What Tubs said

Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville met with beat writers and other media Wednesday regarding his contract extension. He agreed to a two-year extension Tuesday night, after meeting with athletics director Jay Jacobs in New York. What follows is raw transcription of what he said:

--Opening statement

"I’m glad this is behind us. I think there was a lot of misunderstanding in terms of what this was all about. Being a head football coach in major college football, obviously, you’re always looking to improve and make things better for you coaches, for the people around you, for your football team and for your university, and that’s basically what this has been about. As we all know, in the last few years, we’ve changed leadership here on the campus, Jay taking over as athletics director and Dr. Gogue taking over as president, and they offered an extension. There was never any doubt I was coming back. It was in terms of whether I wanted to add to more years onto my contract, so we sat down. We had discussions. They were a little bit drawn out. You can’t do them all in one day. Of course, I had some things to do, and they had some things to do, but, in the long run, we wanted to do what was best for Auburn and for Auburn’s football program and athletics department, and we come to a conclusion that some things that could be worked out, and my family and I and our coaches decided to add to years onto the contract. It’s a very generous contract in terms of what we’re given, but it’s also some things that we’ll obviously earn over the next years, six years. I’m looking forward to it. You can get a new energy inside of you when you feel like people are behind you. I want to thank the thousands of people who sent me letters, emails, phone calls, put things on my porch at home. It was just mind boggling, but it makes you feel good to know that people really want you to be around and that they feel like you’ve done a good job, which we’ve been here nine years. We’ve worked awfully hard to make it better, and we think it’s better, but we think it can be a lot better, and I just wanted to be on the same page with our leaders in terms of what they wanted to accomplish and how I felt we could get better, and so that’s what we’ve done. So Jay and I talked yesterday for about two or three hours, and we were both on the same page, as Dr. Gogue was a week earlier, so looking forward to it, putting that behind us knowing now that everybody can go back to business and get on with getting ready for the bowl game coming up."

--When will you sign?

"What I’ll do, you get a contract, and I, of course, we’ve agreed on the things that are in the contract. What I do, I have a lawyer I send it to. They look at the wording. I don’t know when you sign. It took a month to sign it the last time, but we’ve agreed on it, the terms. Then what you do is you work out wording, words and if-ands and all of those things. That’s very easy to do, but you just want to make sure for both sides everything is the way you want it."

--Did you get answers about facility upgrades?

"In terms of upgraded for six years. That's what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about…..(interruption!!!)
"There's going to be some things that need to be done in the next six years. If you're going to make a commitment, you want to know what kind of commitment your leaders have. The commitment's there. This year, we're redoing all our bottom floor for our players. I think that's very important. We're redoing dressing rooms, showers, all the lockers, equipment room, training room. It's going to start immediately after bowl practice. Once we leave, sometime after Christmas, we will not be able to use the bottom floor through the spring semester. It's going to go through the spring semester. We're going to move the football team and basically their lockers into the weight room, I mean the indoor. All that downstairs is going to be completely redone. That's been on the burner anyway. That's not anything we just talked about. That's been bid out, planned, designed, all those things. The next thing Jay talked about is a stadium expansion. That's in the future, that's in the master plan. You'll have to ask him. There's some other things on the master plan. The major thing I've been talking about and so is Jay and Dr. Richardson before he left and the trustees, the one thing we had to get was different housing for our players. That's already in the mix. I think they're doing a lot of the groundwork. It's going to be over near the new coliseum they're going to build. They will be done in about a year and a half. That's an excellent addition. All I wanted to do was sit down, in terms of facilities, and get my ideas and their feedback on what they thought was feasible for the next five or six years. There's no doubt everyone's on the same page. Jay's done a good job since he's been here. We've redone this room. He's done a lot of things I haven't even asked him to do. He's been very proactive. We're redoing all the coaches offices as we speak – painting, floors, furniture. It's been what 15-16 years since we've moved into this building. He understands the need for redoing things. We're moving the museum and redoing offices. A lot of things are going on. The only thing I was concerned of was the time span and what we were going to do. We have a master plan. It's been talked about with the trustees. We've looked at in the future over at the old track in terms of an indoor. That's not on the front burner. That's on the backburner, but it's something in the future we're going to have to do in terms of upgrading facilities. We're going to need more well."

--How did you address security for assistants?

"Security? Well, most of them have two-year contracts. What we talked about were raises, incentive things. Most of the guys have been with me for nine years. Give them the opportunity, they're not looking for huge raises, they're looking for an opportunity to have incentives such as head coaches have or athletic directors. Once you've paid your dues at one school and been around for a while, and people know you and you've done a good job, you have to look for ways to help them out. Next year, as most of you have written, it will be our 10th year here. Most will be vested in the retirement system because of 10 years. That's a big incentive for them. Everything I do is for this football program and our assistants because they're the ones who go out and do the hard work and have done a great job."

--Are there any hard feelings involved?

"No. There are no hard feelings. It's a business. You don't want to let anything go by. If we weren't doing the contract, there wouldn't have been any discussion about it. If you're adding years, you want to make sure everybody is on the same page. Six years is a long time. For us to have the opportunity to compete in the conference week in and week and … also get to another level.
"We've taken several steps up the ladder since we've been here. The facilities have improved. The players have improved. Our academics have improved. Everything's improved. We all agree that it can be better. We want it to be better. We're looking for the same answers about moving it to the next step. It's hard. This conference is very hard. There's more parity out there every day. "We want to continue like we've been winning – and even more. It's going to be very hard to keep up the pace year in and year out. Everybody's looking for the golden key, so to speak, in terms of finding the right answers to: How can you be as successful as we've been? "We won eight games this year. That's not what we're looking for at Auburn by any means. We know where we want to get. We know how to get there. We want to make sure everybody is on the same page.This was a great time for all of us to get together, look each other in the eye and say: This is what we want to do, this is where we want to get to, this is hope we're going to do it. We all agreed, so we said: Let's go and get it done."

--Will you coach here for six years (term of the contract)?

"Do I look old? I look old and tired?"I feel better than I felt five years ago. I talk to some of my elders like Steve Spurrier. I watch them. I watch how they coach. They still have a lot in them. I'm going to coach as long as I can get the job done. I'm not going to be one just standing around. As long as I feel good about it, I'm going to give it all I've got. I feel like I've got many more years left."

--Buyout? Why reduce it?

"The buyout was a lot of talk. Jay and I probably spent 5 minutes in the entire discussion about the buyout, about what they expected. You want to make sure everybody's fair. When I agreed to this (initially), we felt like it was best for both sides to have the same buyout. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not looking to go anywhere. "It protects me as much as it protects them. You know how it goes. Sometimes, people lose patience. They've made a big commitment to me, re-stated that commitment during the past couple of weeks. I feel great about it and I hope they do."

--You weren't talkative lately. Might it have been a good idea to address rumors about you and coaching vacancies at other schools?

"Rumors are rumors. There wasn't anything to talk about. I wasn't contacted by anybody else. I felt like I needed to give you all something to write about. There's not much going on this time of year. There's no need to go out and address something that's really not happening. "The only thing that was happening was our negotiation in terms of a two-year extension. I could very easily have said I just want four more years and nothing would have really changed.There wasn't anything out there that I could have intelligently addressed because there wasn't anything to it."

--What was your reaction when an Arkansas TV station reported that you took the Arkansas job?

"I happened to be in Arkansas that night. We were at a deer camp. We go every year. It's not that I just happened to go this year. I usually go the week of Thanksgiving. They moved the game back. One of my best friends is a farmer in Arkansas. He always picks me up and some of the coaches. We hunt one afternoon, hunt the next morning and come back. "We were sitting around the fire. We'd just got through eating. It came on the news that I'd accepted the job. We all turned around and looked at each other very slowly and started laughing about it. That's how things start. "It really had nothing to do with Arkansas officials. This is just rumors. It's rumors that get started, internet, talk and everybody thought I was probably over there interviewing for the job. It was a little different. My wife even called me and wanted to know what in the world was going on. "There was no basis to it on either side. It was strictly bad reporting."

--Did anyone leave a for-sale sign on your porch?

"No. I didn't get one of those. If somebody wants to buy it I'll sure sell it to them. I've got a lot of money in it. I just got through building that thing, a year-and-a-half, takes forever to build that thing.
The fans have been great. We didn't want to put anybody out or anything. It was the best thing for Auburn to go through this slowly and do it the right way and not make any quick decisions, not in terms of me being here but in terms of whether to make a two-year more commitment instead of sticking with four years.
"I’m real appreciative of Jay and Dr. Gogue because we did go 8-4. We didn't get to Atlanta and we didn't do anything spectacular. I thought we played pretty good at times but we could have done better. We're going to do better. We're going to start next week, I think practice starts Wednesday or Thursday. We're going to use this for another spring ball and try to make these young guys better."

--Could you talk about planned housing for the team?

"It's going to be apartment-type housing here on campus, which is going to be great. It's going to have eating establishments, different types of fast food places, kind of line a mini-mall within the building. I think somewhere around 1,500 apartments.
"It will be an apartment-type setting for the players. They'll have their own rooms and have a common area of studying and T.V. It's going to be first-class, state-of-the-art, something Auburn people can be proud of, not just the athletes. Only a small portion of the athletes will be there. It will be regular students also.
The great thing is it's going to be on campus. It will be within walking distance of this building and walking distance of all the classrooms and buildings on this campus.
"Sewell Hall has been a great place. I've had a lot of conversations with Bill Sewell who's the son of the dad who built it. They've got a lot of memories. It's to the point now where these guys are getting bigger and they don't fit in the beds. You can imagine King Dunlap sleeping in a regular bed that was built 35-40 years ago."

--Do you turn your focus to recruiting?

"There's been a lot of talk about how come I'm not on the recruiting trail. I don't go very early. I use all mine in January. My deal is we've got three-fourths of our class committed and I do go out in the fall. I see a lot of players in the fall. I'm one of the few head coaches that goes on Friday nights and watches games. I'm going today to see three players.
"I try to let a lot of guys do their first home visits. I only get one shot and I don't like to use mine early. If you go in early then you don't get to see them for the rest of recruiting. I kind of hold mine back until January where I can answer any questions that come up during the holidays or anytime like that. I try to stay out of the assistants' way mostly in December. I'll go out a few, probably hit 10 or 12 guys out of 50 and then in January I'll hit around 35 players. That's always been my philosophy. I just feel like a head coach needs to be in there late. If you go to early then they forget about who you are and what you look like. I want to one of the last head coaches in the home."