Turner Gill Got the Gas Face
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The Arena
It’s nothing new. That is, bruthas being passed over for jobs they are more than qualified for at the Division I-A or Bowl Championship Series conference level in football. In fact, it’s become so common it might as well be a cliché.  But Auburn took it to another level over the weekend when it ignored the tremendous job Turner Gill has done at Buffalo and hired Gene Chizik.
We knew it was a reach to see a black man get a head coaching job at one of the two major SEC schools in Alabama. Let’s be real. But you figured the Tigers were cornered on this one because prime candidates like Mike Leach and Will Muschamp had turned them down flat.
How could Turner be denied?
Yet he was, when the Auburn AD hired Gene Chizik, a man who promptly lost his final 10 games this season, and had managed just a few wins in his two lackluster seasons as head coach of the Iowa State Cyclones. Chizik should have been on the hotseat after his second season, instead he was rewarded with a primo job.
Gill, meanwhile, took over a program that had won just a handful of games since moving into Division I-A and won the Mid American Conference title, beating previously undefeated Ball State in the conference title game to boot.
His reward? Maybe next year, son!
It would have been easier to respect the Auburn AD if he came out and told the truth. His boosters aren’t ready for: A.) a Black head football coach in Alabama. B.) And Auburn and its boosters certainly aren’t about to stomach one who is married to a white woman. Turner had two strikes against him in the Deep South and we know what that can get a brutha.
What’s been interesting through all of this is the criticism Auburn is receiving from the mainstream media. Like they can talk. Has anybody noticed all they’ve talked to are white reporters about this issue? That’s because the mainstream media faces the very problem in its newsrooms that its trying to police on the collegiate level. Talk about hypocrites.  As a member of the media who has covered major college athletics for years, I can say sports journalism is as much, if not more, a playground for good ol boy politics as any university. It’s the playground for white men and women, who feel much more comfortable talking to athletic directors and coaches than they ever will the black athletes and their parents. Can Joe Schad really explain how black people feel about the issue of being left out for jobs they are more than qualified for?  The bottom line is something has to be done. We lost three coaches at the BCS level this off-season and none have been replaced, giving college football no coaches at the sport’s highest level.  The NCAA has tried to remain hands off when it comes to its member institutions hiring practices, in effect saying legislation demanding a minority coaching candidate be interviewed would be impossible to enforce. That’s wrong. To say the NCAA has no control over its members is to say the governing body has no rights to pass down sanctions on rules violations. Some believe such mandates leads to tokenism … Maybe it does to some degree. But what it will serve is to put African-American coaches in front of athletic directors and hiring committees with a chance to impress. And if nothing else, it puts their names out for other jobs.  Gill, meanwhile, this week signed a one-year extension with Buffalo after being flirted with and then passed over for jobs at Auburn and Syracuse (where the AD actually has black skin). It came on the heels of speculation that he might be the leading the candidate to take over Iowa State, which would put him back in his native Big 12 country and closer to home state of Texas where he has been one of the top recruiters at both Nebraska and now Buffalo for the past couple decades.
Apparently, Gill couldn’t stomach the possibility of yet another letdown and becoming the subject of yet another African-American coach being denied at the BCS conference level.
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what a low down dirty shame. picking gene chizik over turner gill, given their coaching resumes is unfathomable. it’s literally disgusting.
gill has the pedigree as a player and assistant coach who’s studied under one of the game’s most respected and revered mentors in nebraska’s coach osbourne.
and to do what he did at buffalo in a very strong mac conference? beating undefeated ball state? c’mon. what does a brother have to do? i’m literally sick of state of power conference schools and their atrocious hiring practices. and i hope charles barkley keeps speaking out, because it’s evident that he’s the only one who stands a chance of being heard.
memo to barack: loved hearing your desire to throw some weight around to get us a college playoff and true national championship. how about throwing some weight behind these embarrasing hiring practices?
> bookman
I’m sure that one day someone is going to stick their reputation on the line for fairness & doing what’s right. It’s amazing how people can put their reputation on the line for Gene Chizik (I actually like him, but was not in favor of this hiring) and what he has done as a head coach. You can’t tell me that the AD for Auburn did not look at Chizik’s record as a head coach. Chizik was 5-19 (20.8%) in his two years at Iowa State, all 5 wins at home, three wins in ‘07 and two in ‘08. In ‘07 he had two conference wins and “0″ in ‘08. A 2-14 overall conference record (12.5%). In his two years he did NOT taste victory on the road…
What I don’t understand is how Auburn’s AD Jay Jacobs, could hire a guy who did not do the very same things as the guy he fired/forced to resigned or whatever you want to say happened to Tubervile, didn’t do. What Tubervile didn’t do was win the big games on a consistent basis, have an offense that looked like they could put up some points…
I am not the type of person who likes to look at everything from a “racial†standpoint, but what other explanation can you give me? If Turner Gill would’ve had the same record as Gene Chizik, then this would not be a discussion with Gill’s name in it. Gill has a far better record & winning percentage then Chizik. Gill’s record in three seasons with Buffalo is 15-23 (39.4%) overall with an 11-13 (45.8%) conference record and a conference championship. Gill even has 5 more road wins then Chizik did while at Iowa State…
If you were an AD and you had only the resume of Chizik & Gill head coaching records & statistics, without even knowing their ethnicity, which would you hire!!!
Both Chizik & Gill have at least one national championship under their belt as coaches; Gill (multiples with Nebraska) has more than Chizik (his one with Texas)…
It’s obvious to me that Auburn has major concerns with Chizik’s body of work at Iowa State that they only devoted 4 sentences, or 87 words out of 1659 words , yes I counted them, on his bio about what he did while at Iowa State. At least his winning percentage at Iowa State, both overall and conference, beat his Auburn’s bio recognition of his job performance at Iowa State percentage (5.2%)…
Next time Auburn hires a coach for any sport, maybe they will look at what they’ve done as a head coach if they are hiring a “current†head coach. Or better yet, maybe they will look at the overall body of work Auburn’s NEXT AD has done before they hire him/her!
> R.J.
It times for us as black people to stop asking for handouts bagging for handouts acting like the burden that most white americans think we are. We have black schools just like Auburn but most of our best black athletes do not want to attend them because of money and name of the school and the winning record of the coach you play for. The face of race in sports has not changed it just took a new look. Lets not hire a black coach just because he is black or any other race lets stop crying about what other people are not giving us black coaches need to talk to our young black athletes get them to understand that a black school is just as good as the big white schools.
Black schools need more support from Americas best athletes we put a black man in the white house then we can do anything we just have to do it together. I recommend the book (Darwin´s Athletes) by John Hoberman.
butch
> Butch
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