AUBURN | What we’ve got here is a failure of leadership. Complete and utter failure.
There’s no other reasonable explanation for what’s occurred at Auburn over the last 14 months.
To recap. Auburn fired Gus Malzahn in December, and nearly hired Kevin Steele to replace him until it was revealed Steele and Rodney Garner conspired behind Malzahn’s back to engineer the entire coup.
What followed was a madcap search that yielded Brian Harsin nine days later. That Harsin lacked any SEC experience or a willingness to recruit from the front seemed of no import to a hastily organized committee led by Allen Greene.
Not long after, Greene had his wings clipped when retired Lt. Gen. Ron Burgess was brought in to oversee AU’s three major sports.
And now, off the heels of a new University president being named — Dr. Chris Roberts will officially take office May 16 — it looks almost inevitable that Harsin is on his way out and a new search will commence.
As a reminder, and not a very pleasant one, the same group of people that oversaw the last 14 months of ineptitude will be in charge of finding the next guy.
I’m sure it will turn out just swell.
Of course, Harsin isn’t gone yet. I’ll just assume he’s interviewing offensive coordinator candidates at a Tiki bar somewhere in Mexico right now and not taking calls from the 334 area code.
I know the Harsin ordeal is being framed in some circles as a coup in its own right, but this more closely resembles an HR investigation being run through Samford Hall. And it’s one that started well before this past week.
It’s current University president Jay Gogue that will make the ultimate decision on Harsin. By all accounts, Gogue is a good man that will make a decision he believes is in the best interest of Auburn.
He and the bumbling BOT are ultimately responsible for the mess that’s occurred over the last 14 months, but it’s also important to remember Gogue was brought back out of retirement in 2019 to clean up the trash heap left by Steven Leath during his 24-month reign of terror.
So this is Auburn’s football program on Feb. 7, 2022. It’s a mess again. And it won’t ever get right without better leadership.
***
Fortunately, Auburn is blessed to have a dynamic leader overseeing the basketball program in Bruce Pearl. And his Tigers will face perhaps their toughest test of the season Tuesday night at Arkansas.
The Hawgs are on a roll, winners of eight consecutive games, and holding a 13-1 record at Bud Walton.
I’m of the opinion a loss might just benefit the Tigers in the long run. If you’ll recall, the 2019 team lost three of five games including an 80-53 beatdown at Kentucky before reeling off 12 consecutive wins on the way to the Final Four.
Pearl is at his best when it comes to diagnosing problems and pushing his team to get better.
But if Auburn wants to win only its fifth SEC regular season championship in school history, it can’t afford to lose many. Kentucky trails AU by just two games in the standings and the Hawgs by three.
Both teams appear capable of winning most if not all of their remaining conference games.
UK has road games left at South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Florida while Arkansas still has to play at Alabama, Missouri, Florida and Tennessee.
After its trip to Fayetteville, Auburn plays two games at home and then has a four-game stretch that includes trips to Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi State.
The Tigers opening win over LSU, and wins at Alabama and back home over Kentucky were three big steps toward securing that title.
Auburn would still be the favorite even with a loss at Arkansas but the margin for error would be razor thin. A win, and it’s likely a two-horse race down the stretch between the Tigers and Wildcats.
***
In today’s musical journey, we go back 27 years to the release of the breakout album for the Queen of Country Pop and one of the best-selling artists of all time. On Feb. 7, 1995, Shania Twain released her second studio album, The Woman in Me, which went on to sell over 12 million copies and be certified 12x Platinum by the RIAA. It won a Grammy for Best Country Album and was honored by the ACMA as the Album of the Year. CMT ranks The Woman in Me No. 8 on its list of the 40 Greatest Albums in Country Music. The album included three No. 1 hits in Any Man of Mine, (If You’re Not in it for Love) I’m Outta Here and You Win My Love. It also set the stage for what would become one of the 10 best-selling albums of all time.
Eileen Regina Edwards was born in 1965 in Ontario, Canada. Her mom divorced shortly after her birth and married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwe from the Mattagami First Nation. She began singing at bars at age eight to help support her family. She performed on CBC’s Tommy Hunter Show at age 13 and played in various local bands during and right after high school. Following the death of her parents in an auto accident in 1987, she took care of her younger siblings by working at a resort in Huntsville, Ontario. During this time, she changed her name to Shania and made a demo tape, which landed her a first contract with Mercury Records. Shania is an Ojibwe word that means “on my way.” Her self-titled first album didn’t catch on when it was released in 1993. Following The Woman in Me, Twain released Come On Over in 1997, which has sold over 40 million copies, making it the best-selling country album, the best-selling album by a solo female artist and the ninth best-selling album in U.S. history. It had three No. 1 hits including You’re Still the One, which also made it up to No. 2 on the Billboard 100. Twain went on to produce two more albums and star in eight films along with VH1’s reality T.V. show Divas. She has won five Grammy Awards and been inducted into the Canadien Music Hall of Fame.
Twain started collaborating with legendary music producer John ‘Mutt’ Lange in 1993 and they were married about six months later. Together they wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on The Woman in Me and Come On Over. They had a son together in 2001 but separated in 2008 and divorced two years later after Lange had an affair with Twain’s best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. Twain ended up marrying her best friend’s former husband, Frederic Thiebaud in 2011. She has an estimated net worth of $400 million.
