David Pollack highlights best candidates for Auburn job, sleeper options

After leading Auburn to a 15-19 record over the past three seasons, Hugh Freeze was fired following the Tigers’ 10-3 loss to Kentucky at home last Saturday night. Over the course of his tenure, Auburn went just 2-9 in home SEC games at Jordan-Hare Stadium, which used to be one of the toughest places to play in the country.

This leaves yet another head coaching vacancy in the Southeastern Conference. With four games remaining in conference play, 1/4 of SEC teams (Auburn, Arkansas, Florida and LSU) departed with their coaches mid-season. The coaching carousel continues to get more and more crowded as more of these jobs open up.

Ahead of Auburn‘s head coaching search, David Pollack discussed a few candidates on the latest edition of the ‘See Ball Get Ball with David Pollack‘ podcast. A few of the names he mentioned included former Penn State head coach James Franklin, former Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall and Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham.

Pollack tosses out candidates for Auburn opening

“You look at the experienced guys like James Franklin, who has six ten-win seasons and five top-10 seasons,” Pollack said. “Won 18 games in back-to-back seasons at Vanderbilt. That’s two nine-win seasons if you average them together. That’s really good. That got you fired at Penn State, but Auburn would be happy for that now. Jimbo Fisher went 83-23 at Florida State. Different time. Has Jimbo Fisher changed the way he build culture? Who is he bringing with him? That’s an experienced guy.”

“(Eli) Drinkwitz I think makes more sense if you’re gonna go 27-6 in three seasons in the SEC. That’s really, really good. But if you’re gonna get outside of that, here are some names I think are interesting. Jon Sumrall, you keep hearing about him at Tulane. He’s from Huntsville, Alabama. He played in the SEC at Kentucky. He coached at Troy and at Tulane obviously. Had a lot of success. He’s a guy who has a lot of fire. Backed out of the North Carolina job a year ago and was like ‘yeah, not my thing.’ Going to Auburn might be his name. That would be an interesting thing to me.”

“And does anyone else think Kenny Dillingham could be great? Kenny Dillingham, like Jeff Brohm, is at his alma mater. Would he leave? I don’t know. Probably not. But if you’re gonna go to Auburn and have consistent resources, that is a good job to consistently have resources.”