Auburn's recent history of firing coaches so soon has made it hard for them to

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I remember that Lane Kiffin declined even an interview this last time

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I'm pretty sure he interviewed or at least kicked the tires on the idea. In the end, he chose to stay at Ole Miss because of family.

But I think the point stands. Auburn is not a well respected employer in coaching circles anymore. It's seen as a toxic environment. The way they tried to oust Harsin initially really slung the cow shite in their faces.

I love it when outsiders know so well the innerworkings of Auburn.

3 other programs have had the same number of coaching changes.

How many "sure thing" hires are out there? A&M shite the bed hiring a coach with a ring. LSU paid huge to get a guy who has underwhelmed to date. Auburn's biggest problem is with boosters and that's a problem all programs with money face. It's just been a long time since we had a strong athletic director. And going forward, I'm not sure how big of a deal "the coach" will play in this sport, anyway.

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Auburn's biggest problem is with boosters and that's a problem all programs with money face. It's just been a long time since we had a strong athletic director. And going forward, I'm not sure how big of a deal "the coach" will play in this sport, anyway.

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Harsin heros checking in

The Harsin thing was embarrassing for sure, they should have just fired him for sucking dong but the Auburn booster boogeyman is one of the most ridiculous narratives out there.

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The PTB …didnt want to babysit Harsin who didnt want to recruit

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The boosters didn’t support Harsin.

I’m not sure if they no longer support Freeze but Auburn’s class currently ranks about 60 something in the nation, while Freeze spends more time on the golf course than he does recruiting. Probably just biding time for that fat severance payday.

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The boosters didn’t support Harsin.

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Yeah. Because he sucked golf balls through hose pipe.

It's impossible to know, IMO.

I don't think we're HELPING ourselves with the turnover, of course. Whether it's genuinely made it hard to hire top candidates is an open question mark. The reality is that the large majority of schools, even schools in Auburn's tier, are hiring coordinators or smaller school HCs most of the time.

The two data points I think are meaningful are Kiffin - who everyone including Ole Miss board mods though was leaving for AU and stayed supposedly due to a final pitch by his family - and Venables. Venables is the only one who went public on Auburn's power/booster situation being a reason. I don't think the Kiffin saga tells us much.

My best guess: Auburn would be in the mix for the same HC candidates as any other school in the historical top 15-20 range. I think there are some schools that are more attractive than their station/positioning due to good situations (money, reasonable expectations, etc.) and I don't think Auburn is really that.

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How many "sure thing" hires are out there?

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This is the dilemma. Is it worse to fire a mediocre coach in hopes of landing a better one? Or is it worth pulling the trigger? It doesn’t always get better.

I remember during the Malzahn years, fans were screaming for Gus’ head. And while I was not happy with where we were at, I kept saying to all my most vocal friends to show me the plan and I might get on board, but there wasn’t a plan… which was the problem. That’s how we got Harsin.

Gus went 48-29 in his last six seasons… average season was 8 wins and 4.3 losses. The same fans who were the loudest proponents of running off Gus were also the loudest at hating on Harsin, and they are also the biggest pessimists when it comes to Hugh Freeze. Funny how that works. I would always say to my friends, “It can get a whole lot worse than Gus if we fire him without a solid plan of a replacement.” But they didn’t want to hear it.

Now here we are. I still think Freeze can work out. While his first 2 seasons have been disappointing, he did have a gigantic hole to have to dig out of and it would take any coach 2-3 seasons to do that…. So I’m not sure he should face much blame yet. But in Year 3, any coach should be able to turn a program around if they are good so it’s time to produce.

With that said, if Auburn goes 6-6 or 7-5 I think we need to remember what got us here. Freeze might deserve to be fired at that point, but if we don’t have a plan that involves a known replacement, a gigantic budget for recruiting and staff, and a huge NIL pool to work with, we probably need to just stay the course. Believe it or not, yes it can get even worse.

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Firing Harsin was a decision Harsin made for himself. The AD just facilitated what he wanted.

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Harsin was terrible, no doubt. But Auburn is just as much at fault for hiring him in the first place. There is virtually no AU fan alive who would pick to have hired Harsin knowing what they know now over keeping Gus for another year going into 2021.

The lack of a plan in place prior to canning Gus is how you get a Harsin. Just an all out pathetic attempt by our AD at the time.