Auburn walk-on quarterback Tucker Tuberville was always given a hard time from his father about spray-painting his hair blue and orange before the Tigers’ football games when he was young.
Remembrance of game-day preparations during his early days in Auburn started when he was 5 years old and when his father, current Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville, was hired as Auburn’s football coach in 1999.
As Auburn’s coach, his father compiled an 85-40 record (52-30 SEC) and led the Tigers to five SEC West Division titles, including an undefeated 13-0 season in 2004, where he won the Walter Camp and Bear Bryant Coach of the Year awards.
The biggest credit to Tommy’s legacy is probably being the only coach in Auburn football history to beat in-state rival Alabama six consecutive times.
“I didn’t realize how nice it was that we beat Alabama six years in a row and had all that success,” Tucker said. “It was a lot of fun. It’s something I will always cherish for sure.”
Tucker grew up on the sidelines of nearly every practice and game his father coached on the Plains, hung out with the players in the locker room and led Tiger Walks alongside his father for the next 10 years.
After being considered a top high school football player in Texas and redshirting at Texas Tech in 2012, where his father was coach, Tucker’s memories of Auburn brought him back to the Plains as a walk-on for the 2013 season.
Tucker sat out his first year as the SEC champions made their run, but he said he didn’t come to Auburn for a chance to start at quarterback.
Tucker jumped at the opportunity to come back so he can embrace his father’s legacy and learn from Auburn’s coaching staff the tools to become a coach like his father someday.
Tucker said observation has been important to learning from coaches, whether it be Malzahn or his father.
“Obviously, I’m not going to start over Jeremy Johnson this year,” Tucker said. “I’ve always just wanted to do this to absorb as much as I can from the coaches whether it was playing for my dad for a year and now coach (Gus) Malzahn and coach (Rhett) Lashlee. Just being a sponge and learning as much as I can and taking this experience with me and hopefully being a coach in the future.”
Growing up around college campuses such as Ole Miss and Auburn, Tucker picked up his father’s fondness for coaching football and his father’s job became a teaching point.
“Growing up, I got to see how he did things, but, playing for him, I really got to see the ins and outs,” Tucker said. “So now I know the difference having played under two head coaches and seen how they do things differently.”
While he is at Auburn, the senior in finance said he is taking in as much information from the coaching staff as he can before graduating next spring.
“Right now, in spring practice and two-a-days is when you learn the most football,” Tucker said. “I am just soaking up as much knowledge as I can from any coach.”
Tucker undoubtedly carries the football genes of his father and the young boy who once spray painted his hair before games has become a young man with ambitions to carry on his father’s legacy by starting one of his own.
“There’s a lot of stresses that come with coaching, but all the good things, from being in the locker room to running out on the field in front of 90,000 people, are something special,” Tucker said.
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