Will Muschamp has “Saban’d” us. A week ago he went on and on about how great it is to be an Auburn Tiger and then sells out to be a Texas Longhorn. I’ve been readying my heart for the inevitable breakup between Auburn and Muschamp, but I was hoping that he would leave us for Brittany Murphy or Brittany Daniels, but instead dumped us for Brittany Spears.



He turned down a head coaching job at Southern Miss, a great first head coaching spot, for a Co-Defensive Coordinator spot at a falling Texas team. I’m trying to piece this together as to why he would want to leave Auburn for Austin. Why would he want to leave Auburn for a Cow College?

1) Money. Auburn was going to offer him a huge payday of $425,000 a year, making him the highest paid assistant coach in the highest paying conference in football. Texas is rumored to have offered up to $525,000. If that is true then Holy cow: take him, he’s yours. Our defense has rocked long before Muschamp, Texas can’t win without using one of our coordinators.

2) Austin. Auburn is absolutely gorgeous. There is a reason it is called the “Loveliest Village on the Plains.” But Austin, if you’ve ever been, is gorgeous too. And it also offers a bit more than a college town like Auburn. I love this University and this Town as much as I love anything, but it’s not a place that I intend on living in the rest of my life. As a college student, Austin can’t touch Auburn. But as an adult, would you really prefer raise your kids town with a population of 30,000 (with 25,000 of that population being college students)?

3) The Spread Offense. Muschamp will have to play 20 more plays on defense per game than before with the abandoning of our previous offense: score-on-the-first-drive-then-run-out-the-clock-offense. No matter how you look at it, even if our defense next year were even beastlier than this year, his stats would suffer a bit, and then rumors will start to circulate about how he’s already losing his edge. Muschamp took this opportunity to jump to another defense where he can maintain or even increase his marketability for a good head coaching job.

So there are logical reasons Muschamp would want to leave Auburn for Texas outside (I say this at the risk of sounding immature) being a big poo-poo head. I would love to say that I wish Will Muschamp the best, but I’m not quite ready to be mature about this yet. I guess there is some solace in the fact that we know that Muschamp will ditch Texas in the next year or two for a head coaching job elsewhere. It’s inevitable: he’s too good to be stuck at Defensive Coordinator all his life.

Now onto the good news: Auburn’s Defensive Coordinator opening is one of the hottest jobs in the nation (Read the last paragraph). It won’t take very much work at all for Tubs to find a fitting replacement for Muschamp. I don’t really even think it matters much who is the defensive coordinator, because our defense is always in the top 10. I don’t think it’s that far fetched to believe that Tuberville is the real defensive genius behind all our great coordinators, but Muschamp brought an intensity that gave our team an extra boost. That’s why we need John Tenuta, the guy at the top of our list right now.

John Tenuta was Georgia Tech’s defensive coordinator – he’s an aggressive beast who would be a GREAT supplement to Tony Franklin’s more aggressive offense. He is also a very intense guy who is great against the pass, but even better against the run. If we land this guy, not only will we not miss a step in the offseason, the new coordinator might even give us an extra boost in morale over the offseason and into next season. Even if we don’t land Tenuta, I would bet that there are coaches who are willing to drop their job to move to Auburn to make a name for themselves. Sometimes the best coaches are the ones that still have something to prove. Fear not, Auburn, Tubs knows what he’s doing. This isn’t as big of a slap to the face as you think and this isn’t as much of a setback as you may think.

War Eagle.

E-mail Ryan at ryan@theauburner.com

Somewhat relative sponsored link: Hannah Montana concert at University of Texas.