Just like every year, Auburn football is frustrated with Gus Malzahn, but this year they’ve set their eyes on landing a once-in-a-million target, Bob Stoops.
Last year Texas A&M did the absolutely impossible task of stealing Jimbo Fisher away from Florida State. National championship winning coaches don’t grow on trees, making the acquisition of a coach of that caliber incredibly difficult to achieve. Well, that was last season.
Through the early days of the 2018 coaching carousel the Kansas Jayhawks have hired Les Miles, the North Carolina Tarheels are working out a deal with Mack Brown. Could Bob Stoops be the third championship-winning coach to emerge from unemployment (granted, chosen unemployment) prior to the 2019 season?
The obvious answer is no. Bob Stoops more or less denied the chances of him being hired at Auburn, although without giving an explicit, “No, I’m not interested at all.” There will be a dozen columns written about how the notion of luring Stoops out of retirement is insane and how Auburn’s boosters are out of their minds — they probably are.
But what if the one-in-a-million shot in the dark pays off? What if making that phone call, getting an interview and persuading (with a hefty check) a veritable college football coaching legend to give it one more go results in Auburn obtaining the services of Bob Stoops.
It’s ridiculous. It’s a PR stunt, but it’s not impossible, not anymore. When Texas A&M hired Jimbo Fisher and signed him to a 10-year deal for $75 Million the “impossible” of a college football coaching search went right out the window.
Gus Malzahn is still the coach at Auburn. Bob Stoops is still retired. Both of those statements will remain true for the time being, but as every college football fan can tell you, it’s a long offseason.