NFL quarterback and former Heisman Trophy-winner Cam Newton stopped by his old stomping grounds yesterday and took in a bit of Gus Malzahn’s practice.  He liked what he saw from his old coach as he spread out to work with the defense.  And he liked what he heard in terms of piped in noise and music:

“It’s always going to be tough for any coach whose heart has been around the offense for so long to have to spread things around.  I use the analogy of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  There’s so much peanut butter on just one side, now you’ve got to spread out to everybody else…

If anything, I wish they were doing things (as Malzahn is now) when I was here.  The music, I love the music.  Third-down situations, it provides an excellent simulation of the game.  It’s going to be very, very intriguing to see this whole process come to fruition.”

Malzahn, of course, was Auburn’s offensive coordinator under Gene Chizik when Newton won the Heisman and led Auburn to the 2010 national championship.

Acting as an ESPN analyst today, ex-Auburn coach Gene Chizik was asked about the importance of social media and technology in the current recruiting landscape:

“(It’s) Completely changed the complexion of recruiting.  No question in my mind.  You know, you can look at a young man’s Facebook and Twitter and never meet him and get probably a 70% accurate evaluation of who that guy is by looking at his Twitter and his Facebook. 

This is a day and age in recruiting where technology is king.  You have to be able to Facebook kids.  They love the tweets.  That’s what kids thrive on.  You have to be technologically savvy, which I’m not, but you have to be.”

Chizik might claim to be technologically-challenged, but no one can say he couldn’t recruit.  Still, his point is a good one.

What a difference four years and one 2-10 season can make.

Last night, a number of Auburn supporters showed up at the local airport to greet new head coach and former offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn.  Needless to say, they were happy with his return.

Here was the response at the airport when AD Jay Jacobs touched down in Auburn after hiring Gene Chizik, Malzahn’s old boss, back in 2008.

Now, what’s funny is that Chizik went on to win a BCS title and he and Jacobs were hailed as heroes and geniuses.  After the nosedive this past season things changed just a tad.

And now Malzahn gets to enter the Auburn kingdom like a long lost son returning home.

Multiple reports from the Yellowhammer State say that Auburn’s next head coach will be… Gus Malzahn, the Tigers’ former offensive coordinator.  Malzahn just led Arkansas State to a 9-3 record and the Sun Belt Conference championship in his first year as a collegiate head coach.

While Malzahn’s name had been tied to the Auburn job from the moment Gene Chizik was nuked, there was a strange cloud of silence surrounding his actual interview with AD Jay Jacobs and his three-man search committee.  We heard from multiple AU sources that Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart had interviewed well.  We heard completely different takes on Bobby Petrino.

But we couldn’t get the two AU sources we spoke to — one last night, one this morning — to say much of anything about Malzahn’s sit-down.  While we had come to expect Auburn to make a clean break from the immediate Gene Chizik past, the silence surrounding Malzahn’s interview certainly raised our suspicions that he might just land the job.

Early on in the process, we suggested that he and Petrino would be the two most likely men to land the AU job.  Petrino because he was desperate, Malzahn because he knew the lay of the land on the Plains.  If NCAA snoops are truly sniffing around Auburn, Malzahn likely knows what the issues are and his return suggests he doesn’t believe they’ll be too serious.  An outsider might not be so trusting considering the fact that the NCAA hammer dropped harder than expected at Ohio State, Miami, North Carolina, and Penn State when their recent hires arrived on those campuses.

Malzahn’s spread offense at Auburn was ranked fourth in the conference in total offense in 2009 (versus SEC foes only), second in 2010, and then seventh in 2011.  Without him, Auburn finished dead-last in the SEC versus conference foes in total offense this past season.

There’s a little good news for Gene Chizik this afternoon.  Good news for Jay Jacobs, too.  And what will be viewed as bad news for Auburn fans demanding that heads roll on the Plains.

For the past few weeks a number of media members, bloggers and fans have called for not only the ouster of Auburn coach Gene Chizik, but also for the dismissal of Jacobs, the athletic director who hired him.  Some have even called for AU president Jay Gogue to be rubbished as well.

But last week, a report claimed that Gogue was actually planning to stand by Jacobs and that Chizik’s situation would be settled after the season.  Today, Al.com takes things a step further claiming that “people familiar with the decision-making process” believe Jacobs will be “a key player” in helping decide the fate of Chizik.

Jacobs and Chizik are close.  So if Gogue’s standing by Jacobs, it’s possible he’ll stand by Chizik, too… if Jacobs recommends he do so.  And it’s quite likely Jacobs will make just such a recommendation.

Chizik has recruited well and he’s just two years removed from a BCS championship.  It can be argued — whether you buy it or not is up to you — that Auburn’s season has been adversely impacted by the arrival of two new coordinators with two new systems.  Jacobs could make the case that Chizik deserves another year to see if these moves and his big recruiting hauls finally pay off in 2013.

And don’t forget, keep Chizik for another year would see his buyout drop from about $7.5 million on December 1st of this year to about $5 million next December 1st.  If AU’s brass is looking for reasons to patient with Chizik, there are at least about 2.5 million of them.

SEC Football

1. Former Kentucky basketball Joe Hall on Bobby Petrino: “He was not out chasing jobs and would not have left Louisville if he had not been approached about jobs.” And what about the Atlanta Falcons? “He was not going to walk out. But they changed the locks on the door so he could not get back to the locker room. There was a lot more to that story.”

2. “The key to having a long and successful coaching career is taking the right jobs at the right time and right now Kentucky’s got an athletic director you want to work together with.”

3. Tennessee had the ball and two timeouts in the final minute of regulation against Missouri Saturday.  Why didn’t they use them?

4. Derek Dooley: ”I just had confidence we could go beat ‘em in overtime.”

5. Auburn coach Gene Chizik talks to A.D. Jay Jacobs on a “daily basis” – not so university President Jay Gogue: ”I don’t typically have a lot of contact with Dr. Gogue until the end of the season, anyway.”

6. Columnist: Common sense tells me “Gene Chizik is done here.”

7. Jeff Schultz: “While Georgia is ascending, Alabama is sputtering (relatively speaking).”

8. Look ahead to next week - time running out on bowl hopes for Arkansas, Ole Miss and Tennessee.

9. Aggies produce a victory t-shirt

10. Matt Hayes on Johnny Manziel: “Where is the national championship race headed, and can a freshman really win the Heisman Trophy?”

11. Andy Staples on the significance of the A&M victory: “It probably ended the SEC’s BCS title streak at six seasons.”

12. Manziel and South Carolina’s D.J. Swearinger Walter Camp National Players of the Week.

13. Jerry Palm bowl projections.

SEC/College News

14. Grade changing investigation at a Memphis high school remains open.

15. Does Tommy Tuberville deserve a suspension? Slaps a graduate assistant’s headset and cap off after a fourth-down penalty. Tuberville: “I was trying to get him off the field.”

SEC Basketball

16. Missouri 83 – SIU-Edwardsville 69.  Laurence Bowers leads the Tigers with 20 points.

17. Vanderbilt 80 – Nicholls State 65. Career-high 25 points for Kedren Johnson.

18. Frank Martin era at South Carolina gets underway today.

19. Florida gets a second chance at a season opener.

20. 1-0 Alabama hosts West Alabama today.

21. Tennessee’s Jarnell Stokes may be 6’8″ and 255 pounds, but he’s quite adept at passing the ball.

Extra

22. Jon Gruden a possibility…in Philadelphia?

Somehow this isn’t surprising given the public personas of Hugh Freeze and James Franklin.  One reached out to the other this week in an effort to be an over-the-top nice guy.  The other responded coolly, like a boxer before at a pre-bought weigh-in.

Ole Miss’ Freeze made the unusual-for-everybody-else gesture of calling Vandy’s Franklin earlier this week to make sure the Commodores’ coach had everything he needed for his first trip to Oxford this weekend.  For any Commodore fans wondering if Freeze was trying some sort of reverse-jinx, mind trick on their coach… he wasn’t.  He says he’s made such calls before.  And in the case of Franklin, Vandy’s coach was very kind in reaching out to him when Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace’s sister was having surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center a month ago.

According to Freeze:

“I think it’s possible to be very competitive and still be courteous.  If I have a relationship with visiting coaches that are coming to our place, that’s not uncommon for me to do that.  I’ve done it this year with Clint Conque (Central Arkansas), Mack Brown (Texas), and Gene Chizik.  I didn’t talk with (Chizik) on the phone, I texted him.

James was very kind early in the year when we had an incident with Bo Wallace’s sister.  We’re going to want to beat them extremely bad Saturday night and he’ll feel the same, but I still think it’s possible to do it and still be very courteous to each other.”

Franklin’s response when asked about the call: “It was a very nice gesture, but… there’s really no reason for people to make those calls.”  Well, aside from just being nice.

Wallace’s sister underwent surgery at VU last month after suffering a broken neck in a car wreck.

Auburn president Jay Gogue is preparing to possibly replace football coach Gene Chizik, according to a report from AuburnUndercover.com.

The website reports Gogue has informed some members of Auburn’s Board of Trustees of his plan. Here’s more from the report:

“Gogue also told the trustees to whom he talked that he plans to retain athletics director Jay Jacobs and reassign executive associate athletics director Tim Jackson, who oversees football.

“In telephone calls with some members of the Board of Trustees last week and early this week, Gogue said he intends to form a committee to help with the decision and plans to move quickly, ideally naming a new head coach within days after the end of the season should the decision be made that Chizik will not be retained.”

Louisville offensive coordinator Shawn Watson is a potential candidate to replace Chizik, according to AuburnUndercover.

To be clear, the report doesn’t state that Gogue has decided to fire Chizik. Gogue is preparing for the possibility, according to AuburnUndercover.

That’s with the expectation that things are about to get worse for Auburn. The Tigers (2-7, 0-6 SEC) will host Georgia on Saturday before playing Alabama A&M at home and Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

At that point, the possibility of Chizik being out might turn into a reality.

Safety Malik Greaves from Sandalwood High School in Jacksonville, Fla., is focusing his recruitment on Auburn now that he’s no longer committed to Vanderbilt.

Greaves told 247Sports that he decommitted from Vanderbilt last week and plans to take an official visit to Auburn in the near future.

“Vanderbilt is a good program,” Greaves said. “From the staff to the players. I just feel that it would be a better situation for me at Auburn. They are a great academic school as well as Vandy, just with a more pro-style defensive system. Yeah, they fell off this season but that happens.”

Of course, as the season for Auburn (1-7, 0-6 SEC) continues to get worse, the future of Auburn coach Gene Chizik and his staff becomes more in doubt. And that could cause prospects like Greaves to question their interest in playing for the Tigers.

On the bright side, he’s not pointing fingers at those around him.

Auburn coach Gene Chizik says he isn’t going to start judging his coaches before season’s end.  Sure the team’s 1-6 start is miserable, but there are still five more games to play according to Auburn’s head coach:

“At the end of every year we go back and we evaluate everything that everybody does, just like we’ve done every year that I’ve been here.  We’ve got five games left.  Our one focus for the next five weeks is nothing but trying to win a game, that’s it.  At the end of the year, just like we do, we go out and evaluate everybody as I get evaluated.”

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