Will Fulmer's Departure Force Auburn's Hand?

Yesterday, Phil Fulmer became the third BCS conference coach to lose his job during the middle of this season. That leaves the hottest seat in the country the one directly below Tommy Tuberville's rear end. The question the Auburn trustees certainly must be asking themselves is this: are they going to be at a competitive disadvantage if they wait until the end of the year to fire Tuberville?

The answer is a resounding "yes".

Of course, it's not a guarantee that Coach Tuberville will find himself looking for work come December, but if he is, Auburn will find themselves more than a month behind in their coaching search, and with some heavy competition.


Washington, Clemson, and Tennessee are all in the market right now. That provides a pretty wide range of options for the up-and-coming head coach.

At Washington you're a part of a conference that gets a decent amount of respect while also fielding one of the weakest bottoms of the BCS conferences. Granted, you're going to have to play USC every year, but if you put together a nationally competitive team and, many years, the only thing standing between you and a BCS berth is the Trojans.

Over at Clemson you've got a school that is located in the football-crazed southeast, has a middling SEC school on the schedule every year, and finds itself in what is quite possibly the weakest BCS conference in the country. Super-agent Jimmy Sexton even says that Clemson is more attractive than the SEC.

Tennessee is a lot like Auburn in terms of what they have there right now, with a few big differences. For starters, the new head coach in Knoxville isn't going to have to deal with Bobby Lowder or the rest of the band of meddling trustees and boosters on the Plains. The Volunteers support a richer football tradition than the Tigers do. Both teams are in the SEC and play both Alabama and Georgia every year, which could either be looked at as a good thing or a bad thing. The SEC might also be one of the most stratified conferences in the country and the normally robust conference has definitely seen some better days top-to-bottom.

You can compare an Auburn opening to any one of these jobs and come up with some good reasons to head to the Loveliest Little Village, but does Auburn hold up to all three of them? And if it does, will it be a big enough difference to offset the weeks/months advantage the Huskies, Tigers, and Volunteers will have in their coaching search?

Is Auburn facing a situation where they need to decide right now whether to fire Tuberville or wait until next year? With their head coach getting his recruiting lunch eaten all over the conference, can the Tigers afford to wait until next year?