Yesterday, former Auburn coach Gene Chizik resigned as the defensive coordinator at North Carolina, after only 2 years. At 55 years of age, he’s still got some coaching left in his blood, I would imagine. Former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville resigned as the head coach at Cincinnati on Dec 4th last year. He’s 62 years old.
Which led me to think about the recent news about Scott Fountain being relieved of his duties as TE / Special Teams coordinator at Auburn. I can’t find a birthdate on him, but he graduated high school in 1984, so he’s around 51 years old. Fountain has been an Auburn guy all his life. From Brewton, AL, he got his Bachelor’s in Physical Education in 1988 from Samford, where he played football. For those that don’t understand the connection between Auburn and Samford, let me go ahead and explain that.
Fountain’s resume can be found here: coachesinc.com/documents/Scott%20Fountain%20Resume%20redacted.pdf
There were only two law schools in the state of Alabama for many, many years; the University of Alabama and Cumberland School of Law at Samford. Auburn grads who went on to law school went to Samford. Because of the connections between bankers and lawyers, there have been many, many, many connections in the football program.
Among other former players from Auburn that ended up at Samford, they were even able to work Rhett Lashley into Samford as the OC/QB coach for the 2011 season, after being a GA at Auburn in 2009 and 2010, before Gus carried him to Arkansas State and brought him back to Auburn the following season. The connections just go on and on.
Now, back to Scott Fountain. Samford dropped football in 1974 and picked it back up again in 1983 as a “club” sport. Fountain arrived on campus in the fall of 1984. His senior year, Terry Bowden showed up. Bowden’s QB in his first season at Samford was hotshot QB Jimbo Fisher, who had played for Bowden at Salem College in 85-86. As I stated previously, in late 1992, Bowden was hired to replace the embarrassed Pat Dye (gotta keep it in house, y’know?).
Fisher played one season in the Arena Football League for the Chicago Bruisers, and came back to Samford as a GA under Bowden. He followed Bowden to Auburn and was the QB coach until Bowden left in 1998.
Again, back to Fountain. After his playing career was over at Samford, Fountain spent time as a high school assistant coach and got his first head coaching spot at Frisco City, AL, five miles from Monroeville, home of Harper Lee.
I haven’t talked much about Wayne County and the ACT fraud case (The University of Louisiana-Lafayette vs ACT), and David Saunders, former Auburn wide receiver and assistant coach, and what all that has to do with Auburn and Ole Miss being tied together, but the Wayne County testing center was hooked to an Auburn family in Monroeville. When Bowden went to Auburn, Dye was still working the area, and one of his favorite booster families happened to live in Monroeville.
Scott Fountain left Frisco City High School in 1993, after winning the school’s first ever state championship, and took over as head coach at Monroe County High School in Monroeville, AL. Fountain was a favorite of Tommy Bowden’s, and in the mid-nineties, he got a job as an assistant at Florida State working for Bobby Bowden. So you have a guy who played with Jimbo Fisher for Terry Bowden, working in a pulpwood county where Pat Dye is known to frequent, who gets a job at Florida State not seven years out of college, after a mediocre record at Monroeville.
Central Florida hired Fountain from FSU in 1997 and he stayed there until 2004. He ended up working with Gene Chizik while at UCF. In 04-05, he coached at Middle Tennessee St, and in 06-07 he was hired as offensive line coach and assistant HC at Georgia Southern under Brian Van Gorder. In ’08, he went to Iowa State with Chizik for two years and came back “home” to Auburn with him in 2010. He has been on the Plains in some role on the coaching staff since then.
He’s the Barney Farrar of Auburn—bouncing back and forth between on field jobs and office jobs. Given his contacts in Monroeville and his longevity at Auburn, I’m convinced he knows where more bodies are buried than Trooper Taylor.
I guarantee we’ll have more about all of this eventually, piecing together more pieces of whatever puzzle this may be, including the story of what exactly is going on with Ole Miss, Wayne County, fake ACT test scores, Auburn, David Saunders, and how ULL ended up being the ones to file a lawsuit against them.
