CBS Sports shares black-pilled prediction on Auburn football's next few years
CBS Sports' Shehan Jeyarajah believes Auburn football fans have a cruel reality waiting for them in the coming years within an everchanging college football landscape: the Tigers will continue to miss bowls and be the 11th-best team in the SEC.
Jeyarajah was addressing AU within the larger context of the sport moving further towards super conferences or even a 70-team super league.
"The other issue is, do fanbases realize they're about to be outside of the club? Take Auburn, a program that has played for multiple national championships in the last 15 years. Over the next decade, they very well might be the 11th-best program in the conference and consistently miss bowls," Jeyarajah wrote. "That's not how their fans have seen themselves. It's not going to only be Vanderbilt, Purdue and Mississippi State struggling. Teams with championships are about to live in a new reality. Is there a point where it actually impacts fan support and interest?"
Auburn football can thrive with the right coach
If anything, the results on the field this season are dictating that there are no set-in-stone contenders incapable of ceding their place atop the college football world.
Alabama already lost to Vanderbilt. Notre Dame lost to NIU. Underdogs are still en vogue.
Auburn is on the outside looking in right now, but one can argue that two straight underwhelming coaching hires is why. No explanation is needed for Bryan Harsin, but some may object to Hugh Freeze being labeled that. Even though Auburn is 8-11 since he became head coach and only three of those wins have come in SEC play. Freeze has recruited well and has stacked classes coming to the Plains in the next two years, but the product is a mess right now. That's undeniable.
Perhaps the right guy in charge can have analysts hopeful that AU can be in that exclusive club of winners sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, Freeze may never be seen as that guy; partly because of his past that some will never forgive him for, and partly because no hope has been inspired through a season and a half of his Tigers tenure.