Franklin finds comfort at Auburn

[Ogre]

Franklin finds comfort at Auburn
PRESSURE THERE DOESN'T COMPARE TO POST-UK BLUES

Tony Franklin thought the call to the big time would never come again.

It came late in 2007.

During his days as a Hal Mumme-era offensive coordinator at Kentucky, Franklin got caught up in the bitter staff feuding that helped doom Mumme's coaching tenure at UK in 2000.

In response to the infighting, Franklin penned a book containing his view of what had really gone on during the turbulent Mumme era. Given the speak-no-evil code that guides the big-time college football coaching fraternity, it made the one-time Kentucky high school coach a professional pariah.

For five long years (2001-2005), Franklin was exiled to the college football wilderness. "I'd pretty much given up," Franklin said Thursday of returning to college coaching. "And I was OK with that."

In 2006, Troy University -- desperate to invigorate a stagnant offense with Franklin's pass-happy system -- finally threw the Princeton, Ky., native a lifeline back into college coaching. For a guy who had coached in the Southeastern Conference, this was starting over at a very low rung of (what used to be called) Division I football.

By the end of last season, a friend on the Auburn University staff rang Franklin to sound out his interest on possibly becoming offensive coordinator for Tommy Tuberville.

"They said, would you be interested? I said, 'Yes, absolutely,' " Franklin recalled. "But I said, 'You all do know what I do? I spread the field. I throw the football. It's all I know and I'm too old to learn something new. If you aren't willing to totally commit to this, there is no point in either of us wasting each other's time.' "

No brownie points there.

Franklin, 50, reported to Auburn and went through an interview session with Tuberville and his entire staff. "When I left, I did not feel good at all," Franklin said. "I just wasn't comfortable with how things went."

Yet not long after, there came another call from Auburn. "They said they wanted to do it," Franklin said.

The decision to leave Troy and head coach Larry Blakeney was not easy. Blakeney, after all, was the man who gave Franklin the second chance in college coaching it long appeared he would never get.

"Larry understood," Franklin said. "That made it easier."

If you're like me, when you play word association with "Auburn offense," what comes to mind is "punishing running game." In other words, the diametric opposite of the five-wideout, short-passing system with which Franklin is synonymous.

A coincidence in scheduling likely played a vital role in Franklin's spread-the-field approach catching the eye of Tuberville. Last season, Troy played three SEC teams -- Arkansas, Florida and Georgia. Auburn also played all three of those teams.

In Troy's three matchups with that trio of SEC big boys, Franklin's offense averaged 30.3 points and 400 yards a game. In Auburn's matchups with the same foes, the Tigers managed 16.3 points and 277.3 yards.

Tuberville's team went 9-4 last year in spite of gaining fewer than 350 yards in eight different games. So this seems a program that could use some new thinking in how to move the football.

Still, in terms of culture shock, the approach Franklin is bringing to Auburn would be akin to introducing bluegrass music at Bad Boy Records.

One wonders if the Auburn fan reaction to the new approach has been more excited or more skeptical. "I think it's both," Franklin said. "The best thing that ever happened, though, was the Clemson game."

After Franklin was hired last December, he used Auburn's nine practices in advance of the Chick-Fil-A Bowl to install a Cliff Notes version of his offense. "I was hoping like crazy it wasn't a total disaster," Franklin said.

Against a stout Clemson defense in the bowl game, Auburn accumulated a season-high 423 total yards. More importantly, the Men of Tuberville won 23-20 in overtime.

With Auburn spring practice already over, sophomore Kodi Burns (who scored the winning TD in the win over Clemson) and Kentucky product Chris Todd (Elizabethtown) are still competing for the quarterback job. "If we had to play tomorrow, both would play," Franklin said. "And I have no problem playing two quarterbacks."

In the meantime, Franklin reports that everything you hear about how all-consuming the Auburn-Alabama rivalry is in that football-mad state is true. It's even more all-consuming than the passion for Kentucky basketball here, Franklin says. "Truly, 365 days a year," he said. "That's all that's talked about."

During the years in the coaching wilderness that followed his rancorous departure from UK, Franklin had to file for bankruptcy. He said he and his family -- wife Laura and three daughters -- at one point had to move out of their home for financial reasons.

His middle daughter, Caroline, suffers from a disease (ulcerative colitis) that landed her in the Mayo Clinic (she's doing OK, now) at one point.

So the pressure of installing a radically different offense at one of the most scrutinized programs in all of college football really is no pressure at all, Franklin said.

"A sick kid is pressure," he said. "Having to scramble to have money so your kids can eat lunch is pressure. Moving out of your house is pressure. When you've gone through what I've gone through, football is not pressure."

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[Jumbo]

I cant wait to see it all spread out 

[stewiegriffin]

"A sick kid is pressure," he said. "Having to scramble to have money so your kids can eat lunch is pressure. Moving out of your house is pressure. When you've gone through what I've gone through, football is not pressure."


and there it is, "the SABAN" could learn some communication skills from CTF