Gene Chizik Biography

When he was hired as the new head football coach at Auburn, a lot of people, including former Auburn basketball player and noted NBA commentator Charles Barkley, were left scratching their heads, as Gene Chizik, on the surface, seems a strange fit for the Auburn Tigers at this stage in his career. However, often times, you need to look a little deeper to figure out why a particular move was or was not made, and in the case of Chizik, the depth of his coaching career seems to outweigh his past two seasons of coaching.
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Over the past two seasons, Chizik has served as the head coach for Iowa State, a team which currently resides in the fiercely competitive Big-12 Conference. Over the course of those two seasons, Chizik’s Iowa State teams, while playing with emotion and energy, have struggled against the tough grind that is the Big 12, and over that span have amassed a conference record of 2-14, versus a slightly more competent record of 3-5 in non-conference matchups. However, even most of Chizik’s most fierce critics recognized the challenge Chizik faced at Iowa State, and generally speaking, they believe that the positives that Chizik brought the Iowa State football tended to outweigh the negatives.

Prior to his years at Iowa State, which represented his first head coaching position he had ever held, Chizik served for two seasons as the defensive coordinator for the University of Texas. Chizik was widely regarded as one of the keys to the successes of the Longhorn program during the time that he served as the defensive coordinator there, and in fact, under his tutelage the Longhorns took great strides defensively. His defensive coaching was a key cog in the 2005 National Championship that the University of Texas won over USC.

Prior to his tenure at the University of Texas, Gene Chizik served as the defensive coordinator and secondary coach at, guess where? Yep -- Auburn University, clearly a major factor in the ultimate hiring of Chizik, by AU, for its head football coach. During Chizik's previous time at Auburn, the team made big strides defensively, and took some major steps toward a return to football dominance, appearing in three consecutive bowl games (the 2003 Capital One Bowl, the 2004 Music City Bowl, and the 2005 Sugar Bowl). His defenses were feared, and were typically near the top of Division 1-A in scoring defense (they were ranked #1 in 2004 (allowing just 11.3 points a game -- of course Auburn finished undefeated, but left out of the BCS Championship game, see BCS Unfair to SEC), a performance that led to Chizik winning the Broyles Award, awarded annually to the nation’s top assistant coach).

Chizik also spent time as an assistant coach for the University of Central Florida (from 1998-2001) as well as at Stephen F. Austin (1992-1995) and Middle Tennessee State University, where he was given his first coaching opportunity, as defensive ends coach, in 1990.

For current Gene Chizik and Auburn Tigers football info, check out Auburn Tigers Football.

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