Auburn fired the coach that made them a relevant program

Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn was fired on Sunday after eight years at the helm for one of the most renowned programs in the country.

On Sunday, Auburn fired their head football coach, Gus Malzahn.

On the daily Locked On Auburn podcast, Zac Blackerby and Michael Pappas discussed how Malzahn made the program relevant and what several critics say is incorrect.

Pappas: One of the complaints that people love to throw out there is that Gus has made Auburn irrelevant, nationally irrelevant. Did your Sunday NFL Football watching experience get interrupted so that you could get informed live on national television that Auburn’s head coach had been fired?

Blackerby: Yes.

Pappas: Was every national football writer making stories and tweeting about how Auburn had fired their head coach and who it might be that replaces him?

Blackerby: Yeah.

Pappas: And how it could change the landscape of college football? That seems pretty relevant. We are in that situation because of Gus Malzahn.

Blackerby: Look at the program that he took over. Now, it was two years removed from a national title, but it took Gene Chizik going 3-9 two years after winning a national title with the best season that Auburn has ever had in football and then Gus Malzahn created the program to be in a situation where he had to be 6-4 in an all SEC schedule during a pandemic, whereby the way his program handled better than arguably anybody in the entire country. His players did a fantastic job of implementing COVID protocol. That’s coaching. He is one of the few coaches in all of college football where they were ready to field a team all ten weeks. And then, with Mississippi State having to move the game, they were still ready after the season was extending an extra week. I think that is a huge deal. I think the fact that he took up a 3-9 team, took them to a national championship the following year, and built the status quo for the Auburn football program to be in a situation where he could never have a losing season and still get fired, Auburn has never been in that spot before. In fact, there are very few throughout college football that a coach could get fired with a coach never having a losing season.