The character Bubba Blue said in the movie Forrest Gump, "You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it ..."

	New Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville has spent a tumultuous first six months on the job.

Bubba was referring to ways to cook shrimp, but it's also a valid description of new Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville's tumultuous first six months on the job.

He was barbecued by Ole Miss fans for his hasty departure as the school's coach. Florida State boiled him for backing out of a season-opener with the Seminoles.

The parents of six scholarship players he cut broiled him. Critics baked him after he counseled former Auburn wide receiver Robert Baker, who served a jail sentence for cocaine trafficking.

Can Auburn's Sept. 4 season opener against Appalachian State come soon enough for Tuberville?

"Part of changing jobs is making decisions to get the ship going straight again," said Tuberville, 44, who signed a five-year, $4.5 million contract with Auburn last Nov. 28 after a 25-20 Ole Miss record in four seasons rebuilding an NCAA probation-wrecked program. "We made similar tough decisions at Ole Miss, but they didn't get as much attention."

What did grab headlines is the clandestine manner he left Ole Miss.

It wasn't long after Terry Bowden resigned as Auburn's coach last Oct. 23 that Tuberville's name surfaced as a candidate.

The magic he'd worked with the Rebels -- eventually three winning seasons and two bowl bids despite massive scholarship reductions because of NCAA sanctions -- made him hot property. He almost accepted the Arkansas job in December 1997, then declined because he said his work at Ole Miss hadn't been finished.

But Tuberville said he was told last fall by Ole Miss chancellor Robert Khayat that athletic fund-raising was being halted until $200 million was raised for academics. Tuberville wanted to raise $20 million for athletics.

Before that, Tuberville began worrying when then-athletic director Pete Boone quit in spring 1998 to enter private business. Boone had been instrumental in helping push through the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium expansion. He also proposed a 10-year contract for Tuberville that was rejected by the State College Board.

When Boone left, a buyout clause in Tuberville's existing contract dropped from $350,000 to $150,000 (Auburn paid $100,000 of Tuberville's buyout). Tuberville worked last season without a contract, and began considering his options.

"I don't hold anything against the chancellor and the other administrators," Tuberville said. "He's got to balance the books, keep it in the black and run the school. He has a plan for the school and he made a business decision.

"But I also had a responsibility to my coaches. Other schools had already looked at us (for jobs). Guys on my staff are ambitious; they want to be head coaches one day. We couldn't continue to turn down jobs. We had to go somewhere where we could be competitive. That doesn't mean Ole Miss isn't a great school with great people."

Khayat said he wouldn't comment on the specifics of Tuberville's exit.

"I've been clear in my statements about the contributions that Tommy Tuberville made to our program," Khayat said. "He did a nice job of recruiting, a nice job of promoting the program. He chose to go to Auburn, and we thank him for his contributions."

Tuberville's departure left Rebel rooters betrayed.

"The fact that it was about money, and that he went to a school within our conference and our division hurt our pride and ego," said Chuck Rounsaville, publisher of the "Ole Miss Spirit," which covers Rebel athletics. "We finally had a guy talking and doing big things, and then he's gone. He was such a hero, and when he left it was like one of our all-time greats slapped us in the face. He touched a lot of different nerve endings in a lot of people when he left."

Tuberville said the angry reaction didn't surprise him.

"You really hope they get angry because it means we did a good job of selling," Tuberville said. "When we got to Ole Miss, there was no enthusiasm."

After the Auburn job opened, Tuberville's failure to acknowledge that he or his agent, Jimmy Sexton of Memphis, had been contacted by Auburn seemed a mistake. An acknowledgment may have cushioned the shock when he was named the Tigers' coach just two days after the Rebels ended the regular season with a loss to Mississippi State.

"After I left and took the job, I could have come back to Oxford and had a press conference to explain why I was leaving," Tuberville said. "But there wasn't a lot of reasons other than Auburn was the best situation for us ."

Tuberville was home in Oxford in December when the Rebels won the Independence Bowl under new coach David Cutcliffe, the former offensive coordinator at Tennessee.

"The way they played in the bowl shows that players win games, coaches don't," said Tuberville, who added that he thought Cutcliffe was a great choice to replace him. "Those players went out and said, `We're Ole Miss players. Coach Tuberville is gone. He did what he had to do. This thing is going to go on.' I was proud of them for that."

Tuberville is discovering coaching in the state of Alabama means daily scrutiny is the norm. It's a one-track sport state that lives only for the Alabama-Auburn rivalry.

Alabama coach Mike DuBose sympathizes with Tuberville.

"He's going through some of the things we went through," said DuBose, a former Alabama player who came close to going to Auburn as a player and an assistant coach. "There's no way to understand the scrutiny we're under until you get in his chair and my chair."

When Tuberville finished a practice at Ole Miss, one or two reporters usually greeted him. At Auburn, the media situation is more competitive.

"It wears on you," Tuberville said. "It's tough coming up every day with something interesting for them to write about it."

Not that Tuberville has done a bad job at it, starting with his decision in February to opt out of the Florida State game. It cost Auburn $1 million -- $500,000 to buy out the game, and the $500,000 FSU was to pay Auburn to play in Tallahassee.

The FSU game was scheduled several years ago as the long-awaited father-son coaching matchup between Florida State's Bobby Bowden and son and former Auburn coach Terry Bowden.

The game lost meaning when Terry resigned under pressure last year after a 1-5 start.

"I didn't want our players to go through again what they went through for three months (during Bowden's departure)," Tuberville said. "All of it would have been rehashed the whole month of August leading up to the game. I would have played it if it was going to be a football game, but it was going to be a personality contest."

That controversy paled next to the one created when Tuberville confirmed on April 29 that he cut six scholarship players. He released them for various reasons, not all football-related.

Among the victims were offensive tackle Brandon Taylor., a 3.0 student in computer science, and tight end/center Shaw Bushong, the son of a single working mother also raising two daughters.

Tuberville's curt explanation of his decision to the Mobile Register was chilling: "This is a business. . . . We wouldn't have recruited these players."

Angry parents of the ousted players turned to Auburn athletic director David Housel, who offered the players jobs.

Tuberville said he thought honesty was the best policy.

"If a player doesn't have the prospect of getting out there on a Saturday and participating, I thought I needed to be honest with them," Tuberville said. "A lot of those kids were good kids from good families, and they were trying.

"But at the press conference I was hired, I told players, alumni and media that it was going to be a tough offseason. I said that when we finished some of the players weren't going to be back because they've got to live up to our standards."

Getting rid of players may not be ethical, but it's nothing new among coaches. Was Tuberville's mistake being too candid?

"I think candor is a refreshing quality in our day and time, and a lot of people don't want candid responses," Housel said of Tuberville. "The Auburn people in town love him. They say that the way he listens to you when you talk to him reminds them of a young Shug Jordan."

The late Jordan, considered Auburn's greatest coach, probably never tried to counsel a former player turned convict.

That's what Tuberville did with Baker, who played for Bowden in 1996 before serving 10 months of a 15-year sentence for trafficking cocaine. He was paroled in March, and Tuberville met him once a week for five weeks.

"I said I didn't know if he'd ever play at Auburn again," Tuberville said. "But I said I'd help him get to another school to play or into the NFL's supplemental draft, where he's going. We never even talked about him coming back.

"I wanted to help the kid get back on his feet. We're in the business to help young people. If there's a coach who won't do that, he needs to get out of the profession."

Auburn's waning talent level has caused the Tigers to be picked to finish near or at the bottom of the Southeastern Conference Western Division in the upcoming season.

Tuberville isn't discouraged.

"We are salesmen. . . . (Mississippi State coach) Jackie (Sherrill) called me a used car salesman when I first got to Ole Miss," Tuberville said. "I am looking for guys who really want to go to Auburn, guys who are proud of the school.

"I want leaders like we had at Ole Miss, guys like Nate Wayne, Walker Jones and Matt Luke. We gave people hope at Ole Miss. We want the same at Auburn."

How long will that take?

"It's not going to take as long as our opponents think, but it's not going to be as quick as Auburn people might think," Housel said with a thin smile.

(Ron Higgins writes for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn..)