Auburn football: Gus Malzahn fired after eight seasons as head coach

Gus Malzahn has been relieved of his duties at Auburn.

While Auburn has consistently placed among the best teams in the SEC, head coach Gus Malzahn has been under constant scrutiny, as he has very rarely shown that his Tigers can be in the national championship picture. After he and Bo Nix struggled in the 2020 season, the athletic department has finally reached a breaking point.

Brett McMurphy is reporting that Auburn has decided to fire Malzahn after going 6-4 this season, even managing to stomach his $21 million buyout.

Malzahn has had plenty of success at Auburn, but he has struggled of late

Malzahn, who served as offensive coordinator under Gene Chizik as Cam Newton carried the Tigers to a national championship, was named Tigers head coach in 2013 after a 9-3 season as the head coach of Arkansas State.

Malzahn’s tenure was a curious one that was full of extremely high peaks and low valleys. While he took the Tigers to a national championship during his first season on the job in 2013, had only two seasons with fewer than eight wins, and competed with Alabama both on the field and on the recruiting trail, Malzahn was just 2-5 in bowl games and never won the SEC after his debut season. Despite being an offensive mind, Auburn’s quarterbacks never seemed to light up the stat sheet like some of their competition in Baton Rouge in Tuscaloosa.

Auburn will attract plenty of coaching candidates given how enticing all of their recruiting advantages can be, but there will be plenty of expectations placed upon them. Malzahn might’ve build the Tigers into a consistent winner, but that wasn’t enough to make them true powers in the SEC, and that led to his dismissal.

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