Newspapers strive to be objective, but we have a bias. We want to see Auburn succeed.
We printed two editorials about Jay Jacobs last year, "We need a leader, not a loser" and "The high cost of losing," calling for Jacobs to be fired.
We felt justified in our opinion, and we still feel it was the right call at the time. His decisions were an embarrassment to the University.
Jacobs seemed to be going by a system of trial and error; hiring and firing coaches here and there on a whim.
There almost seemed to be no logic or reason to his new hires. We saw this happen with Gene Chizik and Tony Barbee.
Jacobs hired Chizik after the former defensive coordinator had only won five games in two years at Iowa State. His reasoning? Chizik was an Auburn guy, and he was cheap.
Sure, he led us to a victory at the 2011 National Championship, but let's be honest, Cam Newton, Nick Fairley and several of Tommy Tuberville's recruits did all of the legwork.
As for Barbee, Auburn built a new arena for the men's basketball team in 2010, expecting Barbee to come through and form a team fans would want see play. What Auburn got was a joke -- the worst four-year stretch in program history -- and the Auburn Arena quickly became a $92.5 million tombstone for our men's basketball team.
Auburn Athletics was dead by 2012. Jacobs was burning the program to the ground with his incompetence. Auburn was in the Dark Age of athletics.
But two years later, despite his past failures, Jacobs has potentially turned the Auburn Athletics program around. He has sifted through the ashes and found a few pearls--literally.
Jacobs hired Gus Malzahn, who is one of the brightest offensive minds in football and brought the University to the BCS National Championship game in his first year.
He brought in Clint Myers for softball, who had two national championships in the Pac-12 and who left a Top-5 program to coach here.
Jacobs also got Sunny Golloway, who was the head coach of a consistent postseason contender at Oklahoma.
And now, he has gotten Bruce Pearl, who took Tennessee from 14-17 to 25-7 in one year and made them the No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament with the same roster.
It will take a while for the basketball team to build themselves up to any sort of glory. Who knows, maybe Pearl will be able to pull off what Malzahn did in 2011.
We now have some of the most incredible coaching minds in college sports. Auburn University is in a veritable athletic Renaissance, and Jay Jacobs is the Medici.
Was it luck? Possibly. A miracle? Perhaps. All we really know is Jacobs gave us results, which is all we really care about.
Jacobs might actually go down in Auburn history if all goes well these next few years.
Now, this doesn't make us wrong for saying Jacobs should have been fired. He should have been.
However, he didn't buckle under the tremendous pressure the fans placed on him. It is fair to say Jacobs has redeemed himself. Hopefully, he can keep it up.
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