Yesterday, Tommy Tuberville resigned as head coach of Auburn University.
If you do not follow college football, you may be asking "Tommy who?"
But, my guess is that many of you are at least familiar with the name. You may not be strong followers of college football but, since football is so big in the South, you have probably at least heard the name.
Now, before I go any farther, let me make it clear to any Auburn alumni who will read this blog; this blog post is not a slap at Auburn. Please don't read it that way. Instead, it's a slap at college football in general. Auburn just happens to be the example used.
So, what am I referring to?
Well, first of all, even though I love athletics as much as anyone, sports has gotten absolutely, way out of hand in America. And that sentence is typed by a "sports nut." Yep, I said it. Sports is out of hand.
We are obsessed with it. Well, maybe "we" is too strong. "Many" are obsessed with it.
Recently, I attended a high school playoff game. It was cold. I'm talking cold... Hard cold. I had layers of clothes on to try to keep warm. Everyone else did, too. As I looked around at the crowd that night, I couldn't help but ask the question; "Would you be able to get people out in weather like this for a church service?"
I think you know the answer.
That is an example of how obsessed we are with sports.
The situation with Tommy Tuberville is another example. Tuberville was Auburn's head coach for 10 years. I don't know his exact record but, it was pretty good. He's a good coach. Several years ago his team went undefeated and then got robbed when they didn't get a shot at playing for the national championship.
But this year, Auburn struggled. They went 5-7 and Auburn fans weren't happy.
I'm an LSU fan and I wouldn't have been happy with that record either. I'm not happy and LSU went 7-5.
UGA fans aren’t totally happy and they went 8-3, I think.
So, here's the point; college football coaches are being fired when they don't win 8 or even 9 games. Why? Because we expect so much in our culture.
Now, to be fair, these guys are paid LOTS of money. Tuberville will walk away from Auburn with 5 million. I think I could live off of that. lol
So, it's not like these guys are destitute. But, they are being held to a very, very high standard. Very high.
And that is the point of this blog post. Throughout the Southeastern Conference, more money is being thrown at coaches, and with more money, comes higher expectations. Every school expects to win. So, every week, coaches being paid lots of money are running on the field to play other teams coached by men being paid lots of money. And, both coaches have great players. But, someone has to lose. They don't let games end in a tie.
So, we have a system that throws mega bucks at coaches and builds multi-million dollar facilities and with all of that, the expectations are outrageous. And then, when coaches don't win at least 8 games, they are fired.
Maybe we need to back away from the table here and put this in perspective. It's kind of interesting to me how quickly schools can come up with money to buy coaches out when they want them gone, but churches have difficulty getting people to give to win someone to Jesus. Go figure. I think we have our priorities out of line.