A college football firing that seemed to loom through the first two months of the season finally happened on Monday, when Auburn let go of Bryan Harsin, its unconventional hire of December 2020. Harsin leaves as the first full-time Auburn coach with a sub-.500 record since Earl Brown wrapped up his three-year tenure in 1950 with a wanting record of 3-22-4.
“Auburn University has decided to make a change in the leadership of the Auburn University football program,” the university said in a statement that did not mention Harsin by name. The decision came from Christopher B. Roberts, the university president who assumed his duties this past May.
It came after Harsin went 9-12 across a season-and-change, and it came after another Saturday afternoon with an implausible sight on The Plains of eastern Alabama: emptied stands during a fourth quarter. That sight backdropped Auburn’s 38-13 deficit to Arkansas, which became a 41-27 defeat, which marked a second home thumping of the year.
ADVERTISING
The other, on Sept. 17, came to Penn State, by 41-12.
The College Football Playoff contenders have narrowed to, oh yeah, 13
When former athletic director Allen Greene hired Harsin two winters ago, the wildly successful seven-year coach at Boise State did seem a potential misfit at a place far-flung to Harsin, who attended Capital High School in Boise, Idaho, played quarterback at Boise State from 1995-99 and coached that ambitious program from 2014-20, going 69-19. He ventured diagonally across the country to a land and a program noted for its political factions. He walks away partway into a six-year, $31.5 million contract, hauling home $15 million of it.
Colleges are more willing than ever to pay football coaches not to coach
He weathered those factions last February during an inquiry into his program, which he summarized in the summertime at SEC Media Days by saying, “It was uncomfortable. It was unfounded … And it didn’t work.”
At that point, he had just wrapped up a 6-7 season that began at 6-2. That season grew noted for blown leads rather than blowouts. It might have taken on an entirely different tenor but for one Alabama possession in the Iron Bowl at Auburn, when Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young took the Crimson Tide 97 yards in 12 plays to score with 24 seconds left to send a 10-3 game into overtime at 10-10. Alabama won, 24-22, in four overtimes.
Harsin hung on even through a loss to Houston in the Birmingham Bowl, not how the Auburn fans tend to envision themselves, and he started off a wobbly 3-1 this year, with the Penn State romp and an overtime survival of visiting Missouri mixed in.
The ensuing four games have left ample evidence of where Auburn, the 2010 national champion and 2013 national runner-up, has come to stand amid its loathed neighbors. It lost 21-17 to LSU, 42-10 to defending national champion Georgia, 48-34 to rising Ole Miss and then to Arkansas, with the fourth-quarter stands again bleak.
“Auburn University has decided to make a change in the leadership of the Auburn University football program,” the university said in a statement that did not mention Harsin by name. The decision came from Christopher B. Roberts, the university president who assumed his duties this past May.
It came after Harsin went 9-12 across a season-and-change, and it came after another Saturday afternoon with an implausible sight on The Plains of eastern Alabama: emptied stands during a fourth quarter. That sight backdropped Auburn’s 38-13 deficit to Arkansas, which became a 41-27 defeat, which marked a second home thumping of the year.
ADVERTISING
The other, on Sept. 17, came to Penn State, by 41-12.
The College Football Playoff contenders have narrowed to, oh yeah, 13
When former athletic director Allen Greene hired Harsin two winters ago, the wildly successful seven-year coach at Boise State did seem a potential misfit at a place far-flung to Harsin, who attended Capital High School in Boise, Idaho, played quarterback at Boise State from 1995-99 and coached that ambitious program from 2014-20, going 69-19. He ventured diagonally across the country to a land and a program noted for its political factions. He walks away partway into a six-year, $31.5 million contract, hauling home $15 million of it.
Colleges are more willing than ever to pay football coaches not to coach
He weathered those factions last February during an inquiry into his program, which he summarized in the summertime at SEC Media Days by saying, “It was uncomfortable. It was unfounded … And it didn’t work.”
At that point, he had just wrapped up a 6-7 season that began at 6-2. That season grew noted for blown leads rather than blowouts. It might have taken on an entirely different tenor but for one Alabama possession in the Iron Bowl at Auburn, when Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young took the Crimson Tide 97 yards in 12 plays to score with 24 seconds left to send a 10-3 game into overtime at 10-10. Alabama won, 24-22, in four overtimes.
Harsin hung on even through a loss to Houston in the Birmingham Bowl, not how the Auburn fans tend to envision themselves, and he started off a wobbly 3-1 this year, with the Penn State romp and an overtime survival of visiting Missouri mixed in.
The ensuing four games have left ample evidence of where Auburn, the 2010 national champion and 2013 national runner-up, has come to stand amid its loathed neighbors. It lost 21-17 to LSU, 42-10 to defending national champion Georgia, 48-34 to rising Ole Miss and then to Arkansas, with the fourth-quarter stands again bleak.
