Casagrande: The odd fall from coaching Auburn to social media trolling
Bryan Harsin was never the right hire for Auburn in 2020 and he only continues to prove that point on social media.
Casagrande: The odd fall from coaching Auburn to social media trolling
This is an opinion column.
Say what you’d like about social media, but there’s something refreshing about how it levels the playing field.
There’s a certain democracy to these cyber cesspools where the common user can catch the eye of the rich and powerful.
Where Joe Six Pack once needed to buy a ticket to shout down his favorite athlete or coach, he can simply wipe the Cheeto dust onto his pre-stained undershirt long enough to roll over to the desktop and heckle freely from the safety of mom’s basement.
It’s also where the celebrity cool factor went to die -- where the bubble of mystery that once made these people interesting popped.
Turns out they’re not so different from Mr. Six Pack, shedding that slick exterior to reveal they’re just as thin-skinned while possessing the same wacky takes on worldly topics.
And that’s where we introduce ex-Auburn football coach Bryan Harsin to this discussion.
A full 19 months removed from among the most remarkably disastrous coaching failures in recent memory, he’s gone full keyboard cowboy.
It’s hard to imagine his recent posts on the platform formerly known as Twitter are helping if Harsin wants to end his time as a formerly employed college football coach.
We’re talking full airing of grievances, odds takes on reality, trolls of anything Auburn and the local press. On Thursday, just hours after following Harsin on X, he blocked me.
But not my burner account!
There I found his 106,000-plus followers treated to an array of stale arguments and odd comments.
We could go on all day about this, but we’ll hit on a few of the greatest hits.
Going back to last November, Harsin posted an Instagram with text on a black background reading “HARD WORK BEATS TALENT WHEN TALENT DOESN’T WORK HARD.” Not a lie but coming a day after New Mexico State stunned Auburn with a 31-10 beating, the timing is hardly a coincidence.
It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a scorned lover or a high school crush. Instead, it was a passive aggressive comment from a coach paid a $15.3 million buyout after being fired midway through his second season with a 9-12 record.
Harsin also turned off the comments on that post.
Then on May 27, Harsin found a comment made by beat writer Nathan King of Auburn Undercover, a 247Sports site. The tweet touched on Harsin’s well-document recruiting failures, so the coach replied with an out-of-context picture of King holding a t-shirt that fittingly commemorated another belly-flop of the coach’s 22-month tenure.
Harsin infamously threw Auburn hats to writers at a 2021 media practice viewing period -- a now-funny attempt to curry favor. When that drew criticism, he handed out t-shirts in 2022 making light of the moment. The shot of King holding that shirt came with the hashtag “#ungrateful.”
Not criminal.
Just weird.
By June 3, the grievance battle went to a quote from Athlon Sports’ preseason college football magazine. It cited an anonymous coach who believed Auburn wasn’t near the top of the SEC “but they are absolutely better than the Bryan Harsin rosters at offensive line and receiver, and probably defensive line too.”
Not a terribly high bar to meet but Harsin took issue not with the content of the quote but the existence of the coach.
“Coaches do not make these kind of comments,” he wrote on X. “They focus on their programs & their problems only. If a coach wants to make a statement about another program he will not hide behind “Anonymous” he will say it publicly & with authority.”
For context, these kinds of quotes have lived for years in these publications. And coaches of course talk trash about each other. What are we talking about here?
That tweet received more than 1 million views and hundreds of responses -- mostly from the Auburn crowd and the tone would best be described by the British as cheeky.
And on Thursday, Harsin cited a 2021 tweet by AL.com’s Joseph Goodman as a reason to complain about the press. Quoting the 3-year-old comment dealing with the COVID-19 vaccine, Harsin played the greatest hits of the grievance game.
Harsin wrote: “Stories like these from local “journalists” erode confidence in the media. Not one point made can be substantiated and everything is completely opinion based. It’s devious & unprofessional.”
An opinion columnist had an opinion.
Three years ago.
Disagree, maybe. But devious?
Ha.
Feel free to browse the rest of Harsin’s page (if he hasn’t blocked you, too) for more of his takes.
It’s not all poor-me, somebody-was-mean stuff, either. Harsin defended Dabo Swinney a few times in the past week and Florida coach Billy Napier on May 29
And I’m not saying he doesn’t have a right to defend himself, share theories or to speak his mind. He’s not alone, either. Hugh Freeze has been known to respond to critics on social media more than once.
But where his square-jawed sideline appearance came off cool and in control, the Twitter fingers version of Harsin is quite the opposite.
Perhaps the often miscited internet quote says it best.
“It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool,” it reads, “than to speak and remove all doubts.”
