Gorney: Harsin had to go, but Auburn far from blameless
I will be the last person to ever defend a coach who’s losing lots of games and gets fired. They’re making exorbitant amounts of money and they’re lavished with every possible luxurious perk possible to win football games.
And Bryan Harsin has a lot to ponder about his time at Auburn that really started to collapse last season when the Tigers lost five-straight games to end the season - albeit three were by one score or less including almost beating Alabama - and then this season was an unmitigated mess almost the entire way.
OK, Harsin had to go because it wasn’t working out. But the Auburn brass and the big-money alumni also have to look in the mirror and ask themselves what they really want from their football program.
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Because it seems like the second Auburn settled for Harsin, after reportedly being turned down by Billy Napier and Brent Venables, there was a contingent that wanted to get rid of this guy before he even moved into town.
Can it be possible that two things are true at once? Harsin was never a good fit at Auburn and it probably wouldn’t have worked over the long haul and he was never given an appropriate chance to fix the Tigers and make over the program in his own vision? No coach in Auburn football history dating back to 1930 has been fired so quickly.
A lot of people on both sides have a lot of soul-searching to do.
Season 1 was going so well for Harsin as he went 4-1 beating LSU and his only loss coming in a hard-fought game at Penn State. A loss to the eventual national champs Georgia was followed by impressive wins over Arkansas and Ole Miss and then the bottom completely fell out.
Maybe it was during that stretch of losses to Texas A&M, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Alabama and then Houston in the bowl game that the idea of ousting Harsin so soon started to materialize. Who knows when things like this really get going.
Instead of rallying the troops behind their first-year coach (the guy had literally been in town less than a year), instead the big wigs at Auburn turned the troops on their leader and tried to get him ousted. Harsin was literally out of the country when an investigation was launched for wrongdoing inside the program. It was decided he would be retained for Year 2.
Not exactly a healthy professional situation for Harsin or anyone else.
Still, I keep coming back to the idea that Harsin has plenty of blame in this as well. Coaches run off. Recruiting events that were complete disasters. The latest was telling players they couldn’t redshirt and to either play or transfer.
Running a program with law-and-order and discipline is fine. Being an unnecessary jerk that turns everybody off is something else. There was a lot of both going on here.
As for recruiting, Auburn has the fewest commits in the SEC with 10 pledges but when it comes to average star ranking the Tigers are sixth in the conference, slightly worse than Georgia and slightly better than Tennessee. Over the coaching search, there might be some movement there as conference foes and others try to pick off top targets. Three-star offensive lineman Gernorris Wilson has already backed off his pledge.
Four games remain in this season, this long slog knowing almost the entire time that Harsin would be out at some point. That time is now.
For Auburn and for Harsin, maybe it’s the best outcome for both. Even if both sides have some reason for blame.