Alex Golesh explains why Auburn elected to decline a bowl invitation

Auburn was reportedly one of several 5-7 teams to decline a bowl bid on Sunday afternoon. There was simply too much going on for the Tigers to accept, new coach Alex Golesh said.

It was more an issue of the calendar than anything else. Had the bowl process occurred a week earlier, there’s a good chance the Tigers might have accepted a bid.

“I think if it all had happened a week ago and our guys were all here, the staff that was previously here was still here intact for the most part, I think that would have been realistic,” Alex Golesh said. “I think you go through the week and when that question was posed to us there’s multiple things that go into it. One, there’s so much staff turnover that it would be hard to truly be able to put it all together and be competitive to where you have a chance to go win a football game. If you’re going to go play a game you’re going to go win the game.”

Alex Golesh broke down the other side of the equation, too, which was the players. Some have already started to finish final exams and have taken off for the semester.

Simply putting out a rallying cry to regroup is more challenging than it might sound. Golesh explained.

“I think the other part of it is our guys, there’s so many of them that are done with finals, that were able to get out and go home and be with their families for a little while here,” Alex Golesh said. “So to be able to get everybody back together, figure out who the heck is going to coach them, how you would actually do that, the timing of it all just was not practical. It just wasn’t realistic.”

That said, Auburn’s new coach Alex Golesh reiterated that not playing wasn’t about not wanting to compete. Multiple times Golesh mentioned going to win a bowl game.

“I think would you love to go play a game? Absolutely,” he said. “Would you love to go compete and win a game? Absolutely. But the timing of it all, just not realistic.

“(Athletics director) John (Cohen) and I talked about it at length twice to be able to get the guys back here to be able to do what we have to do to be able to go field a football team that can go win. With so many conversations happening right now about roster management and all of it combined with, I would tell you about 75% of the guys aren’t here, I think that would be really unrealistic and not fair to the kids more than anybody else. So it just didn’t make any sense.”