Charles Barkley

Occasionally, I will read news on ESPN.com just to keep up to date on any random sports news that isn't Gator related. I don't read all the stories, usually the ones with a catchy title, or a certain name, school or team that is mentioned. This is the season for coaching changes, it happens every year that a team doesn't do well...especially one that was suppose to do great, like Clemson or Auburn or even Tennessee (but I think everyone will agree that Tennessee wasn't picked to ever be #1 this year). Auburn was a flop, but I can guarantee that if they played Florida this year, they would have at least won that one. Auburn is Florida's achilles tendon, every time (home or away). Everyone in the Gator nation is always thrilled when the rotation changes and we don't play Auburn. They could be un-ranked with their second string in and we would probably still loose! It is what it is!

Auburn is a great school, with a great football team...hell they are in the SEC and they are contenders most of the time (everyone has their rebuilding years). Tommy Tuberville was forced to resign (it happens when you lose) and therefore the search for the new member of the SEC head coaching club began. They interviewed candidates and apparently picked a guy named Gene Chizik from Iowa State to be the new coach of the Auburn Tigers. The SEC is a tough place to be a head coach, usually if you don't win you are out before the headlines are printed on Sunday's newspaper. Most teams in the SEC expect to win, and win every game. There are few breaks, there are no handouts, and there’s absolutely no room for error....basically win or get out.

The transition from Iowa State to Auburn will be a daunting one, but if they hired him they obviously feel that he has it in him to turn Auburn around. In hiring him, Charles Barkley got his feelings hurt about race. The article on espn, has some absolutely fantastic quotes from Charles Barkley (the same man that spit on a girl during a game in March of 1991, it was okay though, because he was trying to spit on a guy that was heckling him). Multiple times throughout the article Barkley throws the race card as reason for not being hired. "I'm just very disappointed," Barkley said. "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." Sorry Charles, we aren't hiring a diving coach. We don't need to make a splash or create a buzz with our coaching choices. Its about winning! Never once does Barkley give any credit to the fact that Gene Chizik has history with Auburn. He happened to be the defensive coordinator when they went 13-0 in 2004. Defense is huge in the SEC and Chizik also has a great reputation for being a fabulous recruiter.

Yes, he only had 5 wins at Iowa State for two seasons, but the program is turning around and should really be on the right track in the next year or two. You can't turn a program around with winning results if you are still playing with players recruited by a different head coach. The focus, the game plans, the big pictures are different...if he had had four years to get truly have his team, I'd be willing to bet that he would be going to a bowl game year after year. Maybe not a BCS game, but definitely a bowl game. Besides we wont even go into the fact that Iowa State played teams that were ranked in the BCS at the time they were playing teams like, Oklahoma State, Missouri, or Kansas. Not to rag on Buffalo's but who is in MAC and how many teams did they play that were ranked in the BCS? That alone, is reason enough to go with Chizik...but then again that is only my opinion.

Barkley continues to go on with stupid things about how the coach from Buffalo should have been hired. That he was a best coach for the job and blah blah blah. His main argument was that he was black and that Auburn needed a black coach to get rid of the racism. "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." If you can't consistency win at New Mexico why on earth do you think you can win at Auburn. The competition alone is way more intense at Auburn then New Mexico. I am all about equal opportunity employment and affirmative action, but I am not about giving jobs to be people because of their skin color. That is ridiculous! We are in the 21st century, you aren't going to get a job because you are black! You get job because of how you interview, how qualified you are, what you can bring to the table, and who you know. NOT WHAT COLOR YOUR SKIN IS!

There aren't very many African American coaches in the NCAA, but that isn't because we are being racist against African Americans, I am pretty sure we just choose one to be the President of the United States. But hey, if we decided to elect McCain, Barkley might have come out and say something about how the African Americans votes were lost, or counted wrong or forgotten. Who knows, but I am sure he would have had some racial commentary about wrong it really was. I have a thought, how about if we go to telephone interview with voice-overs, and instead of talking about what teams they worked with we can call them variables (a, b, x...etc) so the committee will never know what race the candidate is...