ATLANTA — As Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin spoke, leading off the final day of SEC Media Days, a grid of the Tigers’ 2022 schedule flashed on the screen above him. Georgia awaits, as do LSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and, of course, Alabama. It’s a brutal schedule, and it doesn’t even include Auburn’s toughest opponent.
As always, Auburn’s greatest challenge in 2022 will be Auburn itself.
Sporting a crisp blue and orange tie and a tight haircut, Harsin leaned forward at the podium, his body language as outwardly aggressive as any coach this week. After a few perfunctory remarks, he took a run at the elephant in the room: the multi-pronged February controversy that nearly cost him his job.
“There was an inquiry. It was uncomfortable. It was unfounded. It presented an opportunity for people to personally attack me, my family, and also our program,” Harsin said. “And it didn’t work.”
Harsin didn’t want to dwell on the events of the offseason, but they will define his tenure at Auburn, whether it’s measured in months, years or decades. He arrived in Auburn a year ago from Boise State, where he’d won nearly 80 percent of his team’s games. In the first few weeks at Auburn, he kept that streak going, leading the Tigers to a 6-2 record.
But then the wheels fell off, the engine dropped out, and the entire frame cracked. Auburn lost its last five games of the season, a staggering face-plant that included a blown 28-3 lead to Mississippi State, a blown two-touchdown lead against South Carolina, a blown double-digit lead against Alabama in the quadruple-overtime Iron Bowl and a blown fourth-quarter lead against Houston in the season-ending Birmingham Bowl.
Auburn squandered opportunity after opportunity in the closing weeks of 2021. With every loss, the foundation beneath Harsin cracked a little more, and the support for him within the Auburn administration shrunk.
In the weeks after the Birmingham Bowl, players and coaches alike ran from the Auburn program like it was the last day of school. Twenty players, including quarterback Bo Nix, and five coaches, including one who’d been on the job for just six weeks, fled the Plains, some with parting shots.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, defensive tackle Lee Hunter, who transferred to UCF, wrote that “Coach Harsin has the true mindset for a winner but has a terrible mindset as a person,” adding “the reason I chose to leave auburn because we got treated like we wasn’t good enough…