A defiant Bryan Harsin came to Atlanta in July with a message to spread. The Auburn coach had survived a coup attempt built around a human resources inquiry after losing the last five games of his first season and signing a lackluster recruiting class. His name had been dragged through the mud because of vicious and baseless internet rumors. For months, Harsin had seemed like a fired coach walking, but on this morning, he looked ready to fight back.
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“There was an inquiry,” Harsin said. “It was uncomfortable. It was unfounded. It presented an opportunity for people to personally attack me, my family, and also our program. And it didn’t work.”
Asked what he’d say to recruits after so much apparent dysfunction, Harsin had a ready answer. “We’ve told our recruits: Watch,” Harsin said.
Everyone watched, and unfortunately for Harsin the results were exactly what the people behind the coup feared. Harsin’s Tigers weren’t even close to good enough to compete with the best teams in the SEC. The string-pullers had tried to find a way in the winter to fire Harsin for free. That failed. Now they’ll have to dig deep into their pockets for the second time in two years.
Auburn fired Harsin on Monday following a 41-27 home loss to Arkansas on Saturday that dropped the Tigers’ record to 3-5 and left Jordan-Hare Stadium virtually empty by the late fourth quarter. After winning four of his first five games at Auburn, Harsin went 5-11 to finish with a 9-12 record. Harsin is owed $15.3 million. According to the terms of Harsin’s contract, half of his buyout is due within 30 days and the rest is payable over a four-year period. There is no offset language, meaning Harsin is due the full amount no matter how much a future coaching job might pay him.
It was a marriage that was bound for divorce, born of the dysfunction of internal Auburn politics. The school has seen a president and an athletic director depart since Harsin was hired on Dec. 22, 2020, after the dismissal of Gus Malzahn at a buyout cost of more than $21 million.
Auburn is a place a coach can win big. Prior to Harsin, the previous four coaches (Terry Bowden, Tommy Tuberville, Gene Chizik, Malzahn) had either led the Tigers to an undefeated season, a national title or a national title game berth. But Auburn has long been viewed as one of the trickier spots to coach because powerful donors have been able to influence presidents and athletic directors to act in ways such people typically don’t at other schools.
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In 2003, the president and athletic director began courting Louisville’s Bobby Petrino with Tuberville still on the job. (Tuberville stayed and won an SEC title while leading Auburn to a 13-0 record in 2004.) Chizik won a national title with Cam Newton at quarterback in 2010 and got fired after going 0-8 in SEC play in 2012. Reports revealed that after Malzahn’s dismissal, influential donors sought to install then-defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, who served as the interim coach in that year’s Citrus Bowl, as the permanent coach. Steele, now Miami’s defensive coordinator, was viewed as a bridge who could right the ship, get recruiting on the right foot and leave the glass more than half full for a future coach.
But that didn’t play out.
Bryan Harsin was a fish-out-of-water hire from the start. (Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Then-athletic director Allen Greene took control of the search. People associated with Auburn approached then-Louisiana coach Billy Napier and then-Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables, but discussions with both stopped short of a job offer as the coaches expressed concern about who was in charge. (Napier took the Florida job in November 2021, and Venables became Oklahoma’s head coach in December 2021.)
In 2020, Greene ultimately chose Harsin. It was viewed as a fish-out-of-water hire from the beginning. Harsin had no experience in the SEC, something that will be required in the new coach. Even after the SEC alters its scheduling format, Auburn will absolutely play Alabama every season and almost assuredly will continue playing Georgia every season in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. Those two teams happen to have combined to win three of the past six national titles, and they, along with Ohio State, routinely reel in the top recruiting classes in the sport. Auburn’s coach ultimately will be judged by on- and off-field performances against Alabama’s Nick Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart, which means at the moment this is one of the nation’s most difficult jobs.
Ex-AD Greene negotiated an exit in August when it became abundantly clear that his contract wouldn’t be renewed when it expired in early 2023. The Tigers have now turned to John Cohen, previously the athletic director at Mississippi State. The hope within the Auburn community is that first-year president Chris Roberts will be more decisive with the athletic department than previous president Jay Gogue was.
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“Jay Gogue was a very nice man, but he served at the pleasure of the Board [of Trustees],” a source with knowledge of Auburn’s inner workings said. “Chris Roberts serves at the pleasure of the board too, but he will make decisions.”
The lack of leaks since Roberts assumed the presidency in May has been a change from Gogue’s administration. Few names had emerged from the athletic director search, and while it had become obvious that Harsin wouldn’t be Auburn’s coach in 2023, the timing of his firing remained a mystery until Saturday, when word leaked during the game about the Tigers targeting Cohen.
Harsin took nearly 90 minutes to show up at his postgame press conference. Once he arrived, he argued over questions as simple as how the defense — such a strength in past years — had regressed so much. “In comparison to everybody else?” Harsin fired back at AL.com reporter Tom Green. “And all the other teams that we didn’t coach when we were here?”
The exchange further cemented the notion that Harsin did not fully understand the job he had undertaken. Of course it’s fair to compare the current coach’s performance to the teams coached by the guy who was fired before he arrived. But at an old-line SEC program that expects to compete for national championships, it’s fair to compare the current coach to any former coach — be that Pat Dye or John Heisman.
To ease his transition to the league, Harsin initially hired Mike Bobo as his offensive coordinator and Derek Mason as his defensive coordinator. Bobo was a former Georgia quarterback who had served as the Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator before becoming the head coach at Colorado State and who had run South Carolina’s offense in 2019. Mason had been Vanderbilt’s head coach from 2014-20. After the Tigers lost their last four regular-season games, Harsin fired Bobo, leaving Auburn on the hook for $2.6 million in buyout money and sending three-year starting quarterback Bo Nix — the son of Auburn great Patrick Nix — into the transfer portal. (Nix landed at Oregon, where he starts for a team that is currently 7-1.) Shortly after a Birmingham Bowl loss to Houston, Mason took a $400,000-a-year pay cut to do the same job at Oklahoma State.
This turnover rang alarm bells, especially after Harsin’s choice to replace Bobo (Seattle Seahawks assistant Austin Davis) resigned this past January — six weeks after taking the job. Staff strife combined with an underwhelming recruiting class in the early signing period further enraged the people who never wanted Harsin as coach in the first place.
Harsin’s inability to recruit was a consistent issue throughout his tenure. Annual opponents Alabama and Georgia consistently sign classes ranked in the top three in the 247Sports Composite. While Auburn’s coach isn’t expected to always sign such loaded classes, he is expected to regularly beat Alabama and Georgia head-to-head for prospects. Before the coup attempt, Harsin didn’t even seem interested in trying to fight Saban or Smart for players. After the coup attempt, Harsin had almost no chance of landing such players. As of last week, Auburn had one high school player ranked in the top 200 composite committed for the class of 2023. Alabama has 16 such players committed for the class of 2023. Georgia has 15.
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So what is Auburn looking for in a new coach? As mentioned, experience in the SEC is a must. Specifically, someone who knows what it takes to recruit in the league footprint will be at the top of the wish list. The new coach also will need to understand how to use the transfer portal. After a coaching change and two cycles of recruiting that isn’t to Auburn’s standard, the roster will need to be overhauled.
This is a critical hire for the Auburn program, and the job, while more than attractive for what it has to offer in resources to win, proximity to talent and a passionate fan base, also has its challenges. Not least of which is that the program’s two biggest rivals are arguably at their strongest points in those programs’ respective histories. Auburn is also viewed as a culture that might require some change to convince a proven coach to step into that environment.
Who are the coaches that meet the criteria? One obvious candidate is Kentucky’s Mark Stoops. Stoops has done a tremendous job in building the Wildcats’ program after inheriting a challenging situation following predecessor Joker Phillips’ tenure. Stoops has built Kentucky in a sustainable way, concentrating on both lines of scrimmage. And while he had to seek out diamond-in-the-rough recruits early, Kentucky hasn’t been shy about going after players coveted by the likes of Alabama and Ohio State. The Wildcats don’t usually win those battles, but the quality of recruits has risen along with the program’s profile.
Another name that will burn up the message boards is Lane Kiffin. Kiffin has SEC experience at three different stops (Tennessee head coach, Alabama offensive coordinator and Ole Miss head coach). His offensive scheme would please the Auburn fan base and help attract offensive skill players. He’s also proven adept at working the transfer portal to fill in his roster as needed. The fact that he knows the state of Alabama pretty well would be a feather in his cap as well.
The issue with both Stoops and Kiffin is that each already is the head coach at an SEC program that is currently performing better than Auburn. Someone would have to convince either one that Auburn’s ceiling is higher, but that could be difficult given everything that has happened at Auburn in the past two years.
Baylor coach Dave Aranda makes sense. He has SEC experience as LSU’s defensive coordinator under both Les Miles and Ed Orgeron. Aranda isn’t like most coaches, though. He might not want the intense spotlight of a job like Auburn. His offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes could want it, though. Grimes served as Auburn’s offensive line coach from 2009-12 and also worked at LSU from 2014-17. He emerged as a star play caller at BYU working with quarterback Zach Wilson from 2018-20.
Of course, the identity of the next Auburn coach could be a complete surprise. This time last year, no one would have guessed Lincoln Riley would move from Oklahoma to USC or Brian Kelly would move from Notre Dame to LSU. Auburn has plenty of money and is about to get more thanks to the SEC’s new media rights deal. As noted above, the Tigers are capable under the proper circumstances of landing elite players and competing for championships.
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Those are tantalizing traits when coaches are considering jobs. Even though Auburn’s recent history might chase some potential candidates away, there still might be plenty who believe the juice is worth the potential squeeze.
Read more about Bryan Harsin’s tenure at Auburn:
(Top photo: Michael Chang / Getty Images)
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