Well, we made it.
Three weeks after I said Bryan Harsin needed to go, and a whole bunch of weeks/months after you all said the same thing, he's now on his way out of town. This is a fact that will be met with satisfaction from nearly all corners of the Auburn world. He is almost universally loathed, which is difficult to accomplish.
But I'm not here to pile on.
I'm here right now to discuss what actually went wrong with Harsin at Auburn.
I've had a lot of time to think about this. I even sketched out some notes last week. My list looks like this:
• Didn't take recruiting seriously
• Didn't take NIL seriously
• Didn't politic until it was way too late
• Didn't fix holes in the roster, specifically OL
• Often took an unnecessarily hard line on player issues
• In-game coaching decisions were suspect
• Wasn't relatable
• Family wasn't relatable (and yes that matters in the South)
That's one hell of a list. In fact, someone who didn't know him might look at that list and think that's emblematic of a person trying to be bad at coaching. He basically did everything wrong — at least in an Auburn context.
Yet I can distill most of that down to one sentence:
He doesn't know how to accept and apply good counsel.
I happen to think Harsin has some all-stars around him. I think his chief of staff, Brad Larrando, is a wise man who thinks about things from a meta perspective. His primary high-school liaison, Brendt Bedsole, has been around coaches in this state for decades (he's a long-time coach himself) and understands what they what to see from a college staff. He has a recruiting strategist named Steven Ruzic who understands what needs to be done with recruits on their level. I'm talking about how a visit works, who speaks with the player, who speaks with the family, how it all gets handled.
That's great counsel. And it went largely ignored*.
The jump from Boise State to Auburn was a big one, but Harsin didn't want to recognize that. He thought "ball is ball" and, well, maybe that's somewhat accurate when you're just talking about ball. Moving upward from Gus Malzahn's station required some other-worldly progress in terms of recruiting. Harsin just didn't realize that. He figured Auburn would sell itself. There were times in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s when that happened. Once we hit July 1, 2021, and NIL became the dominant recruiting paradigm, the entire world changed.
Harsin was left behind — a vestige of what coaching was like in the Olden Times.
The best leaders know how to listen. They surround themselves with smart, sage folks who aren't their best friends. You don't want yes men and yes women; you want people who will MOVE THE ORGANIZATION FORWARD. You want new ideas, better ideas. And when those ideas hit your ears, you make certain that the GOOD IDEAS LEAD TO ACTION.
Harsin didn't do that. I don't think he has that ability and he didn't make much progress in that manner while at Auburn.
Now he's unemployed with a massive, unconcealed blemish on his record. There will be questions. There should be questions.
At least Auburn knows what it needs from the next coach: Everything Harsin wasn't.
* Drew Fabianich wasn't ignored, though I'd argue he wasn't as heard as he should have been. Auburn should hope that he's willing to stick around.
Three weeks after I said Bryan Harsin needed to go, and a whole bunch of weeks/months after you all said the same thing, he's now on his way out of town. This is a fact that will be met with satisfaction from nearly all corners of the Auburn world. He is almost universally loathed, which is difficult to accomplish.
But I'm not here to pile on.
I'm here right now to discuss what actually went wrong with Harsin at Auburn.
I've had a lot of time to think about this. I even sketched out some notes last week. My list looks like this:
• Didn't take recruiting seriously
• Didn't take NIL seriously
• Didn't politic until it was way too late
• Didn't fix holes in the roster, specifically OL
• Often took an unnecessarily hard line on player issues
• In-game coaching decisions were suspect
• Wasn't relatable
• Family wasn't relatable (and yes that matters in the South)
That's one hell of a list. In fact, someone who didn't know him might look at that list and think that's emblematic of a person trying to be bad at coaching. He basically did everything wrong — at least in an Auburn context.
Yet I can distill most of that down to one sentence:
He doesn't know how to accept and apply good counsel.
I happen to think Harsin has some all-stars around him. I think his chief of staff, Brad Larrando, is a wise man who thinks about things from a meta perspective. His primary high-school liaison, Brendt Bedsole, has been around coaches in this state for decades (he's a long-time coach himself) and understands what they what to see from a college staff. He has a recruiting strategist named Steven Ruzic who understands what needs to be done with recruits on their level. I'm talking about how a visit works, who speaks with the player, who speaks with the family, how it all gets handled.
That's great counsel. And it went largely ignored*.
The jump from Boise State to Auburn was a big one, but Harsin didn't want to recognize that. He thought "ball is ball" and, well, maybe that's somewhat accurate when you're just talking about ball. Moving upward from Gus Malzahn's station required some other-worldly progress in terms of recruiting. Harsin just didn't realize that. He figured Auburn would sell itself. There were times in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s when that happened. Once we hit July 1, 2021, and NIL became the dominant recruiting paradigm, the entire world changed.
Harsin was left behind — a vestige of what coaching was like in the Olden Times.
The best leaders know how to listen. They surround themselves with smart, sage folks who aren't their best friends. You don't want yes men and yes women; you want people who will MOVE THE ORGANIZATION FORWARD. You want new ideas, better ideas. And when those ideas hit your ears, you make certain that the GOOD IDEAS LEAD TO ACTION.
Harsin didn't do that. I don't think he has that ability and he didn't make much progress in that manner while at Auburn.
Now he's unemployed with a massive, unconcealed blemish on his record. There will be questions. There should be questions.
At least Auburn knows what it needs from the next coach: Everything Harsin wasn't.
* Drew Fabianich wasn't ignored, though I'd argue he wasn't as heard as he should have been. Auburn should hope that he's willing to stick around.
