Auburn's Tuberville faces school where he got his college start

AUBURN, Ala. - Tommy Tuberville was a small-town Arkansas high school coach living in a house trailer when Larry Lacewell showed up on a recruiting visit.<br> <br> The Arkansas State coach came to Hermitage recruiting a player, and discovered Tuberville instead.<br> <br> ``He said, &#39;How can I get into college coaching?&#39;&#39;&#39; Lacewell recalled this week. ``I said, &#39;You&#39;ll probably have to go the route we&#39;ve all gone. You&#39;re probably going to have to be a student assistant. And you probably won&#39;t make any money.&#39;<br> <br> ``I said, &#39;Pull that trailer up to Jonesboro this spring and we&#39;ll see what we can do.&#39; I figured that was the last I&#39;d hear about it.&#39;&#39;<br> <br> Instead, Tuberville showed up on campus ready to work back in 1980. And he has fondly recalled those days this week, since he&#39;ll lead No. 6 Auburn (8-1) against Arkansas State (5-3) on Saturday.<br> <br> He also looked back on a career crossroads.<br> <br> Tuberville was offered the Indians&#39; head coaching job in January 1993 while working as an assistant with the Miami Hurricanes.<br> <br> ``I came pretty close,&#39;&#39; Tuberville said. ``I talked to the president, the athletic director and was offered the job. Things were going pretty good at Miami and I did the right thing.&#39;&#39;<br> <br> He went back to Miami and decided to stick around after talking to head coach Dennis Erickson. It worked out just fine. He was elevated to the powerhouse Hurricanes&#39; defensive coordinator, then held the same job at Texas A for a year.<br> <br> By that time, he was on the fast track. Tuberville was hired as Mississippi&#39;s head coach in 1995, as Auburn&#39;s in 1999, and now his team is among the contenders for a BCS bowl and perhaps a national title shot.<br> <br> But if he had taken that job at Arkansas State, he might be worrying about the SBC Sun Belt Conference instead of the BCS these days.<br> <br> ``I can remember like it was yesterday driving to Jonesboro to talk with Larry about taking a job there, getting my first start in college football,&#39;&#39; said Tuberville, an Arkansas native who played at Southern Arkansas.<br> <br> ``Actually I was a volunteer, I wasn&#39;t even a graduate assistant. That&#39;s how low on the pole I was.&#39;&#39;<br> <br> If he had any doubts about his priorities as a young coach, Tuberville got a quick lesson from Lacewell about what he was in for. He was no longer a high school coach working fairly normal hours, but a seven-days-a-week, entry-level college coach.<br> <br> ``I&#39;ll never forget the first day. He told me: &#39;Listen, I want you to learn every position. We&#39;re here. You don&#39;t have any money. You&#39;re not going to have time to do anything else so you might as well learn as much football as you can,&#39;&#39;&#39; Tuberville said. ``And that&#39;s what I did. I worked with defensive tackles, defensive ends, linebackers, secondary.<br> <br> ``He was a front-runner in technique football on defense. That&#39;s all we did. We taught technique and fundamentals. I was very fortunate that I started my career there.&#39;&#39;<br> <br> He was finally hired as a fulltime assistant after two seasons, topping out, Lacewell said, at about $13,000. Now, that&#39;s a few days work for Tuberville, who makes about $2.2 million a year.<br> <br> The Indians had lost nine games the year before Tuberville&#39;s arrival and made the Division I-AA playoffs his final season.<br> <br> ``They were getting ready to fire me,&#39;&#39; said Lacewell, who went on to become the Dallas Cowboys&#39; scouting director. ``We were an awfully young coaching staff. I was the oldest by far. We turned it around and got it going largely because of guys like Tommy, who were paid very little and got to work at 6:30 in the morning and stayed until 10 at night<br> <br> ``We were able to turn it around, and Tommy was a big part of that.&#39;&#39;<br> <br> Lacewell remembers walking into Tuberville&#39;s trailer while waiting for that recruit to get done with basketball practice. He saw a film projector and a bunch of books, including one on Alabama&#39;s Bear Bryant.<br> <br> That was a good sign for Lacewell who, like Bryant, is from Fordyce, Ark. He started his coaching career at Alabama in 1959.<br> <br> Tuberville also made a favorable impression upon his arrival at Arkansas State.<br> <br> ``He showed up and didn&#39;t act like a kid,&#39;&#39; Lacewell said. ``He acted like a coach. He was well organized. He studied football. He became a real good recruiter for me.&#39;&#39;<br> <br> What else does he remember about Tuberville?<br> <br> ``He was a sharp guy,&#39;&#39; Lacewell said. ``He dressed sharper than most country boys, and he was more country than me.&#39;&#39;