This column requires a disclaimer right up front so here goes: I swear I am not making this up. If you care about Auburn and believe money doesn't grow on trees, you might end up swearing, too.

Gus Malzahn is the head coach of a college football team that went 7-6 overall and 2-6 in the SEC last season to finish last in the Western Division.

Malzahn's record in his current job has declined for two straight years from 12-2 and 7-1 to 8-5 and 4-4 to 7-6 and 2-6.

Malzahn has lost nine of his last 11 SEC games.

And yet ... wait for it ... Malzahn's employer announced Monday it has extended his contract.

Only at Auburn.

Only at Auburn could a football coach experience the worst year of his college coaching career and have the school throw even more money at him. At this rate, Malzahn could go winless in conference play this season, and Jay Jacobs wouldn't fire him. He'd sign him to a lifetime contract.

Of course, despite the extension and the praise Jacobs has lavished on Malzahn recently, if history is any indication, the AD would fire his head football coach if necessary, and he wouldn't wait a long, long time to do it.

You know this. I know this. So does anyone with even a basic understanding of the way college football works at most places, especially at Auburn.

The whole thing would be outrageous if it weren't so laughable and predictable.

The length of a coach's contract is irrelevant in terms of how long a coach is going to remain in his current job. The contract doesn't exist to keep him on the job. The contract exists to determine how much the coach will owe the school if he leaves for another job or, more likely in the dog-eat-dog SEC, how much the school will owe the coach if it decides he's outstayed his welcome.

At Auburn, where every coach since Shug Jordan retired in 1975 has either resigned under pressure or been fired, the contract exists to decide how much the school will end up paying its coach not to coach there anymore.

That's the real absurdity here. There was no good reason for Jacobs to extend Malzahn after a disappointing 2015 season, but he did it anyway, and don't say recruiting required it. Recruits and their families understand the only truly binding document in college football is the national letter of intent.

This extension is as fiscally irresponsible as the ones Jacobs threw at Gene Chizik after the 2010 national championship and at Malzahn before the 2013 SEC title and BCS near-miss were complete.

Look at the details. There have been some year-by-year recalculations, but the average annual salary of $4.725 million over the life of the deal remains the same. It's adding a year and keeping the same buyout provisions where Auburn is giving Malzahn something he hasn't earned.

The buyout still says if Auburn fires Malzahn, it will pay him $2,237,500 for every year left on his contract. So by adding a year, coming off Malzahn's worst year as a college coach and heading into a murderous schedule without a proven quarterback, Jacobs has increased the price of firing Malzahn after this season from $6,712,500 to $8,950,000.

Some people would suggest that means Auburn won't fire Malzahn after this year because the price wouldn't be right. Some people said the same thing about Chizik and his $7.5 million buyout in 2012, and those people were wrong.

All this extension really does is increase the scrutiny on Malzahn and Jacobs both. Prematurely, unnecessarily and not for the first time, the AD has bet even more of the school's money on an unproven head coach.

What is it they say about doing the same fool thing again and again and expecting different results?

Especially at Auburn.