Let’s say you’re a man who makes $3.5 million per year.  And let’s also say you want to dress like a man who makes $3.5 million per year.  In that case Auburn football coach Gene Chizik would make a pretty good model for you.  He makes that much cash and he’s shown himself to be quite the splashy dresser these last couple of years.

Ah, but which Chizik look do you go for?

Chizik’s Spring line, which he showed off at a recent Atlanta Braves games?

Or his classic Fall collection, complete with rugged leathers?

Pastel paisley or rich, Corinthian leather, folks?

Or do you just hold out, hoping he releases a paisley/leather jumpsuit salute to ’80s rock/funk legend Prince?

Gotta give this to Chizik… the man’s got his own style and he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about it.  Probably because he makes $3.5 million per year and could buy or sell most of us.

(Kill the “you hate Chizik” comments before they start, please.  We’d have fun with any coach who tried to pull off these two looks.  And, no, yours truly won’t be gracing GQ anytime soon, either.  Of course, I don’t make $3.5 mil, either.)

1.  Gene Chizik says Auburn has a lot of work to do to develop depth at linebacker.

2.  Alabama’s offensive line is providing stability this spring.

3.  Star point guard BJ Young will return to Arkansas for his sophomore season.

4.  Trent Johnson traded a better job for more security by leaving LSU for TCU.  (Always smart to restart the coaching clock every four or five years.)

5.  Rick Ray has completed his coaching staff at MSU… but with six players leaving, he’s still got some work to do on the roster.

6.  Ole Miss has announced seven future home football opponents.

7.  Kevin Sumlin thinks his quarterback competition is going well at Texas A&M.

Running back Ladarious Phillips arrived on Auburn’s campus at a whopping 291 pounds in 2010.  He was expected to drop some of that excess weight, but that didn’t happen.  And now AU’s dropping him.

Phillips — who was expected to be a fullback for the Tigers this fall — is walking away.  “He will not be on our football team and we’re going to with him well,” Gene Chizik said yesterday.  “He’s decided he’s not going to play.”  At Auburn, that is.  He’s been granted a full release to transfer to any school of his choice.

Jay Prosch — an All-America transfer from Illinois — is slated to be Auburn’s starting fullback in Scot Loeffler’s new offense.

Would the real Gene Chizik please stand up?  Is the guy who won five games in two years at Iowa State?  Is he the man who’s led Auburn to two 8-5 campaigns in three years?  Or is he multi-millionaire, top o’ the line coach who led the Tigers to their first national crown in decades?

That’s what many Auburn and SEC fans would like to know following last year’s post-Cam Newton season.  But Auburn AD Jay Jacobs isn’t reading too much into last season because he says he and Chizik knew early on what was coming:

“2010 was a magical year for us.  Back when I interviewed Gene in December ’08, we knew that 2011, as far as the number of players, was going to be challenging.  I couldn’t be more proud of how the guys played.  There was only one institution that played more freshmen than we did this past season.  I’m proud of how hard they worked and how they stayed to the task at hand and continued to build this foundation that’s going to take us back to an SEC championship.”

Sounds good.  And we believe it’s too soon for anyone to start writing Chizik off as a one-year wonder.  But…

For Jacobs to have known back in 2008 that the roster would be so full of holes in 2011, he would have to have foreseen some real problems coming with Chizik’s first two signing classes.  After all, 43% of the players from Auburn’s ’09 and ’10 classes aren’t at Auburn or never arrived.

For that reason — while we say it’s way too soon to panic on the Plains — we also aren’t buying Jacobs’ “we knew it was coming” message.

Auburn didn’t have a great morning, but Gene Chizik’s rebounded nicely this afternoon.  In addition to five-star offensive lineman Avery Young, the Tigers have also nabbed the signature of fellow Floridian Ricardo Louis.  Louis is a four-star receiver prospect from Miami Beach.

Louis had been an Auburn commitment before switching late to Florida State and then declaring himself undecided.  Turns out, he wound up where folks thought he would all along.

And suddenly Auburn’s finish has taken on a much better look.

Just a few headlines from around the league for you on this Monday…


1.  In hiring Scot Loeffler, Gene Chizik found an O-coordinator who can “develop a quarterback to get them where we needed him to be to win championships.”

2.  The Arkansas football team wants two more wins next season.

3.  MSU’s comeback win at Vanderbilt on Saturday required their best half of basketball all season.

4.  Riding a two-game win streak, Ole Miss hopes to keep things rolling with a pair of home games this week.

5.  Florida’s bench players are getting better.

6.  Vince Dooley and Mark Richt put out statements regarding Joe Paterno’s passing last night.

7.  Up next for Kentucky: Georgia at home, then LSU on the road.

8.  Steve Spurrier on Paterno: “It was sad how it ended, but he was a great person and coach.”

9.  Cameron Tatum broke out of a slump to help lead Tennessee to its upset win over UConn.

10.  Vanderbilt’s defense disappeared against MSU and as a result so did the Commodores’ eight-game win streak.

Rumors have been swirling since Gus Malzahn announced he was leaving that Auburn might go from its current spread offense to a pro-style offense under its next coordinator.  Gene Chizik hasn’t hired a new O-coordinator yet an he’s not been interested in telling fans or media what his plans entail.

But he is giving Tiger recruits a hint of what’s to come.   According to wide receiver prospect Jaquay Williams:


“He said it’s going to be a little bit of the same.  Four receivers.  Three receivers.  It’ll be more a little pro-style.  It’s going to be good.”


According to Charles Goldberg of Al.com, Williams also said that he “got the feeling” that Auburn’s new coordinator will be announced “later in the week.”

Now, this is the word of a teenager so who knows if he correctly interpreted what Chizik was telling him.  That said, at least it’s a clue for info-starved Auburn fans.

Those close to the Tiger program believe Chizik would like to create more of a pro-style offense.  Problem is… he’s got a roster filled with players recruited to play in Malzahn’s hurry-up, spread system.  It makes sense, then, that he might try to marry the two concepts in 2012.

It took a while — 22 months to be exact — but Auburn coach Tony Barbee has finally signed his contract on the Plains.  The Opelika-Auburn News reports that the second-year coach actually inked the agreement back on December 7th.  It is a seven-year pact dating back to Barbee’s start date of March, 2010. 

The coach says he’s glad to have the issue put to bed:


“I’m glad it’s signed.  The contract was a bigger deal for everybody else but Auburn and me.  I was very comfortable with the letter of agreement we were working under.  It’s part of negotiations.  Things don’t always go as quickly as you want them to go.  It’s just part of it. 

Auburn had committed to me.  I had committed to them.”


Barbee’s contract — worth $1.5 million per year — includes a chapter on compliance that is identical to the wording in Gene Chizik’s contract. 

Auburn is continuing to pursue junior college wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson.

The five-star prospect received a visit on Wednesday from Auburn head coach Gene Chizik and wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor.

“It was a pretty good visit,” Patterson told 247Sports.com. “We talked about a lot of the same things we’ve been talking about, really. It was just good to  see the coaches again and have them come to my home. I feel better about Auburn now that Coach Chizik and Trooper came to see me. I really like the fanbase there, too.”

Patterson, who’s ranked the nation’s No. 1 junior college prospect by 247Sports, has already taken official visits to Auburn, Georgia and Tennessee.

Patterson plans to take two more visits and is considering Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss, Baylor and Oklahoma. He told 247Sports he has scheduled official visits to Ole Miss and Baylor on Jan. 13.

“I got two visits set up for the same day and I don’t know which on I’m going to take yet,” Patterson said.

You can throw another log on the Mike-Dyer’s-leaving-Auburn-fire this afternoon.  According to the website NationalFootballAuthority.com, the suspended Tiger running back filed paperwork this afternoon to enroll at Arkansas State.

Two ASU players tweeted and Facebook’d “welcome” messages to Dyer a week ago, but Auburn coach Gene Chizik said at the time that there had been no change in Dyer’s status — he was still indefinitely suspended from the AU squad.  Still, Dyer was noticeably absent from Auburn’s bowl media guide and from a postseason highlight reel that was shown in the Georgia Dome during the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

Dyer’s former offensive coordinator at Auburn — Gus Malzahn — has just taken the reins as Arkansas State’s head coach.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE — Matt Harris of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has now tweeted a follow-up to the above report/rumor from NationalFootballAuthority.com:  “Hearing from a source close to Dyer the #AState transfer paperwork rumor is bunk.  Family wants to meet with Chizik at Auburn.”

And that’s why used the “rumors” icon in connection with this one.  When it comes to Dyer, we want to hear an official word from Chizik or Malzahn before we believe he’s moving from one school to the other.