on message boards wondering "why the hell would Nebraska hire this search firm if Pelini is their guy and he wants to come here?" They provide a lot more services than just finding people to interview.

So there's our update...at this point, if you were to ask Heavy Soul, it would say that due to some VERY good inside information, Bo Pelini will be striking fear into Big XII offenses and officials come this time next year.

Stay tuned...

Labels: Bo Pelini, Coaching Search, Jim Grobe, Nebraska Football, Parker Executive Search, Tom Osborne, Turner Gill

God, this is fun.

So there have been people saying for a while now that Bo Pelini was in line to take over for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and lead us back to the Promised Land, 15-yard personal foul penalty by penalty.

But then there are those who say Turner Gill will be the man. How could Tom Osborne not hire one of his best friends?

Well, here are some interesting updates that I am coming across this evening. Who knows...

--It has been well publicized that Buffalo received an official request for permission for Tom Osborne to talk to Gill officially about the Nebraska job. Now, apparently Chris Mortensen of ESPN reported this morning that Monte Kiffen will come in as the Head Coach, with Turner Gill as Associate Head Coach and take over when Monte hangs it up in 4 or 5 years. Sounded suspicious to me, but now the University of Buffalo has said that Gill's end of the year press conference--scheduled for Tuesday--had been moved back to Wednesday. Now it is being reported that this press conference has been postponed indefinately.

I know there are contributors to this blog that either do not think this will not happen or hope it does not happen--or both. I don't have any idea as to what to think at this point. But it certainly is interesting. Between this coaching search and Kentucky's earlier this year, I don't know that my modem nor my marriage can take much more. The good news is that the Omaha World-Herald thinks this could be wrapped up by Wednesday, meaning I am sure that we'll all know who will be named sometime tomorrow.

So what's everybody think is going to happen? Put your rep on the line in the comments...I'll offer mine. Despite having very good information that says the opposite, I for some reason think that Turner Gill is going to be heavily involved in this process. Or Bo Pelini.

Labels: As The World Turns, Bo Pelini, Monte Kiffen, Nebraska Football, Tom Osborne, Turner Gill

Labels: Bo Pelini, Nebraska Football, Parker Executive Search, Tom Osborne, Turner Gill, Unknown Kick-Ass Coach No One Knows About