Bryan Harsin speaks: 'Let the head coach be the head coach and support him'
And Auburn Live talked about what all this means, and what it doesn’t mean.
Amid the turmoil, Harsin spoke with ESPN.com about the ongoing scrutiny around his job. Here’s what Harsin said in the ESPN report:
“I’m the Auburn coach, and that’s how I’m operating every day,” Harsin told ESPN in a lengthy interview late Thursday night. “I want this thing to work, and I’ve told our players and told everybody else there is no Plan B. I’m not planning on going anywhere. This was and is the job. That’s why I left the one I was in, to come here and make this place a championship program and leave it better than I found it.”
ESPN reported: Harsin, who is on vacation, said he hasn’t had any conversations with Auburn leaders that would suggest he won’t be back for the 2022 season.
ESPN continued in their report: Upper administration officials at Auburn, including executive vice president and chief operating officer Lt. Gen. Ron Burgess, have conducted interviews with some of the people exiting, sources told ESPN. At the root of the inquiry, sources told ESPN, is the overall volatility in the program and Harsin’s treatment of players and assistant coaches.
“It all gets back to people and the way they were mistreated,” one source told ESPN. “There’s a reason so many people have left. You just don’t see that many people at one school leave, not in one year. It’s a mess.”
Bryan Harsin continued in an exclusive with ESPN’s Chris Low:
“This is where I want to be. This is what I want to do. That’s why I came here. I didn’t come here to fail. We’ve got to build something, and right now I feel like when you hear some of these things, that there’s a lot of things building against me.
“Certainly, I’m the right man for the job. There’s no doubt about it. No one is going to have a better plan than I do, but we’ve got to change some things. This place is not going to be a championship program until we change some things. You’ve got to let the head coach be the head coach and support him.”
Auburn Live will continue to monitor the situation and provide the latest information.
