One fired Auburn coach got so bored that he [opened a leafblower business](https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8_x_gjJXYJoy09XU4Ffn-TzL0Wg=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4305277/muschampleaf.0.gif).
I don't know if you'd call it a scandal, but he did rob a lot of families out of their life savings as well as a few investors.
https://www.al.com/breaking/2012/02/former_auburn_coach_tommy_tube.html
This doesn't surprise me. If you are associated to High School or College Football in Texas the amount of crimes you can get away with is pretty amazing.
Is there anyway to bring this back up now Dummy Tommy is a Senator. Maybe he obstructed justice during this so we can get him thrown out?
The whole thing pisses me off. Like, he's not even fit for the job. He has no clue what he's doing. I hate that he represents Alabama this way, and beat Doug Jones to do it.
Pretty much haha. Its honestly crazy how effective a strategy it is cause In the other persons mind it dilutes the assholery cause they just say “oh thats so and so just being so and so”
Texas Tech hates him because he literally left in the middle of a dinner with his team to go take the Cincinnati job.
Cincinnati fans hate him because he took over a team that had finished ranked 5 of the previous 6 seasons, including a top 10 finish and promptly drove the entire program into the ground.
Auburn fans probably like him the most but I've seen a lot of recent chatter about many fans and former players disliking him for treating players like shit and being an asshole.
And now he's a giant obstructionist asshole in the Senate. Even among conservatives he pissed off a lot of people by refusing to allow military promotions to go through for nearly a year.
He alienated Texas Tech and Cincy fans. Led Tech to its first losing season since before Leach, slapped a GA on the sideline, literally left recruits sitting at a restaurant so he could go take the Cincinnati job. Oh and his wife ran a red light and killed an elderly couple in Lubbock and got off with nothing.
He was flat out arguing with and insulting Cincinnati fans too while sending that program spiraling downward as well. Dude’s always been a slimeball.
I think they’re mostly referring to his post coaching career.
But Tuberville always came off as a bit of a scumbag after the “Pine Box” comments at the end of his Ole Miss tenure.
Texas Tech and Cincinnati fans also don’t like him because he was a bad coach for them.
It's honestly kinda ironic that as slimy as Tuberville is, he's one of the main reasons that Ole Miss banned Confederate flags being flown at their games.
Cruel or sad?
I think Kiffin's childish antics are more enjoyable as someone else's coach, but I'm sure I'd embrace his behavior if he was Auburn's coach, haha.
You say this like there wasn’t reason for Auburn fans to be excited about Freeze. Yeah he’s got some off-field baggage but purely from an on-field perspective he is far more qualified to be the Auburn HC than Harsin ever was.
The story goes we flew an assistant guy out with the spare key for a repo lmao
I cannot confirm this other than hearing it many multiple times, but it’s hysterical either way
Don't these buyout clauses have some sort of 'you must be attempting to get another job' kinda phrasing?
Dude is just sabotaging actually getting another job so he can sit at the house. Maybe he is a genius after all? I've long said 'fired SEC head coach' is my dream job. I look forward to doing a job so badly they pay me millions to never do it again.
His name came up enough in a couple of the Mountain West searches where reasonable effort (at least by his agent) could be shown.
That said there's no offset to his buyout so no effort is actually required.
You think so? Utah, BYU, and TCU were all dominant at times, and Nevada had a great run for a while too.
Edit: 2008 and 2009 are pretty crazy, back to back years with 3 top 25 teams and almost 4 top 10 combined .
Guy is just a giant loser of a person with a crack pot conspiracy loving family. The more time passes the more I really do think after being hired he just decided to tank and not do the job and collect his buyout.
I loved the family picture they took on the field at JHS. Someone said it looked like the youth minister at the church in the strip mall and his second wife and their kids.
After the nonsense that came out about his family, I don't blame him, and yes, headed into the second season, I believe that was the goal. If your employer wanted you to resign in lieu of termination (giving you a lower payout than what was contractually owed), made up nonsense about your family, etc., would you put 100% effort into your job? His time at Auburn was done as soon as the reports about his family were intentionally leaked (along with the alleged affair), and Mason torpedoed the guy (claiming racism) as a parting shot for their failure to get along (which, to be frank, I never understood the rationale for hiring him \[or Bobo\] in the first place). That being said, WGAF? The guy is gone, and if he's lucky, he'll get another job in the MWC or Big XII at some point in the future..
I’m shocked someone with an Auburn flair would have this opinion lol. Was the school ever linked to the stuff about his family? Seemed like message board/twitter stuff that was more of a meme than an employer actively sabotaging their coach.
As far as the racism stuff, I didn’t even follow it that closely and I remember multiple players saying stuff about the culture (treated like dogs, he doesn’t understand how to talk to people in the south), if you combine that with a very well respected coach like Mason making a claim of racial issues, they probably had an obligation to investigate what the hell was going on. Your defensive coordinator called the HC racist, and took a pay cut to coach somewhere else on top of losing like half the starters to the portal lmao.
Harsin defenders blow my mind, and I’m a fuckin Auburn hater.
I'm not advocating for hating on him or anything. I'm advocating in forgetting about it. There was nothing memorable that happened. I think most Auburn fans are not mad at him they just want to move on.
The entire fiasco started from a forum user who was DMing recruits to get info so he could be a "insider journalist".
He literally made up the Harsin family story. He revealed this after a Auburn player posted DMs this same guy sent him telling him to quit the team after a poor game performance.
When this guy was called out, months later - he also admitted in that very thread on 24/7 that he "jumped the gun" on the Harsin stuff because he saw pics of this one cute intern that followed him from Boise and said he simply "put two and two together".
The original story did get spread like wildfire because Harsin was such a polarizing figure and there were many cracks in his program and a lot of rumors swirling about.
And here we are - years later, and even Auburn fans parrot this stupid "The boooosters hamstrung Harsin!" narrative.
I'm shocked that you're shocked. It's an open secret that Auburn has the most meddling boosters in CFB.
I'm proud to say that every Auburn fan I know HATED what the boosters and local media were doing to Harsin. Even Charles Barkley denounced it. It was absolutely his employer instigating it on behalf of the boosters, and it got so bad that Harsin had to take his kids to Mexico, iirc, to get away from it.
The sad thing is, this wasn't the last time this happened. Whispers about more "sexual misconduct" were thrown around about Cadillac Williams & two other coaches that got let go this year. They were actually let go because Freeze wanted to bring in his own coaches. Keeping those other coaches on for at least a year was a part of the agreement when Freeze signed on, but now there's a culture of mud slinging sexual allegations at coaches at Auburn.
Again, the people who hate it the most are the Auburn fans I know.
> it got so bad that Harsin had to take his kids to Mexico, iirc, to get away from it.
This all came out while Harsin was on vacation in Mexico the week before national signing day. Maybe he *was* there to get away from a toxic culture that was created to get rid of him before the public knew anything about it, but we're talking about a guy who never (as in not once, not a single time, not even a phone call) reached out to the biggest feeder high school programs in the area, was consistently not present for on-campus recruiting events, and limited his staff's recruiting time - all *before* the crazy rumors and whatnot came out.
What's more likely, then? That he was in MX to get away from boosters who were meddling in secret, or that he's just a lazy guy who valued doing what he wanted over recruiting that week just like every other week since he'd arrived a year earlier?
I'm not defending our boosters here (though I'm not sure how involved the administration was beyond doing their due diligence once things started to look bad). Like you say, I hate the way all of that went down and wish these folks would find something better to do with their time. That said, multiple things can be true at the same time. Harsin was lazy, misguided, arrogant, and just generally terrible at the job. By all accounts he's an absolute asshole who doesn't get along with many people. The administration and boosters were saddled with an incompetent dickhead - I don't condone the way that they got rid of him, but I don't blame them for wanting rid of him.
Didn't the school launch an investigation into firing him with cause over it all? Or maybe that was just mistreatment of players and staff and stuff at the same time?
But no, he isn't a wonderful dude or great coach.
I didn’t study it closely, but I remember articles at the time specifically saying the official investigation was toxic culture/climate stuff based on exit interviews by players and coaches.
Yeah, I think the timing of it right after this made it a bit suspect though. Someone else can jump in and clarify. I dunno; he's not our problem anymore haha.
I mean I get that they could be lying, but all reports at the time kept talking about Derek Mason leaving for at best (though currently better) lateral move for less money and there were outbursts play players about how he treated certain socioeconomic classes differently and "he didn't understand them".
Would I put 100% effort into my job? Yes. Absolutely. Every televised game is a job interview to show the country my coaching style and how I can motivate players. Mailing it in for a paycheck? Who’s to say you won’t do that at your next stop too?
That money will dry up and he and the hardashians will be tanned and jacked but broke sitting on a beach in Mexico. I’d start eyeing the high school level if I was him.
He has his record at Boise to fall back on, so no, he didn't need to put 100% effort into the job. (Not to even touch upon the reality that he can just retire with the money that he has in a low cost-of-living region.) Also, lets be realistic: Given Auburn's reputation, Harsin came out of the affair looking a hell of a lot better than the university. He'll be fine. If he wants to talk about the university on social media then... whatever. WGAF? Once again, I have no idea why this is even news, nor do I understand why it's being posted on an Alabama-based website.
Honestly because a large portion of al .com readers are Bama fans and we lap up anything anti-Auburn. Plus there is really no other sports news in the state right now. I'm betting they had this story ready for awhile and chose to put it out in a dead time.
Unless he's a complete idiot, then his buyout money is damn near generational wealth.
15 million dollars grows to 85.7 million dollars in 20 years if he throws it into an index fund and ignores it.
I don't think the employer made up the rumors about his family. That was the message boards and beat writers. The Auburn beat writers are big into conspiracies just like the Haskins family.
He was in Mexico on vacation on national signing day. Allen Green (AD at the time) met him in a hot tub at a conference and hired him based off this conversation. Both were fired and rightfully so
What nonsense about his family? I can't believe people still try to bring that up like it holds any water. 1 It was all message board rumors, not from anyone at the school. 2 He's the dummy who brought the hot girl down from Boise and gave her a do nothing job. He invited the controversy in. The rest of what you said it made up nonsense.. No one from the school made up anything about him and no one tried to pay him less.
Mason made a claim and it was properly investigated. None of us know what happened or what was said. Harsin wasn't found to have done enough to be fired for it though.
None of the issues came up until after he started blowing people off though.. wouldn't meet with alumni, boosters, fans or the community, fired a coach randomly (Remember coach Corn) and then flat out didn't recruit.. THEN the boosters and alumni stopped supporting him, THEN the fans turned on him and THEN the rumors came out. Right now you're falling for the Harsin spin on the situation, but that's not the reality.
I agree though, besides just being a running joke, most at Auburn forgot about him. He's the one constantly taking shots on social media, going out of his way to go at Auburn fans and has even taken shots at Auburn reporters. The guy is a total loser.
I always view Harsin’s life outside of coaching as the typical Idaho/PNW right leaning person (that isn’t, you know, part of an extremist group). Holds the same values as the average republican person out west and is very much the “my way or the highway” guy who hates being in the spotlight all of the time.
Which made it funny to me that he was entertaining the Oregon job after Helfrich got canned.
This. The worst losses under Harsin looked like he didn't even prepare and was looking to the next week. Add in the hardass coaching style not connecting to or motivating a new generation of players.
Boise fans were adamant he sucked despite his record when we hired him and I don't know if I have ever seen a fanbase be more correct about a coach before.
It is weird. I mean everyone agrees Auburn had to move on and everyone agrees that he is a pretty crappy dude. Believe me I want to blame Auburn for this one but you cant
The hire didn’t really make a lot of sense at the time and then the guy just completely mailed it once he got to Auburn. At least Auburn realized their mistake and quickly moved on
I thank Auburn all the time for taking Harsin off of BSU’s hands. The guy has an advantage in nearly all areas over every other team in the conference and was consistently mediocre. His teams also tended to get worse year to year which isn’t a great sign
I don't really blame Bryan for being petty. He can't even post pics of his son without Auburn fans saying shit about how bad his tenure was. The attacks are just relentless. Charlie Strong is one of the worst UT head coaches of all time but he doesn't attract UT hate the way Bryan attracts Auburn hate.
Alright, now imagine that Charlie Strong had the exact same record but also refused to recruit and actively ran off your teams talent. We have multiple top 100 guys in our 2024 recruiting class that lived 30 minutes away that NEVER even heard from the guy.
When our upper classmen graduated/declared for the draft they thanked the current staff on social media and a lot of them thank Malzahn. I don't think a single one thanked Harsin
Auburn fans were never harassing Chizik or Malzahn when we fired them because despite how it ended people liked them as people. Harsin is a grade A jackass that by all accounts from everyone that ever delt with him was terrible to be around.
True. Different kinds of scumbags. I've said many times before my best hope for Freeze is that when he inevitably screws it up (and he will) that he'll leave it in a better place than Harsin did. Unbelievably, even in a post-transfer portal world, I think the next guy is going to be starting from a better place than Freeze did after Harsin.
Freeze is one of the best offensive minds in CFB. If he finds a QB and a playmaker or two they’ll be right back in the mix.
Auburn can’t win when the big money boosters declare war on the coach or AD. When everything is aligned they are a powerhouse program and at least for the moment they have the guy they want, they just need to rebuild the roster.
Bama had some of the same issues between Bryant and Saban.
I hear his therapist suggested a high efficacy type of therapy where he relaxes in a room full of Auburn's money. Money couch, money chairs, money on the floor, money in the pool. July 15th 2024 his next payment from Auburn, and they are paying him two more i.e. until the last one in 2026:
https://www.si.com/college/auburn/football/bryan-harsin-receives-first-buyout-installment-payment
After several years of this the next step in his recovery is taking a coaching job at a normal school where he is basically guaranteed to do pretty well and make Auburn look like crazy people, if anyone notices.
Dude has been tweeting through his firing two years after being fired.
Before Harsin there was Gene Chizik’s “Words of Chizdom.” Something about Auburn makes their ex-coaches go stream-of-consciousness on twitter.
I guess all that buyout money combined with having a lot of time on your hands leads to one doing weird things.
All money and no coaching makes Jack a dull boy
One fired Auburn coach got so bored that he [opened a leafblower business](https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8_x_gjJXYJoy09XU4Ffn-TzL0Wg=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4305277/muschampleaf.0.gif).
Another one bamers elected to federal office
And what a gigantic piece of shit he is.
🤝
The WOAT
Somebody go check on Jimbo.
If Tubberville was a twitter troll, things would be better.
Tbf a lot of US Senior Senators are twitter trolls
An one particular US president too
I feel like most modern elected officials are full-time Twitter trolls and part-time reps.
The fact that he ran and won is a troll
Can’t wait for that piece of shit to be in the pine box he promised to leave Oxford in
Words of Chizdom 2: Chizzin’ All Over Everyone
Did Tommy Terville coach there??
How did you not know that?
We found a common denominator
how old are you?
Like fine wine. Old
Yeah, including am undefeated season
*”hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”* Which were you, Bryan? *”Harsin also turned off the comments for that post”* Oh.
LOL!!! This was my first thought, like "Well, Bryan - your teams didn't have talent AND didn't work hard". Well done.
Now do Tommy Tuberville.
To be fair to Tommy Tuberville, he was always a garbage person.
I don't think I've ever seen a coach as universally hated as him without an off field scandal.
I don't know if you'd call it a scandal, but he did rob a lot of families out of their life savings as well as a few investors. https://www.al.com/breaking/2012/02/former_auburn_coach_tommy_tube.html
His wife did get drunk and kill a guy while they were at TTU and she didn't even get arrested.
This doesn't surprise me. If you are associated to High School or College Football in Texas the amount of crimes you can get away with is pretty amazing. Is there anyway to bring this back up now Dummy Tommy is a Senator. Maybe he obstructed justice during this so we can get him thrown out?
Voters could decide to care.
The whole thing pisses me off. Like, he's not even fit for the job. He has no clue what he's doing. I hate that he represents Alabama this way, and beat Doug Jones to do it.
Without exaggerating he is probably the dumbest person in the Senate. Dude didn't even know the 3 branches of government.
Everything he says now would be a scandal but he has the one job where you benefit from saying this crap
he's like too transparently heinous for anything he does to be scandalous
Which somehow is a viable strategy. If you do enough scummy shit, people just write it off at a certain point lol
I've seen people get elected president doing it.
When you’re famous they let you do it.
Grab em by the… perception of societal norms?
“I’m glad he does scummy shit proudly, it makes me respect it more” type people enjoying that
So how Draymond is handled by referees but it matters instead.
Pretty much haha. Its honestly crazy how effective a strategy it is cause In the other persons mind it dilutes the assholery cause they just say “oh thats so and so just being so and so”
Crazy that his wife’s DUI/Car Crash/Manslaughter ordeal didn’t get more attention
To me, the fact he exists at all is a scandal
Tuberville was hated? Obviously ole miss and Bama fans didn’t like him, but why did other fan bases hate him?
Texas Tech hates him because he literally left in the middle of a dinner with his team to go take the Cincinnati job. Cincinnati fans hate him because he took over a team that had finished ranked 5 of the previous 6 seasons, including a top 10 finish and promptly drove the entire program into the ground. Auburn fans probably like him the most but I've seen a lot of recent chatter about many fans and former players disliking him for treating players like shit and being an asshole. And now he's a giant obstructionist asshole in the Senate. Even among conservatives he pissed off a lot of people by refusing to allow military promotions to go through for nearly a year.
And even before being elected to the senate he was just an ass hen he was a color commentator for ESPN.
But the good people of Ala will keep re-electing him
He alienated Texas Tech and Cincy fans. Led Tech to its first losing season since before Leach, slapped a GA on the sideline, literally left recruits sitting at a restaurant so he could go take the Cincinnati job. Oh and his wife ran a red light and killed an elderly couple in Lubbock and got off with nothing. He was flat out arguing with and insulting Cincinnati fans too while sending that program spiraling downward as well. Dude’s always been a slimeball.
I'll always remember him getting 2 or 3 unsportsmanlike penalties in a row during one of Cincy's bowl games
Oh yeah - that was all post Auburn. I was thinking more about his time at Auburn.
You don’t remember how he laid down on the job in order to get fired from Auburn and get his buyout?
I think they’re mostly referring to his post coaching career. But Tuberville always came off as a bit of a scumbag after the “Pine Box” comments at the end of his Ole Miss tenure. Texas Tech and Cincinnati fans also don’t like him because he was a bad coach for them.
Don't forget this old Ole Miss grievance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZiWmbJGTPo&pp=ygUeb2xlIG1pc3MgdG9tbXkgdHViZXJ2aWxsZSBzb25n
LSU fans hate him for the cigar bullshit in 99.
Something something pine box
It's honestly kinda ironic that as slimy as Tuberville is, he's one of the main reasons that Ole Miss banned Confederate flags being flown at their games.
2024 Tuberville would probably call 1997 Tuberville "woke"
LBJ kinda vibe, dude is a dink ... still had some reasonable policies you might not associate with a dink.
Eh, Harsin kind of is too. Just not to that extent.
Piece of crap person
Fuck that guy. For SO many reasons.
Ugh. Out of all the past coaches, why does he have to be the one with the legacy of beating Bama every year.
Isn't this what Joey Freshwater does now, while gainfully employed?
Joeys tweets are cheeky and fun. Brian’s tweets are cruel and tragic
Which makes them not tweets at all. *Evil* tweets.
Someone fed him after midnight.
I swear to god I’m going to pistol whip the next person that says tweets
Hey farva, what do you call a post on that dumpster fire musk renamed X?
I swear to god I’ll pistol whip the next person who says “tweet”.
Hey Farva, what’d we used to call the message someone would publish on Twitter?
You mean tweets? you guys are talking about tweeting right?
Awwwww *hands pistol**
Is there anything else to talk about? Other than tweeting?
Cruel or sad? I think Kiffin's childish antics are more enjoyable as someone else's coach, but I'm sure I'd embrace his behavior if he was Auburn's coach, haha.
It's a movie reference
Well then, "Sometimes I feel like an idiot. But I am an idiot, so it kinda works out."
Tactfully though
I feel like he has softened a lot and every time he says something "outrageous" it's silly fun really.
Harsin was so bad that it made the Auburn fanbase excited for Hugh Freeze.
It took true talent to get that low.
Keep going. Almost there.
You say this like there wasn’t reason for Auburn fans to be excited about Freeze. Yeah he’s got some off-field baggage but purely from an on-field perspective he is far more qualified to be the Auburn HC than Harsin ever was.
"Some off the field baggage" may be the understatement of the year
He's a mid coach that beat Bama 10 years ago. Great recruiter though
Freeze has “future U.S. Senator” written all over him
The fanbase is still pretty divided on that one.
The online fanbase*
[Most Auburn fans after Harsin was fired](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/284/781/8e9.gif)
Did Auburn ever get his university vehicle back, the one that he just sort of left with?
The story goes we flew an assistant guy out with the spare key for a repo lmao I cannot confirm this other than hearing it many multiple times, but it’s hysterical either way
Feels like this would be great material for a SEC shorts skit.
I'm pretty sure it was in either SEC shorts or SEC rollcall as a one of in one of the episodes
it was! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4A9H3GG9ls&t=106
Thanks for finding it!
Paid road trip? Hell yeah
I vaguely remember a story of Barn sending 2 students managers up to Idaho to get it back.
Did they fly into Boise and then take an uber out to Eagle?
Don't these buyout clauses have some sort of 'you must be attempting to get another job' kinda phrasing? Dude is just sabotaging actually getting another job so he can sit at the house. Maybe he is a genius after all? I've long said 'fired SEC head coach' is my dream job. I look forward to doing a job so badly they pay me millions to never do it again.
His name came up enough in a couple of the Mountain West searches where reasonable effort (at least by his agent) could be shown. That said there's no offset to his buyout so no effort is actually required.
Right now, he’s fine helping his kid out at Idaho State. I imagine once that gets going, he’ll look for another job.
Auburn people couldn't even ID this guy in a lineup, much less anyone else.
Is it truly a fall?
When you do so after failing to get a job in the lesser conference you once dominated it is.
What’s really funny about Harsin is despite his 45-8 conference record at BSU over 7 years, he only won the MWC 3 times
True but the MWC conference was probably its most competitive at that time with SDSU fielding some really good and strong teams.
You think so? Utah, BYU, and TCU were all dominant at times, and Nevada had a great run for a while too. Edit: 2008 and 2009 are pretty crazy, back to back years with 3 top 25 teams and almost 4 top 10 combined .
Sorry, I meant most competitive while BSU was in the MWC.
I completely forgot they were in the WAC at that time. And then in the Big East for about 5 minutes lol.
Yeah, they were never in the MWC at the same time as Utah, TCU and BYU.
So it really has nothing to do with Auburn.
Guy is just a giant loser of a person with a crack pot conspiracy loving family. The more time passes the more I really do think after being hired he just decided to tank and not do the job and collect his buyout.
Absolutely
I loved the family picture they took on the field at JHS. Someone said it looked like the youth minister at the church in the strip mall and his second wife and their kids.
After the nonsense that came out about his family, I don't blame him, and yes, headed into the second season, I believe that was the goal. If your employer wanted you to resign in lieu of termination (giving you a lower payout than what was contractually owed), made up nonsense about your family, etc., would you put 100% effort into your job? His time at Auburn was done as soon as the reports about his family were intentionally leaked (along with the alleged affair), and Mason torpedoed the guy (claiming racism) as a parting shot for their failure to get along (which, to be frank, I never understood the rationale for hiring him \[or Bobo\] in the first place). That being said, WGAF? The guy is gone, and if he's lucky, he'll get another job in the MWC or Big XII at some point in the future..
I’m shocked someone with an Auburn flair would have this opinion lol. Was the school ever linked to the stuff about his family? Seemed like message board/twitter stuff that was more of a meme than an employer actively sabotaging their coach. As far as the racism stuff, I didn’t even follow it that closely and I remember multiple players saying stuff about the culture (treated like dogs, he doesn’t understand how to talk to people in the south), if you combine that with a very well respected coach like Mason making a claim of racial issues, they probably had an obligation to investigate what the hell was going on. Your defensive coordinator called the HC racist, and took a pay cut to coach somewhere else on top of losing like half the starters to the portal lmao. Harsin defenders blow my mind, and I’m a fuckin Auburn hater.
Are there Harsin defenders with Auburn flair? I've never seen one.
Top 10 greatest coaches in the University of Alabama history.
He was a good O/C at Boise and at Texas. Maybe just one of those many guys who can be a coordinator but not the head honcho.
I'm not advocating for hating on him or anything. I'm advocating in forgetting about it. There was nothing memorable that happened. I think most Auburn fans are not mad at him they just want to move on.
The entire fiasco started from a forum user who was DMing recruits to get info so he could be a "insider journalist". He literally made up the Harsin family story. He revealed this after a Auburn player posted DMs this same guy sent him telling him to quit the team after a poor game performance. When this guy was called out, months later - he also admitted in that very thread on 24/7 that he "jumped the gun" on the Harsin stuff because he saw pics of this one cute intern that followed him from Boise and said he simply "put two and two together". The original story did get spread like wildfire because Harsin was such a polarizing figure and there were many cracks in his program and a lot of rumors swirling about. And here we are - years later, and even Auburn fans parrot this stupid "The boooosters hamstrung Harsin!" narrative.
I'm shocked that you're shocked. It's an open secret that Auburn has the most meddling boosters in CFB. I'm proud to say that every Auburn fan I know HATED what the boosters and local media were doing to Harsin. Even Charles Barkley denounced it. It was absolutely his employer instigating it on behalf of the boosters, and it got so bad that Harsin had to take his kids to Mexico, iirc, to get away from it. The sad thing is, this wasn't the last time this happened. Whispers about more "sexual misconduct" were thrown around about Cadillac Williams & two other coaches that got let go this year. They were actually let go because Freeze wanted to bring in his own coaches. Keeping those other coaches on for at least a year was a part of the agreement when Freeze signed on, but now there's a culture of mud slinging sexual allegations at coaches at Auburn. Again, the people who hate it the most are the Auburn fans I know.
> it got so bad that Harsin had to take his kids to Mexico, iirc, to get away from it. This all came out while Harsin was on vacation in Mexico the week before national signing day. Maybe he *was* there to get away from a toxic culture that was created to get rid of him before the public knew anything about it, but we're talking about a guy who never (as in not once, not a single time, not even a phone call) reached out to the biggest feeder high school programs in the area, was consistently not present for on-campus recruiting events, and limited his staff's recruiting time - all *before* the crazy rumors and whatnot came out. What's more likely, then? That he was in MX to get away from boosters who were meddling in secret, or that he's just a lazy guy who valued doing what he wanted over recruiting that week just like every other week since he'd arrived a year earlier? I'm not defending our boosters here (though I'm not sure how involved the administration was beyond doing their due diligence once things started to look bad). Like you say, I hate the way all of that went down and wish these folks would find something better to do with their time. That said, multiple things can be true at the same time. Harsin was lazy, misguided, arrogant, and just generally terrible at the job. By all accounts he's an absolute asshole who doesn't get along with many people. The administration and boosters were saddled with an incompetent dickhead - I don't condone the way that they got rid of him, but I don't blame them for wanting rid of him.
Didn't the school launch an investigation into firing him with cause over it all? Or maybe that was just mistreatment of players and staff and stuff at the same time? But no, he isn't a wonderful dude or great coach.
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Sure, I guess my comment maybe leans more conspiratorial about them being more related than that behind the curtain, but I clearly have no real idea.
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Honestly, i kinda was in this comment. I think I just lost track of what thoughts I've had in my head vs. what was said here, so my bad actually haha
I didn’t study it closely, but I remember articles at the time specifically saying the official investigation was toxic culture/climate stuff based on exit interviews by players and coaches.
Yeah, I think the timing of it right after this made it a bit suspect though. Someone else can jump in and clarify. I dunno; he's not our problem anymore haha.
I mean I get that they could be lying, but all reports at the time kept talking about Derek Mason leaving for at best (though currently better) lateral move for less money and there were outbursts play players about how he treated certain socioeconomic classes differently and "he didn't understand them".
Would I put 100% effort into my job? Yes. Absolutely. Every televised game is a job interview to show the country my coaching style and how I can motivate players. Mailing it in for a paycheck? Who’s to say you won’t do that at your next stop too? That money will dry up and he and the hardashians will be tanned and jacked but broke sitting on a beach in Mexico. I’d start eyeing the high school level if I was him.
He has his record at Boise to fall back on, so no, he didn't need to put 100% effort into the job. (Not to even touch upon the reality that he can just retire with the money that he has in a low cost-of-living region.) Also, lets be realistic: Given Auburn's reputation, Harsin came out of the affair looking a hell of a lot better than the university. He'll be fine. If he wants to talk about the university on social media then... whatever. WGAF? Once again, I have no idea why this is even news, nor do I understand why it's being posted on an Alabama-based website.
Honestly because a large portion of al .com readers are Bama fans and we lap up anything anti-Auburn. Plus there is really no other sports news in the state right now. I'm betting they had this story ready for awhile and chose to put it out in a dead time.
His record at Boise does not hold up to scrutiny, imo
After seeing what Avalos did with the team Harsin was basically Chris Petersen in comparison.
His buyout was $15.3 million. He doesn't need to work again if he doesn't want to.
Unless he's a complete idiot, then his buyout money is damn near generational wealth. 15 million dollars grows to 85.7 million dollars in 20 years if he throws it into an index fund and ignores it.
I don't think the employer made up the rumors about his family. That was the message boards and beat writers. The Auburn beat writers are big into conspiracies just like the Haskins family.
He was in Mexico on vacation on national signing day. Allen Green (AD at the time) met him in a hot tub at a conference and hired him based off this conversation. Both were fired and rightfully so
What nonsense about his family? I can't believe people still try to bring that up like it holds any water. 1 It was all message board rumors, not from anyone at the school. 2 He's the dummy who brought the hot girl down from Boise and gave her a do nothing job. He invited the controversy in. The rest of what you said it made up nonsense.. No one from the school made up anything about him and no one tried to pay him less. Mason made a claim and it was properly investigated. None of us know what happened or what was said. Harsin wasn't found to have done enough to be fired for it though. None of the issues came up until after he started blowing people off though.. wouldn't meet with alumni, boosters, fans or the community, fired a coach randomly (Remember coach Corn) and then flat out didn't recruit.. THEN the boosters and alumni stopped supporting him, THEN the fans turned on him and THEN the rumors came out. Right now you're falling for the Harsin spin on the situation, but that's not the reality. I agree though, besides just being a running joke, most at Auburn forgot about him. He's the one constantly taking shots on social media, going out of his way to go at Auburn fans and has even taken shots at Auburn reporters. The guy is a total loser.
Harsin was a decent coach here but his personal life choices is very odd.
I always view Harsin’s life outside of coaching as the typical Idaho/PNW right leaning person (that isn’t, you know, part of an extremist group). Holds the same values as the average republican person out west and is very much the “my way or the highway” guy who hates being in the spotlight all of the time. Which made it funny to me that he was entertaining the Oregon job after Helfrich got canned.
Thank goodness that never happened.
What were his odd personal life choices?
He sucked at Boise. Started the rot we just now are overcoming. Always a charlatan
This. The worst losses under Harsin looked like he didn't even prepare and was looking to the next week. Add in the hardass coaching style not connecting to or motivating a new generation of players.
Boise fans were adamant he sucked despite his record when we hired him and I don't know if I have ever seen a fanbase be more correct about a coach before.
Author is weird
His trolling doesn't make Auburn look bad
Yeah we do that just fine on our own.
It is weird. I mean everyone agrees Auburn had to move on and everyone agrees that he is a pretty crappy dude. Believe me I want to blame Auburn for this one but you cant
I'm not even mad about him and his tenure anymore. I feel sorry for him now that he's showing what a damaged and insecure individual he is.
Here I am jumping straight into trolling with zero experience of coaching
Not the first time a Harvard aulum has jumped into a high-level profession with no experience ;)
Its weird that he is digging up really old stuff but if those 3 tweets are his biggest "trolls" then he is better at coaching then trolling.
I’d tweet it up with that buyout as well.
At least he’s not in the US Senate
Harsin is probably a punk, but this Casagrande fellow seems pretty egotisical himself....
The hire didn’t really make a lot of sense at the time and then the guy just completely mailed it once he got to Auburn. At least Auburn realized their mistake and quickly moved on
Who cares? He was fired. Let it go.
You think that’s an odd fall, try the guy from 15 years earlier, from Auburn coach to bootlicker.
Harsin ran off all the talent and didn’t even recruit. He did it to himself.
I thank Auburn all the time for taking Harsin off of BSU’s hands. The guy has an advantage in nearly all areas over every other team in the conference and was consistently mediocre. His teams also tended to get worse year to year which isn’t a great sign
As arkansas State Fan, we would like to thank Boise state for taking him back from us.
Husky Harsin
Did Auburn ever get his university vehicle back, the one that he just sort of left with?
Yes, I think a grad assistant flew out there with a spare key and took it back. Potato-head is truly clown shoes
I mean thats the weirdest thing of all that to me. Like what was he thinking
“I’ve gotten away with keeping the car until now, what are they gonna do send someone to repo it?”
Auburn: "Yes"
I don't really blame Bryan for being petty. He can't even post pics of his son without Auburn fans saying shit about how bad his tenure was. The attacks are just relentless. Charlie Strong is one of the worst UT head coaches of all time but he doesn't attract UT hate the way Bryan attracts Auburn hate.
Harsin stole a university car after he was fired. Charlie Strong is a stand up guy.
Alright, now imagine that Charlie Strong had the exact same record but also refused to recruit and actively ran off your teams talent. We have multiple top 100 guys in our 2024 recruiting class that lived 30 minutes away that NEVER even heard from the guy. When our upper classmen graduated/declared for the draft they thanked the current staff on social media and a lot of them thank Malzahn. I don't think a single one thanked Harsin
Auburn fans were never harassing Chizik or Malzahn when we fired them because despite how it ended people liked them as people. Harsin is a grade A jackass that by all accounts from everyone that ever delt with him was terrible to be around.
Hugh Freeze is just as big a scumbag as Harsin and time will tell.
Harsin was a bad coach, Freeze has done really scummy things. I’m not sure it’s the same thing. Either way it’s very disappointing.
We're aware. Not that I'm happy employing a scumbag but if my school must employ one, better the one that wins.
They aren’t really scummy on the same scale though are they?
True. Different kinds of scumbags. I've said many times before my best hope for Freeze is that when he inevitably screws it up (and he will) that he'll leave it in a better place than Harsin did. Unbelievably, even in a post-transfer portal world, I think the next guy is going to be starting from a better place than Freeze did after Harsin.
Freeze is one of the best offensive minds in CFB. If he finds a QB and a playmaker or two they’ll be right back in the mix. Auburn can’t win when the big money boosters declare war on the coach or AD. When everything is aligned they are a powerhouse program and at least for the moment they have the guy they want, they just need to rebuild the roster. Bama had some of the same issues between Bryant and Saban.
That isn't true. We don't need time. It's already common knowledge.
See, you gotta fail upward to the Senate if you fail as the Auburn coach.
I hear his therapist suggested a high efficacy type of therapy where he relaxes in a room full of Auburn's money. Money couch, money chairs, money on the floor, money in the pool. July 15th 2024 his next payment from Auburn, and they are paying him two more i.e. until the last one in 2026: https://www.si.com/college/auburn/football/bryan-harsin-receives-first-buyout-installment-payment After several years of this the next step in his recovery is taking a coaching job at a normal school where he is basically guaranteed to do pretty well and make Auburn look like crazy people, if anyone notices.
All the weird tweeting is related to sports though? Gotta say… only clicked because I didn’t think that would be the case.
I mean he posts a lot of stuff from Robert F. Kennedy, the covid-denier presidential candidate with actual brain worms.
He and G\*C\* could team up. Tag team showing their ass on twitter after getting well paid to fuck off and not coach anymore.
Harsin is salt of the earth right now
Being a troll is significantly better than being a college football coach in 2024