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Auburn University officials have received perhaps not even their fair share of criticism for their handling of firing football coach Tommy Tuberville and hiring Gene Chizik. Most Auburn fans that I've talked to and those that I've listened to on local sports talk radio believe that Chizik comes far from qualified after a 5-19 record in his two years of head coaching at Iowa State. Other potential hires such as Turner Gill, who would have been the first African-American football coach at Auburn, would have been much more popular with fans and alumni.
Barkley speaks directly to this search coming down to Chizik and Gill.
"I think race was the No. 1 factor," said Barkley, who played basketball for three seasons at Auburn during the early 1980s. "You can say it's not about race, but you can't compare the two resumes and say [Chizik] deserved the job. Out of all the coaches they interviewed, Chizik probably had the worst resume."
Barkley like others that have been discussing this topic today have said that not only was Gill's race a factor, but the race of his wife was a factor.
"We talked about the whole race thing in Alabama," Barkley said. "I told him it's there and it's going to be anywhere you go. I told him you can't not take the job because of racism. He was worried about being nothing more than a token interview. He was concerned about having a white wife. It's just very disappointing to me."
On Paul Finebaum's popular radio show today, a clip was played where Mark Schlabach, who wrote the Barkley article, said that he learned Gill would not be hired because he has a white wife. Here's the clip of the discussion on Espn's Outside the Lines on Hiring Black Football coaches from yesterday:
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