There are times in life where a man’s best really isn’t good enough.

Welcome to the world of Gene Chizik.

“Where did it all go wrong?

Yes, the man we know at AuburnZen.com as Coach Eugene Frank Cheezeit (right), was formally shown the door Sunday after a humiliating 49-0 defeat in the Arn Bowl.

You could argue that Cheezeit’s legacy will be more for our glorious 2010 National Champeenship than for this season’s preposterous 3-9 record in which absolutely NONE of the eight SEC teams we faced managed to bow down to our collection of five-star blue-chippers and all-star lineup of coaches.

Or you could argue that 2010 was an aberration, a once-in-a-lifetime intersection of fate and “tithes” that simply masked Chizik’s true coaching worth — a worth that can be summed up in one simple statistic.

5-19.

That was Chizik’s woeful record at Iowa State when we snatched his God-fearing, “All In” ass from Ames, Iowa, shortly before he would have likely been fired. We gave him a big fat contract and, more importantly, showed him the way to cheat in the SEC like the big boys do it.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t 5-19 that did Chizik in. Could it have been $180,000 — the amount we so generously tithed to the Right Rev. Cecil Newton’s church in the hopes his boy Cameron would come toss the pigskin at Auburn? No one can question the return on investment, as Newton’s once-in-a-lifetime physical gifts won us a crystal football and bestowed millions into our orange-and-blue coffers. But that investment also clouded Chizik’s almost total inability as a football coach.

Put another way, we fully bought into his hype. And once the smoke cleared — from the firearms used by players during armed robberies as well as the self-immolation of our beloved Toomer’s trees — only one man was standing in front of us wearing nothing but a dentist’s smock.

Coach Eugene Frank Cheezeit.

Where does Auburn go from here? Well, after we snatch Jon Gruden from the Monday Night Football booth or steal Jeff Fisher from the Rams, we’ll go right on doing what we do, of course.

There are championships to be bought. There are players to be wooed with cash and cars. There are rules to be fudged and ex-coaches to be placated.

It is the Auburn Way. And it will be again.

Weegle!

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