Tony Franklin Doesn't Have To Worry About Crap...

((HT: Montgomery Advertiser/Josh Moon))

This past weekend, Josh Moon penned an opus the size of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" as he caught up with former Auburn, and current Middle Tennessee State, Offensive Coordinator Tony Franklin...

We figure we'd just lay out some of the highlights...

"I've been here a few months now and I don't think I've been recognized once," said Franklin, who was hired as the Blue Raiders' offensive coordinator in February. "I can go out and have a beer somewhere and not worry about winding up on the Internet the next day.

"I don't have to worry about all the crap you face in the SEC with its ridiculous, nit-picky rules and regulations on everything you do. I'm a guy who likes to walk down the street and not have to worry all the time about people watching me,

waiting on me to screw up. I have that here."

Franklin, who said he almost broke off his first interview with Tuberville just 10 minutes in, had deep doubts that his style of his coaching, along with his personality, would work on The Plains.
He was right on both counts.

But what he never expected was to find an athletic department and football program so riddled with turmoil.

"It was the most unusual place I've ever been," Franklin said of the Auburn program. "No one liked anybody else. There was this deep distrust of everybody. The coaches didn't trust the administration, the administration didn't trust each other or the coaches. It was very strange and very unnerving. You would walk down the halls and there would be tension you could just feel.

"No one would speak to you or even look at you. The coaches were all paranoid and didn't trust anyone in the administration. They all felt like the administration was out to get them and they stressed out over everything that happened. "

Franklin said the level discord within the athletic department had resulted in the football coaches closing ranks. Tuberville and his core group of assistants kept to themselves and shut everyone else out, mainly because they weren't sure whom they could trust.

"When you are involved in a job where there's so much tension and so much distrust, it changes people," Franklin said. "It changes their personalities, it changes the way they treat you. And it was obvious that the environment there had changed everyone."

Go on over to the article... it's a must-read and has a whole lot of insight into the last year of the Tuberville Administration...