Auburn announced Friday that it will retain football coach Bryan Harsin after conducting what it called “a fact-finding review” of the program that included interviews with current and former players and coaches.
“Let me be clear — our university, the administration and the entire Board of Trustees stand behind Coach Harsin and are ready to help him succeed as the leader of our football program,” school president Jay Gogue said in a statement. “It is my hope and expectation that the entire Auburn family will join us in uniting behind Coach Harsin. With that support, I have no doubt that Auburn football’s best days are ahead.”
At one point ranked as high as No. 12 in 2021, the Tigers lost their final five games and went 6-7 in Harsin’s first season on the Plains after he was hired away from Boise State to replace the fired Gus Malzahn. Among the losses was a four-overtime, 24-22 loss to rival Alabama in a game the Tigers led 10-0 entering the fourth quarter.
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Eighteen players left the program following the season along with defensive coordinator Derek Mason, who departed to take the same role at Oklahoma State. Harsin also fired Mike Bobo as offensive coordinator and named Austin Davis to replace him, only to watch Davis step down for personal reasons last month.
Some departing players were critical of Harsin, with defensive tackle Lee Hunter writing on social media that Harsin has “the true mindset for a winner but has a terrible mindset as a person” and that he had transferred to Central Florida because Harsin treated the Tigers’ players “like dogs.”
But other players supported Harsin. Former defensive lineman Tony Fair wrote that Harsin “brought a competitive edge to everything we did and you need that in this level of ball.”
“The record we got don’t come from his coaching. It came from the cancers on the team that spread and are still spreading,” Fair continued. “This is what we dealt with this season. The only word to describe what Coach Harsin is doing is Chemo. Those cancers will be gone.”
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John Samuel Shenker, who had one of the best seasons ever for an Auburn tight end in 2021 and will return in 2022, said Harsin is “my football coach” and “the leader I want to have in my corner.”
In a statement Friday, Harsin said “this has been one of the hardest weeks of my career and it had nothing to do with my coaching ability. The personal attacks on me and my family went too far and were without justification. Their resolve through this experience has been incredible but also completely expected. We saw and felt the worst of the worst in some people. Fortunately, we also saw the best of the best in others and we will always be grateful for the support of so many through a very difficult time — our players, staff, the Auburn family, and many others.”
Late last week, Gogue said Auburn was attempting to make an “appropriate decision” on Harsin’s future, and on Monday, the school said in a statement that it was “judiciously collecting information from a variety of perspectives, including our student-athletes, and moving swiftly to understand any issues in accordance with university policies and procedures.” Last week, Harsin told ESPN that he’s “not planning on going anywhere.”
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Firing Harsin might have been financially unappealing for Auburn, which will pay Malzahn $21.45 million in buyout money over a four-year span after his 2020 firing (it also had to cover the bought-out contracts of Malzahn’s assistants). Auburn would owe Harsin $18 million if it fired him without cause, though ESPN reported that the school had conducted its review in part to determine whether it could fire Harsin for cause and not owe him a buyout.
Harsin was seen as a peculiar fit at Auburn after the Tigers announced his hiring in December 2020. Though he had gone 69-19 in seven seasons at Boise State, winning at least nine games in every year except the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the Idaho native had little experience coaching in the South apart from two years as an assistant on Mack Brown’s coaching staff at Texas and a one-year stint as Arkansas State’s head coach in 2013. The vast majority of his career, both as a coach and a player, had been spent at Boise State.
His early returns at Auburn were promising: The Tigers started last season 6-2, with a win at then-No. 17 Arkansas and a home victory over No. 10 Mississippi, both by double digits (the two losses were to Penn State, then ranked 10th, and eventual national champion Georgia).
But the wheels started coming off in a 20-3 loss to Texas A&M on Nov. 6, when the Tigers managed only 226 yards. Quarterback Bo Nix, the 2019 SEC freshman of the year, suffered a season-ending ankle injury a few games later and then announced he was transferring to Oregon before Auburn’s season-ending bowl loss to Houston.
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