The Auburn job search has a bit of a Duke-UNC angle to it: Jeff
Capel says he was offered the job before Jeff Lebo took it, and that he
turned it down. He says he has a contract to prove it, and that "everything
I said in my press conference was 100% true."
Auburn countered first by saying that "[a]t one point, an agent asked for a copy of a blank, standard contract to show the wording. It was a replica. It was just a copy."
Given Auburn's history, and Jeff Capel's history, we'll go with Capel, 100%.
Incidentally, while we've said we thought Jeff was wise not to take the job,
here's an Alabama writer who
really nails what Lebo is walking into. We're not saying it can't be done,
because of course it can. But the guy is right - you have to change a culture at
Auburn, and that's not easy.
It also occurred to us that while Dean Smith has sent some tremendous coaches
into the world - Roy Williams, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Doug Moe, among
others - when they get to the SEC, they haven't done all that well. Just off the
top of our heads, we can think of John Lotz at Florida, Eddie Fogler at
South Carolina and Vanderbilt, and Buzz Peterson at Tennessee. The jury's
still out on Buzz, and we think he's got immense potential, but the other guys
had mixed results at best, which might be what you could expect going from a
basketball paradise to a football-first conference. We'll see how Lebo
does.