What does Auburn do when it wants to hire a big-time football coach?

Cheez-It!

Or Chizik. Or whatever.

Or just, “Huh?”

Some mighty strange things have transpired in The Loveliest Village when it comes to the football program. But this move might be the strangest of all.

In hiring Iowa State coach and former AU defensive coordinator Gene Chizik, Tigers athletic director Jay Jacobs surprised Auburn Nation about as much as he was supposedly surprised by Tommy Tuberville’s “resignation.” And it wasn’t a good kind of surprise, either.

In the space of ten short days, Auburn has replaced a coach who won five games in one season with another who won five games in two seasons.

Ponder those numbers just a minute, and see if you can figure out the logic behind them. And if you figure it out, let me know, because I sure haven’t.

For that matter, I’m not sure anyone has this pinned down. Certainly not my fellow ink-stained wretches, and not the pajama-clad bloggers. Nor have the fans themselves, which may be the most unsettling fact of all. The reaction to Cheez-It’s hiring has been, uh, less than warm and fuzzy.

Here’s how my friend Ben Cook, longtime sidekick on Herb Winches’ old radio sports-talk show and now an editor for Lindy’s, put it:

“Auburn people’s reaction has been strange. Chizik was immensely popular when he was at Auburn as defensive coordinator, but his hiring as head coach did not unite the masses as I’m sure Jay Jacobs and others in the Auburn power structure (read: Bobby Lowder) thought it would.”

Ah, there’s that name again. Bobby Lowder, the grand poobah of Auburn sports. Lowder has reached the point where he doesn’t really care what anyone else thinks, as is the case with most dictators. But still, The Great Garden Gnome must be somewhat taken aback by the collective “What the heck?” reaction, or worse, from War Eagle diehards.

Some the reaction has bordered on the comical. The video of the heckler who greeted Jacobs at the airport with shouts of “We need a leader, not a loser! Five and 19! Five and 19! Boo!” has made the rounds on SportsCenter and the Internet — nearly 600,000 views on YouTube alone. “Sir Charles” Barkley had to get into the mix, to the surprise of no one. He played the race card, saying AU was racist by not hiring University at Buffalo coach Turner Gill, an African-American.

Racist? I doubt it. Stupid? Maybe.

Perhaps even more startling is the reaction from Cheez-It’s old school, Iowa State, where he so masterfully guided that program to the 5-19 record with zero wins on the road. It can be summed up in two words: Good riddance.

Paul Clark, who runs Iowa State’s site on Rivals.com, put it thusly: “…it just unburdened Iowa State of its most unprepared, overmatched and incompetent head coach of the modern era. … Chizik’s game day performance speaks for itself and his Saturday state of confusion was borderline comical…”

Jamie Pollard, the Iowa State athletic director and Cheez-It’s former boss, was fit to be tied. He explained at a news conference that Chizik had told him just days, even hours before the interview in Memphis that he would stay at Ames. After venting for a bit, Pollard finished with perhaps the most telling line of the day: “I give them credit for hiring a 5-19 coach.”

Ouch.

You can understand why Gill, or any of the other likely candidates mentioned over the 10-day search, would avoid Auburn like the plague. There’s The Gnome to deal with at home, and the second coming of Bear Bryant looming on the other side of the state. It may well be that Chizik was the best man available, a thought that should make Tiger fans shudder.

What those fans wanted is simple — someone who can beat Nick Saban. The orange-and-blue crowd sees a resurgent Crimson Tide that has been brought back from the dead, and knows that with Saban in Tuscaloosa, the situation does not bode well in prospects for top recruits, Iron Bowl wins or SEC championships. The Auburn checkbook was open, they were led to believe, and a savior was on the way to rescue the program.

Then they got Cheez-It.

Instead of steak, they got snack crackers.

Jay Jacobs has some splainin’ to do.

Robert Carter is the sports editor of The North Jefferson News.