Listening to Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs on Sunday while announcing the firing of Gene Chizik as Auburn’s head football coach you get the impression he was aware of the collapse all along.

Not only aware of it … but disturbed by it. Good for him.

Every Auburn fan throughout the country watched it painfully unfold over the last three months.

But how Jacobs gets off the hook for this mess is beyond me.

What could he possibly have told Auburn president Jay Gogue to keep from losing his job?

“Hey, prez … can’t believe what’s happening out there … will look into it … but hey, Coach Chiz, is a good guy … great character … we’ll get someone in here to turn this around …”

And why would anyone have reason to believe Jacobs can make that decision?

He’s the man that looked at the TV cameras yesterday and said a proven winner is what the school is looking for in a head coach.

Oh, so, that’s why you hired a coach that went 5-19?

The national championship in 2010 with Chizik is one of the memories that Auburn can grasp on to for generations but the damage to the program where it is at now is unfathomable.

All season long, loss after loss, players and coaches all said we’re giving it are all.

Then, why while walking off the field following the debacle against Texas A&M, did one of the Aggies players come up to me and say: “That’s the laziest football I’ve ever played against in my life.”

Sounds like great attitude and effort to me.

Discipline, coaching, fractured in-team relationships, lack of talent and/or poorly developed talent.

Normally, they say you get what you pay for … Auburn paid a lot for what it is left with now.

Oh, yeah, wasn’t Jacobs the one who set up the huge buyout of Chizik after the national title season because he thought, cough, cough, Texas might want to hire Chizik if Mack Brown retired?

Like that was ever going to happen.

And, it’s costing Auburn millions that he says is just the way finances dictate in the sport.

It doesn’t cost anything if you don’t make such stupid decisions.

That’s why Chizik is going to make nearly $50,000 a week for the next 150 or so weeks.

It takes a lot of donations to cover that as well as selling a lot of tickets.

And, if you go by the look at Jordan-Hare at home games against Texas A&M, New Mexico State, Georgia and Alabama A&M there are a lot of fans that it might take awhile before they come back.

Jacobs needs to shoulder the blame for that “great fan experience.”

Jacobs says in the final analysis that “we cannot risk falling further behind by waiting another year and hoping for improvement. That is why we decided it was time for a change.”

Auburn can’t get any further behind. It’s at rock bottom.

Check that … at least Kentucky is still in the SEC but too bad the Wildcats are in the SEC East.

I don’t think the school can trust Jacobs and his “rubber-stamp committee” right now to hire the right coach.

Maybe Auburn didn’t want to have an athletic director search the same time as a head coaching search.

But come spring, Gogue should do what is right and start over and clean house by getting rid of Jacobs.