Glad Someone Said It

In case you have been living under a rock somewhere Gene Chizik was hired as the new Auburn football coach. He replaces Tommy Tuberville who had been very successful in his 10-year at Auburn. Great Jeff, we all know he was hired but what is your point? Ok Ok, my point is that there was a far better man for the job in Buffalo's Turner Gill. Why was he not hired? In my opinion and that of Charles Barkley it was race.

From Sir Charles:

"I think race was the No. 1 factor," said Barkley, who played basketball for three seasons at Auburn during the early 1980s. "You can say it's not about race, but you can't compare the two resumes and say [Chizik] deserved the job. Out of all the coaches they interviewed, Chizik probably had the worst resume."

When I moved from California to Alabama in 1998 I was told that their was still racism in the South (mainly from Books and News Programs), but not until I arrived and saw it first hand did I believe it. When i first heard mention of Turner Gill being a primary candidate I knew immediately there was no chance for him to be hired because of his skin color, and unfortunately that was true.

More from Sir Charles:

"I'm just very disappointed, I just thought Turner Gill would be the perfect choice for two reasons: He's a terrific coach and we needed to make a splash. I thought we had to do something spectacular to bring attention to the program. Clearly, if we'd hired a black coach, it would have created a buzz."

[...]

"My biggest problem with the black coaches is they're not getting jobs and they're getting [expletive] jobs when they are hired, They're not getting good jobs. They're not getting jobs where they can be successful. That's why I wanted Turner to get the Auburn job. He could win consistently at Auburn. You can't win consistently at New Mexico. You can't win consistently at Kansas State. He could have won at Auburn."

I think this moves the race card (which I hate that it is even a factor) to frontpage and there is no way Auburn can hide from it.