Lebo went 35-61 in six years in the SEC.
Be honest, if I asked you yesterday who the head coach at Auburn was, would you have known?
That’s part of the problem with Jeff Lebo. He didn’t put the Tigers or himself on the national map. Lebo was fired today, according to the Birmingham News, and the search for a new name will begin immediately.
I’m going to be a little cynical here and say I don’t think the Tigers get the kind of name they want. With so many of these football-first schools, you can’t blame hot-name coaches for passing up the “opportunity” to be the beta.
Lebo went 78-69 in six seasons at the helm. He’ll be bought out for $1.5 million and will probably end up as an assistant in a major conference. The interesting wrinkle: Auburn is opening up a new building next year (that’s why this is happening; want to start fresh and begin anew, etc.) and is scheduled to play North Carolina. Well, Lebo is a Roy Williams guy, so the talk now is that UNC will back out of that game since Lebo’s not going to be there.
Is there hope for Auburn? Define hope, I guess. A Tournament appearance every other year would probably be acceptable. Last time the Tigers made The Dance was in 2003. Yep, before Lebo arrived. If you remember, that’s the team that had Marquis Daniels has been largely forgotten about.
Remember when they were actually on the national radar before that? Was there ever a team overrated like the 1999 one?
I digress, admittedly, but the coaching carousel picks up another victim mid-season and we’ve now eclipsed 10 firings in a year. Boise State just fired Greg Graham and Bob Nash got the same from Hawaii.
Jeff Lebo is out as Auburn coach {Birmingham News}
