Former Auburn football coach and U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) said his 2004 team being recognized as national champions in 2025 was “21 years late.”
Auburn announced on Tuesday that it was claiming titles from 1910, 1913, 1914, 1958, 1983, 1993 and 2004 in addition to the already claimed 1957 and 2010 titles.
Auburn won the SEC Championship in 2004 and finished 13-0, but wasn’t invited to the BCS National Championship game.
Tuberville told Outkick’s Hot Mic on Tuesday that the team was “as good a football team as I’ve ever been around.”
“I was on three national championship teams at Miami ,and that was as good a football team as I’ve ever been around. I think we had five first round draft picks. I actually bought all the players and all the coaches that year a national championship ring because we couldn’t have done anything else. We went undefeated. Unfortunately, we got left out of the two-team playoff,” Tuberville said.
He continued, “I complained at the time because obviously Oklahoma got beat very badly in the Orange Bowl against USC.”
“Then USC, they caught a couple of players with their hands in the cookie jar. They took the national championship away from them. Then the NCAA in their infinite wisdom says, ‘You know, we’re not going to give anybody the national championship.’ Why the hell not? You’ve got somebody who went undefeated. We beat four top-10 teams during the year. We had a great football team, and it was what college football used to be about. It was about kids staying fourth and fifth years. Carnell Williams, Ronnie Brown, Jason Campbell, they all played five years and they stayed at one university. How about that for an oxymoron nowadays? At the end of the day, thank goodness they recognized us. It’s all for the players and the coaches and the fans that supported us. It was a great football team, and 21 years later is better than nothing,” Tuberville added.
