big daddy russ

[DaHop72]

Your thoughts on the next Auburn coach???

[big daddy russ]

He's not Tubbs. That's about all I know.

I've heard some interesting names floating around, but it seems like the most likely names are Buffalo's Turner Gill, Ball State's Brady Hoke, and Tulsa's Todd Graham. I'm not as excited about Gill as everyone else. I think a mid-major coach who has overachieved is great at a smaller BCS school that doesn't have an immediate need to be in a BCS bowl (Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, North Carolina State, Washington, etc.). To be the next Urban Meyer, I want a guy who's consistently on the verge of breaking up the BCS.

Although I'm not in love with any of these coaches, I like Hoke and Graham, especially if Graham brings OC Gus Malzahn to the party. The big thing with Graham is that him and Malzahn have some SEC recruiting ties. I don't know enough about Hoke's pull in the Deep South considering that he's in Illinois, and Gill's waaaay too far north at waaaay too small a school to have made recruiting trips to 'Bama, Georgia, and Florida.

Brian Kelly's also been on the list, and he excites me more than anyone, though I'm not completely sold on him either.

I've also heard Jimbo Fisher's name on the list and Mike Leach as a long shot (as in Auburn hasn't even interviewed him and doesn't care to). Personally, I'd love to see Leach on the Plains. I love the guy and there's nobody on Earth that scares him, least of all Nick Saban. He was an assistant at Kentucky under Hal Mumme, recruited the Deep South for Bob Stoops at OU, and can bring the kind of offense that Tubbs was trying to implement to help recruit the offensive skill kids that we so desperately need.

Those are my thoughts. Yours?