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This is an opinion column.

Let’s just put this out there. If Lane Kiffin loses to Auburn on Saturday, then he should be fired on the spot and never hired again to coach college or high school football in the United States of America.

Maybe he can get a job in Italy or Iceland or Slovenia or somewhere nice like that. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be torture for Kiffin — I mean, I kinda like the guy — but a loss to Auburn this weekend gets the States-side coaching card revoked no questions asked and on the spot. There would be no living that down ever. It goes in the obit.

That’s how fundamentally flawed Auburn football is right now, and it has to terrify Kiffin a little bit knowing that his entire coaching career is suddenly riding on beating the team that (A) has the worst offense in all of college football and (B) doesn’t even want to try to get better never mind win games in the Southeastern Conference.

That’s right. Auburn football, which features statues of Pat Sullivan, Bo Jackson and Cam Newton outside Jordan-Hare Stadium, somehow managed (or mismanaged) to put together an offensive game plan over the last couple weeks that made it seem like they were actively trying to make things as hard as possible on themselves. It’s that bad. No, it’s worse than that actually. It’s masochistic, this constant swapping of two quarterbacks who clearly are struggling to understand their new realities.

They’ve both regressed so badly that I’m surprised Robby Ashford and Payton Thorne haven’t forgotten how to tie their shoes.

I’m not suggesting that Auburn is actively tanking games at this point in the season. Tanking infers motive and strategy. Auburn is much worse than that.

Auburn is so thoroughly broken that new coach Hugh Freeze doesn’t even seem to care. Honestly, based on what we saw against LSU, it’s hard to really blame him. LSU averaged 8.1 yards per play in the first half of its 48-18 victory, and Auburn’s defense was actually better than Auburn’s offense.

We’re seeing what rock bottom looks like for the Auburn football team, and you’re not going to believe this, but that’s actually the good news. It cannot possibly get any worse for Auburn at this point no matter what happens the rest of the way.

Over the last two seasons, Auburn has lost all but two of its games against SEC opponents. Honestly, what difference is a few more going to make? As victories go, there was the win against Missouri to begin the 2022 conference schedule and then there was Cadillac’s great triumph against Texas A&M. People said Cadillac wasn’t ready to be the permanent coach, and so Auburn hired Freeze.

Losers of three straight conference games to begin the 2023 slate, Auburn plays No.13 Ole Miss at 6 p.m. on Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. More than likely, the number of consecutive losses to begin conference play is about to be four. If Kiffin loses, he should just hitch a ride to Atlanta and then on to Europe. You know, get lost somewhere. Maybe become a yoga instructor.

I’m not here to bash the Tigers anymore than necessary, but some tough decisions are facing Auburn’s coach over the next couple months. Freeze needs to flip half the roster. Don’t go full Deion at Colorado, but maybe Half Prime.

Why does Auburn have the worst offense in the SEC and exactly what type of team culture is Freeze trying to establish in his first season? Look, I think he’s a good coach, and maybe it needs to be this bad before things can get better, but Cadillac had Auburn playing like believers touched by the fire of God at the end of 2022. I don’t know, maybe bring back that attitude for Ole Miss and see what happens.

Auburn’s offensive numbers against SEC opponents are comically horrendous. In the league, Auburn is dead last in passing offense at 4.3 yards per attempt. By comparison, Auburn is averaging 4.73 yards per attempt rushing for the season. Do you know how hard it is to average more yards rushing than yards per attempt passing? My brain might bleed if I think about it too long. What year is this, 1923?

People who read my columns regularly know that I don’t like using many statistics to girder opinions. Statistics can be used to lie about anything. The reason is because mathematics is a soulless enterprise used to camouflage and manipulate the truth. All that being said, there’s only one team out of 133 in all of college football that has fewer yards per passing attempt against conference opponents than Auburn.

It’s Bowling Green.

Congrats, Auburn. According to math, you’re not the worst or even the worst school named after a color. See, math lies every time. Math was not working late on that big presentation. Math was hanging out with a yoga instructor from Iceland.

I know how much everyone likes lists (we have the data), so here are the statistically worst teams in passing yards per attempt in every conference: Jacksonville State of CUSA, 5.9; Cincinnati of the Big 12, 5.5; Utah of the Pac-12, 5.5; Georgia Southern of the Sun Belt, 5.4; Colorado State of the Whatever Conference, 5.3; N.C. State of the ACC, 5.1; Iowa of the Big Ten, 5.1; East Carolina of the American, 5.0; Auburn of the SEC, 4.3 and Bowling Green of the Mid-American, 3.6.

In the name of being reasonable and because I still love Auburn even if the offense is bad enough to get Kiffin fired if Ole Miss’ loses, here are 10 things still worse than Auburn’s offense:

10. Food poisoning

9. Bryan Harsin press conferences

8. When my dog rolls in dead things

7. All those stickers on the cars

6. Bryan Harsin at your dinner party

5. When people talk to me about Twitter

4. Bowling Green, apparently

3. The cuisine in Sweden, including the meatballs

2. Bryan Harsin at an Imagine Dragons concert with Bryce Harper

1. Bryan Harsin coaching Auburn

Oh, that reminds me. Did I mention that Bryan Harsin beat Lane Kiffin and then Auburn wanted to hire Kiffin?

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, wild times and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.