College football insider reveals behind the scenes drama at Auburn

ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel joined The Paul Finebaum Show to address the never-ending saga inside Auburn’s football program this offseason. He cleared up some of what was going on inside the drama Monday.

Let’s start from the beginning when Auburn athletic director Allen Greene hired Bryan Harsin prior to the 2021 season.

“Greene … uses a search firm and runs a traditional coaching search and that search yielded Bryan Harsin, who again, was from outside of the area, but won 78 percent of his games and by all accounts is an excellent, high end football coach and certainly had the resume and reputation of that before he came to the SEC,” Thamel told Finebaum.

“There was clearly a division here, and there were clearly people who wanted other candidates to be the head coach at Auburn, and that’s where we find ourselves now and our sources have told us at Auburn, you know, Chris Low and I have reported this week that the current athletic administration has very little to do with this investigation, and will likely have little to do with any kind of decision that comes for Bryan Harsin.”

There seems to be a power struggle inside Auburn between the athletic department, the boosters, and those inside the football program itself. The athletic department won the last struggle and thanks to Greene, is why Harsin landed at Auburn in the first place. That might not be the case this time around.

It was reported that if Harsin were to be let go, Kevin Steele would be one of the top names those inside the Tigers organization will want to hire. After agreeing to terms to become the new defensive coordinator at Maryland last week, Steele has jumped ship to Miami. And if Lowe’s assumption is correct, it will be the third time that Steele is on the move in this offseason. 

But what Auburn is looking for — now, and historically — is stability.

“Holistically, Auburn athletics, Paul, are in a great place. Their basketball team is obviously No. 1 in the country, their gymnastics team has [Sunisa] Lee, who is a sensation. The athletic department at Auburn is in very good shape,” Thamel said. “The football program had a losing season. And so I would think the new president who was just brought in Friday, at essentially the same meeting where they were trying to figure out this football coach stuff.”

Auburn is seemingly putting the pieces in place to put their football administration back in check, but as usual — at least one of the aforementioned parties will end up with a bad taste in their mouth as a result. But where do they go once they get there?