Two weekends ago, a middle aged lifelong Auburn fan was talking some trash about Alabama and Saban in particular. He wanted to know what we would do when Saban left for Notre Dame.

Yeah. Auburn fans think Saban is going to leave us for Notre Dame.

As ridiculous as that is, let's just assume for the sake of argument that Saban does, in fact, leave Alabama after the 2010 season. My response to the Auburn fan was that Saban would have left this program is much better shape than when he found it, and that we would hire someone else and life would continue.

Incredulous that this man, fan of a school who just fired their coach of 10 years and who was 7-3 against their archrival, was casting stones at Alabama (a team fresh off a BCS bowl appearance) and Saban (a national championship winning coach), I asked him if he'd rather have Saban as a coach for four years or Gene Chizik for one.

That Auburn fan looked me square in the eyes and without any hesitation replied, "Gene Chizik."

And that is why Auburn has been and will always be a second rate power in college football. **

Chizik is supposed to a "defense" guy. Last year, out of 120 teams, Iowa St. ranked 111th in scoring defense, 94th in rushing defense, 117th in passing defense, 111th in total defense, 97th in sacks made, and 95th in tackles for loss. (ISU was top 10 in fumbles forced and recovered.) Could Chizik have turned it around? It's impossible to know. He was only in his 2nd year as head coach.

Now maybe Auburn made a good hiring decision here (and if they did, it's my opinion that it is purely coincidental), and maybe they didn't. But it takes some real gall to talk trash about a team that thrashed you to the tune of 36-0 last year and is clearly only going to get better.

** Sidenote: Auburn had a 7 game win streak against Alabama and could only parlay that into one conference championship. In the meantime, Alabama was on probation for a decade and also won one conference championship. Then of course there's Auburn's 6 conference championships all time vs. Alabama's 21.

And no, I did not have these numbers memorized. My point is Alabama has a history of relevance. Auburn does not. Try to keep that in mind when talking trash.

(Apologies to my Auburn friends. You're all very nice people.)