Wiedmer: If Auburn can find another Saban, paying Malzahn $21 million not to coach might be worth it

On Sunday afternoon, a very wise woman emailed me a Tweet she’d seen earlier that day. The original message read as follows: “A nonprofit university that receives millions in taxpayer funding is voluntarily paying one person (now former Auburn football coach Gus Malzahn) $21 million to do nothing. But it’s college football so this is news, not a scandal.”

Actually, it’s Southeastern Conference football. And it’s only scandalous if canning the only SEC head football coach to have beaten Nick Saban three times while Saban’s been at Alabama doesn’t lead to Auburn hiring an even more successful coach when it comes to facing the Crimson Tide.

And should it work, should the Tigers find somebody, anybody – Hugh Freeze, Lane Kiffin, Bill Belichick, anyone? – to finally dethrone the wicked warlock to Auburn’s west, it would be seen, at least in War Eagle circles, as genius, whatever the financial cost.

If you’ve never lived in the state of Alabama, it is indeed difficult to rationalize this, particularly in these coronavirus times when so many are enduring so much misery through lost jobs and medical nightmares.

But my family moved to Alabama when I was in junior high. No one asked me my name until they’d asked, “So are you for Alabama or Auburn?”

Fast forward a few years. While flipping hamburgers for a summer job at a country club south of Birmingham one afternoon, a man pulled up in a golf cart and asked us to call the police.

“There’s a fight on the 16th tee,” he said. “They’ve already wrecked a golf cart. It’s pretty bad.”

What was the fight over? Alabama-Auburn, of course. And this was July, not November.

As former Alabama coach Gene Stallings once mused, and I’ve repeated often, “It’s the only rivalry I know where they hate each other 365 days a year.”

But there’s also this aspect of college football at the SEC level that doesn’t get talked about much, but perhaps should. According to a Forbes magazine article a few years ago, the Alabama athletic department revenue nearly doubled – from $67.7 million and a profit of $7.1 million the year Saban first arrived in 2007 to revenue of $124.5 million with a profit of $19.4 million by 2012. How important is football success to that amount? Bama football generated $45 million in profit in 2012, which meant the rest of the athletic department ran through more than $25 million on other sports.

Beyond that, Tuscaloosa, where Bama is located, rakes in a reported $19 million every home football game. Given that, having a winning team that stirs enough interest to fill Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium to its 87,451 capacity, then stick around the Auburn-Opelika area to celebrate is probably worth paying Malzahn not to coach.

The very big problem for Auburn is finding someone who can both win like Saban, or very close to it, and also excite people to go to the game rather than watch it on TV.

Current Liberty University coach Hugh Freeze could fit that bill. Before he ran into NCAA trouble at Ole Miss, Freeze beat Bama in back-to-back seasons in 2014 and 2015. The Rebels won 23-17 in ’14, then 43-37 in ’15. To show such success wasn’t an aberration, Freeze led Liberty to a 9-1 record this season, averaged 40.8 ppg, winning 38-21 at Syracuse and 38-35 at Virginia Tech. The lone loss was 15-14 at N.C. State.

As for the shadow of his past NCAA troubles, that shouldn’t bother Auburn, which couldn’t wait to hire former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl despite his having been let go at UT for NCAA wrongs.

Given that Pearl has since guided the Tigers to their first-ever Final Four, that gamble has worked out well enough to sell even the most cautious Auburn booster on Freeze.

Of course, Freeze, who once coached high school ball in Memphis, is said to most covet the Tennessee job. Given Jeremy Pruitt’s shaky third season in Knoxville, he might say thanks, but no thanks to Auburn in hopes the Vols cut Pruitt loose a year from now.

There’s also the media dream hire of current Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who was once Saban’s offensive coordinator. Imagine the irreverent Kiffin now facing off against his former boss on both the recruiting trail and in the Iron Bowl. The social media universe within the state of Alabama could crash once a week.

Finally, there’s former UT linebacker and current Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, who is said to be a favorite with many of the school’s boosters.

Tennessee athletic director Phillip Fulmer was once a favorite of Big Orange boosters when he went from assistant to head coach following the ouster of Johnny Majors. Steele might one day produce a national title for Auburn as Fulmer did for the Vols.

Those whose lives aren’t governed by big-time college athletics are certainly right to question the message paying an employee of a public university more than $21 million not to work sends to all those souls who are losing everything they own to a pandemic.

It is scandalous. It’s disgusting, really. But Saban has also proved for years that he’s more than worth his current $9.1 million annual salary for the money and prestige his outrageously successful football program returns to both the University of Alabama and the city of Tuscaloosa.

Can that success be duplicated at Auburn? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean the Tigers and their frustrated fans will ever stop trying to beat Bama 365 days of every year.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.