Bryan Harsin discusses importance of Iron Bowl at Auburn, advice he's received

Just a day after he was hired — one hour after the university’s plane first touched ground, Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin was asked about it.

Harsin, formerly the head coach at Boise State, was hired by the Auburn Tigers on Dec. 24, replacing former head coach Gus Malzahn. He knew the expectations at Auburn would be high, and he knew part of the job — and to some fans, the most important part of the job — is finding a way to beat Alabama in the annual Iron Bowl rivalry.

Fittingly, it was one of the first questions Harsin encountered at Auburn. And it came long before his team even opened the season.

“I’ll say this: the first question I was asked after I did my press conference on Christmas eve was about the Iron Bowl,” Harsin said Monday. “Which I think, at that time, was about 340 days away.

“That made it very clear how important this is.”

At the time, it was 338 days away, to be exact. Fast forward to now, and Harsin’s slumping Tigers have just three days before game day dawns on Saturday, and Auburn has a whole lot to correct in the meantime.

Alabama, currently 10-1 and No. 2 in the country, is facing Auburn not just in a developmental year for the program, as it’s Harsin’s first as head coach, but also after the Tigers suffered three-straight losses, each to an SEC school. First, Auburn lost to Texas A&M 20-3, then to Mississippi State 43-34 and most recently, the Tigers suffered a brutal 21-17 loss to South Carolina, which made the Gamecocks bowl eligible. Along the way, Auburn lost starting quarterback Bo Nix to a season-ending ankle injury against Mississippi State, so TJ Finley will again be called on to recover from a poor showing last week.

Auburn’s record is just 6-5, and Alabama opened up as a 19-point favorite over its in-state foe.

“This game has been going on for a long time. This game is one that everybody in the country knows,” Harsin said. “To me, that’s the best part of this game. You have that excitement and passion surrounding it. So, you want to go out there and have yourself prepared and ready to play. You want to go out and play your best game. You want to have an opportunity to put yourself in a position to go have a chance to win. And you do that by having yourself prepared.”

The atmosphere in Auburn should be a good one, as the Tigers will host SEC Nation on campus prior to the highly-anticipated Iron Bowl. And Alabama has a history of playing certain SEC opponents close this year.

Not only did Alabama’s only loss come in a 41-38 road contest against Texas A&M, a game decided by a Seth Small game-winning field goal, but the Crimson Tide also beat Florida by just two points early in the season, beat LSU just 20-14 and are coming off a 42-35 win over Arkansas. The Crimson Tide have had trouble pulling away from SEC opponents, and a hostile atmosphere at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium won’t make things any easier.

“We have a team right now that we’re developing and growing and trying to improve each and every day. So, that still is the main message of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Harsin said. “We’re going to have to play tough. We’re going to have to be disciplined. We’re going to have to do things that we’ve shown that we’re capable of on a consistent basis. The rest of it — that all comes with it.”

Though the Tigers come into the Iron Bowl with three consecutive losses, Harsin’s first season at the helm hasn’t been all that disappointing. Auburn reached the AP Top 25 on multiple occasions, and even managed to beat Arkansas, 38-23, the same team that came within a touchdown of Alabama, while beating a nine-win Ole Miss team 31-20.