With Bryan Harsin officially out at Auburn, breaking down the appealing aspects and challenges of the Tigers' opening
College football’s cruelest joke — mercifully and ironically — came to end on Halloween, as Bryan Harsin was finally axed as Auburn’s head coach Monday.
Harsin was 9-12 with the Tigers in less than two seasons, losing eight of his last nine games against Power 5 foes.
The former Boise State head coach seemed set to fail from the start, landing the opening mainly because recently-ousted AD Allen Greene won a power struggle with Auburn boosters after paying more than $21.5 million to have Gus Malzahn leave the Plains.
Auburn’s behind-the-scenes dysfunction prior to Harsin’s hiring signaled a short tenure on the Plains as the likeliest of outcomes, and sure enough, some 22 months later Harsin is set to collect a $15.3 million check to exit stage left, too.
For those unfamiliar with the backstory of Harsin’s tenure at Auburn, the TLDR: version is he was maybe the Tigers’ fourth or fifth choice for the job back in December of 2020 after Greene stopped Kevin Steele, whom many of the boosters wanted to be the Tigers’ next head coach after Malzahn, from taking over the program.
Then, candidates such as Billy Napier, now at Florida, Brent Venables, now at Oklahoma, and perhaps others said, “No thanks” for fear of the school’s lack of alignment.
Thus, Greene turned his attention to Harsin, who was a successful head coach at Boise State but had zero SEC experience, wasn’t considered a strong recruiter and his main strategy to beat rivals Nick Saban and Kirby Smart was a blue-collar, ‘I’ll out work’em’ by developing players’ approach.
Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work.
Harsin won six of his first eight games with the Tigers, but Auburn finished his inaugural season on an ugly five-game losing streak. He churned through assistants, particularly at offensive coordinator. More concerning, Auburn’s recruiting, which had already stagnated during the 2020 COVID-19 season, completely cratered.
The Tigers signed the nation’s No. 16 class in 2022, per On3, and the early returns from the 2023 cycle were even more discouraging. Harsin had failed to connect with high school coaches within the state, and the results of those missed relationships were felt first-hand on the Plains, as the Tigers had little traction with Alabama’s top prospects this year — despite the 2023 class being an all-timer from a blue-chip perspective.
With results on and off the field lacking, angry Auburn boosters conspired to have Harsin fired for cause to avoid paying another costly buyout in February. Harsin survived a gross coup attempt full of scandalous rumors, returning from his family vacation in Mexico to defiantly call Auburn’s bluff. After an internal investigation came up empty, Harsin publicly punched back at SEC Media Days.
“There was an inquiry. It was uncomfortable. It was unfounded. It presented an opportunity for people to personally attack me, my family, and also our program,” Harsin said, pausing for effect.
“And it didn’t work.”
Only it did, just not exactly way Auburn’s boosters had intended.
The self-sabotage wasn’t fulfilled without payment, but what’s been sadly too predictable since the start of the 2022 season is that Harsin has always been coaching to be fired.
He’s been a lame duck for nearly nine months.
That it took until Halloween felt like cruel and unusual punishment for Harsin, but as he wakes up today for his 46th birthday, most everyone else would sign up for life-changing money for a few extra weeks of embarrassment.
So now that we’re finally here, what’s next for Auburn? What kind of job is the Tigers’ opening?
As has been rumored for weeks since Greene was ousted, Auburn preferred to line up an athletics director first, and then turn its focus on the future of its football program.
On Saturday, while Auburn was in the middle of losing to Arkansas 41-27, reports surfaced that the Tigers were in contract negotiations with Mississippi State AD John Cohen for the same position. Sure enough, Cohen resigned from MSU on Monday, and minutes later, Auburn canned Harsin — notably without mentioning his name in the press release — with its new school president delivering the news.
“Auburn University has decided to make a change in the leadership of the Auburn University football program. President Roberts made the decision after a thorough review and evaluation of all aspects of the football program. Auburn will begin an immediate search for a coach that will return the Auburn program to a place where it is consistently competing at the highest levels and representing the winning tradition that is Auburn football.”
Now it’s up to Cohen to find the right candidate to return Auburn back to national prominence. Many names have already been mentioned, and in the coming days, I’ll dive deeper into Auburn’s candidate pool.
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin is an obvious target, same for at least kicking the tires on Deion Sanders. I’m skeptical that Liberty’s Hugh Freeze makes a ton of sense anymore now that Auburn just hired the AD who helped spark the NCAA investigation on Ole Miss all those years ago. But perhaps bad blood can be buried.
Either way, Auburn is absolutely a Tier II job. It’s a place where you can win titles. Before Harsin, the last four coaches at Auburn all won an SEC Championship.
Auburn’s upside — with resources, a passionate alumni base, a great recruiting footprint and its conference affiliation — makes it the best opening on the market in 2022. The Tigers’ burgeoning NIL collective — On To the Victory — is a very attractive piece, too, especially since the roster will need an immediate reboot for 2023.
But Auburn is also a snake pit for dysfunction. It’s like the ultimate wild card in Uno.
Anything is possible, and those unknowns will turn off some potential top candidates, some who otherwise would line up for an opening with Auburn’s upside.
The Tigers are constantly a house divided, with varying factions from all directions. That’s a problem anywhere, but it becomes the bat signal from hell when you’re currently living in a different neighborhood as chief rivals Alabama and Georgia.
Amid the various reporting of Cohen’s hiring Monday, Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger noted that the new AD had “assurances that he will operate his own athletics department.”
Sure, good luck with that.
You think the AU boosters who’ve attempted multiple coups in the last two years and are having to pony up some $45+ million in total buyout money aren’t going to want — or have — a say in the direction of the football program?
It’s also not a great sign that Auburn Live’s Justin Hokanson reported that there was already some internal strife within the athletics department over Cohen’s hiring Monday, citing “a collective pushback” Auburn’s president wasn’t expecting.
This is what makes the Auburn job so complicated. So challenging.
So much potential. So many pitfalls.
No one ever seems to pull in the same direction on the Plains. The words cohesion and alignment don’t exist.
Only personal agendas.
Everyone there wants to see Auburn win. But on their terms.
The Tigers had a house-cleaning Monday, but it might take a full reconstruction — both internally (with boosters and the athletics department finding top-down alignment) and externally (with the next football coach hammering the recruiting and the transfer portal immediately) — to get the program back to its heydays.