It’s been more than six months since Tuberville walked out of Auburn’s football complex for the last time after resigning as head football coach, 10 mostly big-winning seasons behind him.
It was a painful, gut-wrenching decision. Not even athletic director Jay Jacobs’ agreement to honor his contractual buyout of more than $5 million made it easy. Ten days later, Auburn had named Gene Chizik head coach and moved on. Tuberville looks back with pride and some disappointment, but the decision, he says, was his alone.
“For some reason, a few years ago, everybody wasn’t on the same page,” Tuberville said in an exclusive interview with AuburnUndercover.com. “It just got harder and harder. For 10 years we did a great job. I just thought, ‘For the betterment of Auburn, let’s go somewhere else.’ That’s basically what happened.
“I’d still like to be at Auburn, but you can’t start the 10 years over. That’s just the way it is. It’s like graduating from college. You’d like to go back and start your freshman year over again, but you can’t do it. You just have to move on.”
Tuberville is working part-time for T&S Partners, a financial services company owned by a friend, David Stroud. That's where he has his office. He’s getting ready to spend the football season working for ESPN on its telecasts of Southeastern Conference games.
And he’s looking ahead to 2010, when he hopes to go back to the business that has been his life since he graduated from Southern Arkansas University.
“Oh, yeah, if the right job comes open,” Tuberville said. “I’m not going to just jump back in it. I’ve missed it from the day I got out of it. My buddies, the guys I have worked for, have always told me you will know when it’s time to get out. This isn’t time. I still have the itch to coach, to recruit. You miss the camaraderie with the players and coaches.”
After Tuberville’s disappointing 10th season ended with a 36-0 loss at Alabama and a 5-7 record, he insisted that he had no plans to leave, saying he hoped to stay at Auburn for 10 more seasons. But as days went by, he began to wonder if 10 years had perhaps been long enough. On Dec. 3, he decided it had been.
Tuberville’s staff members, six of whom had worked with him for 14 seasons at Ole Miss and Auburn, had turned their focus to the future. But they sensed uncertainty. In the end, they could only reminisce about what had been.
“It was a great time,” said offensive line coach Hugh Nall, who has gone into private business in Albany, Ga. “I’m really proud of what we did. In 1999, there were some real problems with personnel, academics, everything. I’m really proud of what Tommy did. We recruited a bunch of good kids and won a bunch of football games.”
The days of coaches spending long careers at one school are over, Tuberville says. Florida State’s Bobby Bowden and Penn State’s Joe Paterno are the last of a generation.
“If you do a good job at a school, you are going to be there for 7-10 years,” Tuberville said. “It’s gotten harder. The media is tougher. You have to be able to handle all the things that are coming at you, a lot of truths and a lot of untruths. That didn’t bother me. I was able to handle that pretty well, but I ran myself ragged. I tried to do too much.
“You can’t do it right unless you do too much. You have to be gone from your family. You can’t be a homebody. You have to get out and go and go some more.”
For Tuberville, things were never really the same after the ill-fated attempt to unseat him after the 2003 season. The scandal eventually cost late president William Walker and athletic director David Housel their jobs. Even a 13-0 record in 2004 didn’t fully repair the breach.
It wasn’t the way Tuberville wanted to go out, not after averaging 9.37 wins per season for the previous eight seasons, not after beating Alabama six straight times and seven out of eight, not after winning 85 games in 10 seasons.
“All environments are different, but they are all tough,” Tuberville said. “What you want to do is what gives the best opportunity for your team and your school. You are kind of the rallying point for everybody. The head coach brings everybody together for a common cause. I just decided it was time.”
For now, Tuberville will help his friend, who moved his company from New York City, build a client base. He’s in the final stages of negotiations with ESPN. He’s been offered the opportunity for 45 on-camera days, most on the weekend telecasts of SEC games. He’ll do two radio shows a week for Bustersports.com.
Tuberville says he’s enjoyed spending time with his wife, Suzanne, and sons, Tucker and Troy. He’s traveled to other campuses to watch how other coaches do things. He’s even played a part in a movie that tells the remarkable story of former Ole Miss offensive lineman Michael Orr.
For the second straight year, Tuberville went with other coaches to the Middle East to boost the morale of American troops. He says he’ll probably do it again if asked. But for the first time in 32 years, Tuberville won’t prepare a football team for competition.
Wherever he goes from here, whatever he does, Tuberville says his decade as Auburn’s coach will be with him always.
“We beat a lot more people that we weren’t supposed to beat than we lost to people we were supposed to beat,” Tuberville said. “We had some exciting moments, some good players, some good times.
“It’s disappointing that we didn’t win the conference another time or two, and we had chances. We had some disappointments, but we had a lot more good times. I wouldn’t take anything for those 10 years.”
