Auburn football coach Gus Malzahn fired after eight seasons

Gus Malzahn has been fired as the head coach of the football program, athletics director Allen Greene announced Sunday.

Defensive coordinator Kevin Steele will serve as the interim coach.

“After evaluating the state of the Auburn football program, we’ve decided that it was time to make a change in leadership,” Greene said in a statement. “We appreciate everything that Gus did for the program over the last eight seasons. We will begin a search immediately for a coach that can help the Auburn program consistently compete at the highest level.”

The decision was made after the Tigers completed a 6-4 regular season with a 24-10 win at Mississippi State. Malzahn celebrated it by dancing with his players in the visitor’s locker room at Davis-Wade Stadium. The rug was pulled out less than 24 hours later.

Malzahn, 55, just finished in the third year of a seven-year, $49 million signed following the 2017 season. It carries a buyout of more than $21 million, half of which is due within 30 days.

Most damning: Auburn has an 8-17 record against rivals Alabama, Georgia and LSU, including an 0-12 mark on the road. No coach in program history has ever faced a tougher challenge against those teams — they have combined to win six SEC titles and three national championships since 2014 — but those are the teams fans want the Tigers to compete with, and under Malzahn, they haven’t consistently enough.

Perhaps that was the final straw. Auburn bludgeoned a struggling LSU team this season, but against top-five Georgia, Alabama and Texas AM teams, it got outscored 100-39 in three losses. The Tigers went 20-26 against ranked teams and 8-19 against top-10 teams under Malzahn. Their other loss this season came on the road against a South Carolina that fired coach Will Muschamp a few weeks later.

After the most recent of those ranked losses on Dec. 5, Malzahn said that a six-win season would be “solid.” He later clarified that he meant in a regular year where Auburn would have also played four nonconference games, but the decision made about his future proved that to be incorrect.

Auburn supporters want more. The program will pay handsomely for the opportunity to find a new coach who can provide it.

Follow Josh Vitale on Twitter at @JoshVitale.

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