re: Who was the best Auburn football coach of the last 30 years?

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Tuberville really wasn't the greatest of coaches. He was good but it is true that he did benefit from Alabama's NCAA sanctions.

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Honestly, I agree with this. I feel like Tubs is getting overrated itt by conservative fanboys. If this question was asked 3 years ago, the overall consensus on him was a bit different.

He was at Auburn at the right time to make him look better than he really was.

I'll always be grateful for 2004, and some of my best memories of Auburn football are games that he coached. But for every big upset he had, he shite the bed once or twice to teams that he should've beat. Outside of 2004, pretty much every other season was a disappointment. 02,03, 05, and 06 are all seasons full of "could've beens"

It's no secret that Tubs never put much effort into recruiting, and a lot of great players came to him at Auburn almost by default. Bama was under NCAA sanctions and considered a dead program until Saban came in, both MS schools were jokes at the time, Tennessee was cooling off and starting to trend down, Georgia was good but was still equals with Auburn, we didn't really compete much with LSU for recruits at the time. Florida was a juggernaut and got who they wanted, but other than them Tubs didn't have much competition for recruits. The second Saban came into the state, and other SEC teams started stepping up their game, Tubs immediately wilted. He put up zero fight, just completely quit on Auburn without so much as feigning any effort to appear otherwise.
People might not remember but before Bama hired Saban, Auburn was considered heavy favorites for both Julio Jones and Donta Hightower. A good example is Josh Chapman, he was a guy who grew up a Bama fan, but had been committed to Auburn for nearly a year, largely bc Auburn was a competent program and Bama was in constant turmoil. It took one meeting with Saban a few days after he was hired to flip that opinion, and Tubs didn't so much as call to try and save that commitment.

Gus ultimately shot himself in the foot with failures in key areas of recruiting, but he held his own for a long time against a level of competition that Tubs couldn't even stand to.