Auburn Coaching Search: Pete Thamel reveals what to expect in Tigers' next coach

Auburn is the latest school to begin a coaching search following the firing of Hugh Freeze on Sunday. So, as they begin that process down on The Plains, what will the Tigers be looking for in their next head coach?

ESPN’s Pete Thamel listed some of the criteria he’d expect to be met by the eventual hire at Auburn during the ‘College GameDay Podcast’ on Monday. He thinks the hire will be an opposite to this last coach, while also being someone who understands the area and can also bring some energy back into their program.

“Yeah, you know, places tend to hire opposites, right,” Thamel began. “And I think that place needs a bit of a – just, the program and the fanbase needs a little bit of a lightning bolt.

“And then, you have to kind of be southern to coach at Auburn. Does that make sense? Like, it’s not a place that’s going to look well on outsiders. So, it’d be interesting to see where they go.”

With that, Thamel would name all of the usual options whose names have come up out of the Group of Five in this cycle, with Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, Memphis’ Ryan Silverfield, USF’s Alex Golesh, and James Madison’s Bob Chesney. Sumrall is then the most obvious of those, whether based on early rumors or how you think he fits a lot of what was thought above by Thamel.

“So, you start with Sumrall, because you mentioned him,” Thamel said to his co-host in Dan Wetzel. “He’s defense, right, not offense. He’d bring energy, connection…And, Sumrall kind of has that magnetic personality. I would think he (is an option).

“Ryan Silverfield obviously at Memphis has, you know, the best resumé of any coach in the Group of Five, has really done what you need to do in modern college football which is just figure out how to really, like, build a roster every year through significant turnover. You know, he’s won really consistently. You know, Golesh and Chesney are both, obviously, very good names. Chesney’s name has picked up a lot of steam, at James Madison, in recent weeks.”

From there, the only other sitting head coach that Thamel connected to Auburn was Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz. Beyond that, he wonders if the Tigers will have to be one of the programs who is left having to talk themselves into a hire, especially if their search ends up resulting in a coordinator getting his first head coaching job.

“It’s fascinating, man, because, you know, (Rhett) Lashlee is off the board. He would have been an obvious Auburn name,” Thamel went on. “Drinkwitz was a GA there. He’s going to be right at the forefront of that conversation with Jon, and really ahead of Jon because he’s obviously an established SEC coach.

“So, it’s a fascinating game of chicken right now…And, there aren’t, like, enough great, established head coaches to fill these jobs. So, does somebody, does John Cohen, the AD there, go bold and go hire an assistant? Go hire Glenn Schumann from Georgia or, you know, Will Stein from Oregon, or Brian Hartline from Ohio State? One of these guys that’s on the board right now. Collin Klein at A&M, for example. Like, those are kind of part of the crop that, you know, would be in that conversation. But, someone, at many schools, I think at this point, aren’t going to get, like, the – they’re going to go to the press conference a little bit like, ‘Hm, you know, this probably isn’t where we thought we’d end up, but we’re going to sell it.'”

We’re just around 48 hours since Freeze’s firing on Sunday, with a lot left to do in order to get to a hire over this next month for Auburn. However, those standards could be a decent benchmark to follow as to what the Tigers will be looking for in the coming weeks.