Auburn Tigers head coach Bryan Harsin has been the source of salacious rumors over the course of the last 24 hours and he’s decided to push back against the court of public opinion while he reportedly fights for his job.
Harsin struggled in his first year as Auburn coach, with the Tigers finishing 6–7, the program’s first season below .500 since 2012. That’s concerning, but perhaps way more concerning is the fact that 20 players and five assistant coaches are leaving the program, per ESPN.
Here's what I'm comfortable saying: There's been a concerted effort to ramp up pressure and make it untenable for Bryan Harsin to return for Year 2. And Harsin has provided plenty of ammo from coaching departures to transfer portal exodus. Situation moving fast.
— John Talty (@JTalty) February 4, 2022
As Pete Thamel reports, “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” and one of the key issues at hand is Harsin’s treatment of players and assistant coaches, which may be what has led to this mass exodus.
“It all gets back to people and the way they were mistreated,” a 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.”
Lee Hunter, who transferred from Auburn to UCF during the offseason, said on Instagram that “the reason I chose to leave auburn because we got treated like we wasn’t good enough and like dogs.”
For his part, Harsin remains resolute about the job he’s doing and how it’s what he wants to do, in spite of rumors he could leave during the season.
More of Bryan Harsin to @ClowESPN: "I'm the Auburn coach, and that's how I'm operating every day. I want this thing to work, and I've told our players and told everybody else there is no Plan B." https://t.co/CeAhPaeV0E
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) February 4, 2022
“I’m the Auburn coach, and that’s how I’m operating every day,” Harsin told ESPN 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.”
Along with the concerns about the way Harsin treats his players and coaches, there are also rumors circulating about an alleged inappropriate relationship with a staffer. Harsin wanted to make it clear to ESPN that anything that is being said about him at the moment is simply untrue.
“Any attack on my character is bullsh**,” Harsin said. “None of that is who I am.”
“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.”
@CoachHarsin and this staff are building men of character. Block the noise and work, hard work. #WarEagle 🦅
— Jeff Schmedding (@SchmeddingJeff) February 4, 2022
If Auburn did want to part ways with Harsin after one year, it would certainly cost them. If they fired him without cause, his buyout would be $18.3 million.
That said, it wouldn’t be the first time Auburn make a speedy decision and paid, literally, for it. They fired Gene Chizik in 2012, two years after he won a national title, and spent $21.5 million when they fired Gus Malzahn after a 6-4 finish last year.
[ESPN]
