AUBURN, Ala. - It was just a year ago at this time that the plot to get rid of Tommy Tuberville began to thicken.

His Auburn football team that had fallen well shy of its preseason Top 10 ranking was about to lose to Georgia 26-7 to fall to 6-5 on the season. It was a loss that apparently was the final straw for Tuberville‘s bosses, who immediately set up a clandestine meeting in Kentucky to offer the Auburn job to Louisville coach Bob Petrino.

Even before the Tigers walloped the Bulldogs on Saturday, heads rolled at Auburn. Tiger fans are thankful none of them belonged to the 50-year-old Tuberville.

The university president who led the delegation to Louisville, William Walker, was forced out. The athletic director who accompanied Walker, David Housel, announced he will step down at the end of this football season. The trustees who accompanied Walker and Housel were cited in a report by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), which is one reason why that board has put Auburn on probation, with a threat to pull Auburn’s accreditation as an academic institution in good standing.

Meanwhile, Tommy Boy just keeps showing up for work every day as the coach of the undefeated (10-0), No. 3 ranked Auburn Tigers.

“Well, the only thing you can do is joke about what happened last year,'' said Tuberville, who is about the only one of the cast or characters from that tragedy-turned-comedy of a year ago left in a position to laugh. “There really wasn't anything good about it.”

This time around, instead of lobbying to keep his job, Tuberville is lobbying for a place in the BCS Championship game. His Tigers made a big statement for it on Saturday, hammering rival Georgia 24-6.

Now, all that remains are Alabama and the SEC East champ in the conference title game and hope that voters in both the AP and coaches’ polls — and probably some computers — are sufficiently impressed to jump the Tigers over No. 2 Oklahoma.

Indeed, coaches in this part of the country are taking notice. While Auburn is getting only one first-place vote in the coaches’ poll — a vote cast by Tuberville — Arkansas coach Houston Nutt says if Auburn wins out, the Tigers will get his first-place vote. Clemson coach Tommy Bowden has said he will probably move the Tigers to at least No. 2 on his ballot. Others from around the South are saying much the same thing.

“I'd be shocked if a team ever goes through their schedule in the SEC and wins an SEC championship game, goes 12-0 and does not have an opportunity to win the national championship,” Tuberville said.

By the way, the  last SEC team to go through the regular-season schedule undefeated and not get a shot at the national championship? Auburn, in 1993, when the Tigers were on NCAA probation.

Tuberville has not only survived the last year, but he also learned from his near (professional) death experience.

Auburn opened last season with high expectations and a championship-caliber schedule that featured a game against eventual national champion Southern Cal in the home-opener.

Unfortunately, not only did the Trojans shut out the Tigers 23-0 but an Auburn offense that ranked third in the SEC in scoring in 2002 (under then-offensive coordinator Petrino, hence the Louisville connection) failed to score a touchdown until the second quarter of the third game of the season.

It was an offensive futility that continued throughout the season as Auburn fell to eighth in the conference in scoring, with quarterback Jason Campbell ranking 40th in the nation in passing efficiency and last in the conference in passing yards per game.

Tuberville demoted Hugh Nall from offensive coordinator back to coaching just the offensive line, changed first-year quarterback coach Steve Ensminger’s responsibilities to working with tight ends, and brought in journeyman offensive coordinator Al Borges from Indiana, a move that was greeted with dismay from Auburn fans who wanted a “big name” coordinator.

A year later, Auburn’s offense is first in the conference in scoring and Campbell ranks fourth in the nation in passing efficiency. Throw in the tailback tandem of Carnell “Cadillac” Williams and “Touchdown” Ronnie Brown, and you have a team that is outscoring opponents 238 to 87 through nine games. And Borges is celebrated by Tiger fans as if he were the second coming of Bill Walsh.

It also didn’t hurt that Southern Cal was replaced by Louisiana-Monroe and Georgia Tech by The Citadel on a schedule that went from one of the toughest in the country to one more in line with competing for a national championship.

“This time last year, I’d already turned in my application at Wal-Mart to become a greeter,” Tuberville says when as he makes the rounds of the south’s Touchdown Clubs this fall. “Let me say, they almost got me.”

What’s the old saying about winners telling jokes? After the embarrassing near-firing, Tuberville wound up with an extra year added to a deal that pays him $1.5 million a season, with a $3 million buyout and a $1 million bonus if he stays through the 2008 season.

And already Auburn’s new president, Dr. Ed Richardson, has said he recognizes the job Tuberville has done this fall and is set to reward him accordingly at the end of this season.

So Tuberville is having fun — not that his having fun is anything new. One thing about the 50-year old Arkansas native, Tuberville has always enjoyed coaching football. He earned a reputation in his first head coaching job at Ole Miss as “The Riverboat Gambler,” for taking chances with an undermanned football team that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, but were always greeted with the same shrug and sly smile from Tuberville afterwards.

He gambled early and perhaps too often in his days at Auburn, but since his talent level has started to equal out with the best teams in the country, Tuberville has started to reign in those free-wheeling tendencies that were the sign of an underdog.

Not that he’s above taking a chance, as a double-reverse half-back pass for a touchdown on the first drive of a 38-20 victory over Arkansas earlier this season proved. Tuberville’s approach has always been that football is supposed to be fun, which is a good attitude when you are an underdog but doesn’t always work well when you are the favorite. That’s when you start to play the percentages, because percentages are easier to defend if you lose.

Tuberville doesn’t seem particularly worried about losing, however. Not that he doesn’t think it could happen. But what are they going to do to him if he does? Fire him?

That’s already been tried.

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