It's probably premature to talk about Gus Malzahn's future. We're only halfway through the conference season so there's plenty of time for his third Auburn team, which stands at 4-3 overall and 1-3 in the league, to pick itself up out of the SEC West cellar.
A look back, though, shows that previous Auburn administrations had little tolerance for bringing up the rear in the division.
The SEC split into East and West divisions when it expanded to 12 teams by adding Arkansas and South Carolina for the 1992 season. In the 23 full seasons since, Auburn has finished in last place in the SEC West four times.
Three of those seasons concluded with a coaching change.
In 1998, Terry Bowden resigned ahead of the posse midway through a season that ended with the Tigers 3-8 overall and 1-7 in the SEC. Auburn's only SEC win that season came against Ole Miss and Tommy Tuberville. who left Oxford without a pine box to move to the Plains.
In 2008, Auburn, Arkansas and Mississippi State all occupied a crowded SEC West basement at 2-6. The Tigers went 5-7 overall, and after a 36-0 defeat by Alabama to end his "One for the other thumb" run in the Iron Bowl, Tuberville "resigned."
In 2012, two years after running the table and winning the national title, Gene Chizik was run off after running the table in reverse to finish 3-9 and 0-8.
It was the second time in Chizik's four years as head coach his Tigers finished last in the division. His first Auburn team shared the 2009 SEC West cellar with Arkansas and Mississippi State at 3-5, but there was some encouragement in an overall 8-5 mark.
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So a remarkable thread of deja vu runs through almost a quarter century of Auburn football. Each of the previous three coaches before Malzahn achieved a rare double. Bowden, Tuberville and Chizik each finished one season with the best record in the SEC and another season with the worst record in the SEC West - at least - during his tenure on the Plains.
Malzahn's halfway toward that dubious double. He won the SEC title in his first season as head coach in 2013. Two years later, he has four conference games left against Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Georgia and Alabama. He'll likely have to stage an upset or two to avoid riding the same rollercoaster as his predecessors all the way to the bottom.