Auburn football: Bama Hammer wrongly skeptical of Tigers HC search

Our sister site Bama Hammer had harsh words for Auburn football’s head coaching search, and quite honestly, it was a tad out of line.

Fly War Eagle serves the needs of Auburn football fans. Bama Hammer is the equivalent for fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide (who of course don’t stack up to Tigers fans on the Plains). That said, the Bama bias was showing when Ronald Evans commented on the team’s head coaching search–that, of course, wrapped up on Tuesday–and undermined the process:

"The current problem for Auburn is how it went about hiring Harsin. He was not the Tigers’ first, second, or even third choice, no matter how many times they claim he was their guy from the start. Others, particularly Kevin Steele, was who a group of boosters wanted. Unable to gain a consensus to hire Steele, Billy Napier, Steve Sarkisian, Brent Venables, and Bill Clark could have had the Auburn job. None chose to ignore ‘control’ issues about who would be on their Auburn staff."

Evans has a point that there are control issues when it comes to who actually makes decisions behind the scenes at Auburn. Billy Napier opting to stay in the Sunbelt conference making less than $2 million a year was perhaps the most egregious example of internal strife negatively affecting the head coaching search.

Then again, Bryan Harsin is arguably the best candidate the team interviewed in the first place. With a 69-19 record at Boise State–who was ranked in the Top 25 at points this season before dropping a game to San Jose State to end their Mountain West schedule–Harsin is living proof that the team’s story isn’t a “lie.”

If anything, the search committee expanding the team’s search actually helped land the best candidate. That was what they were brought on to do, and they did, with Kevin Steele being stopped, Napier turning it down, and Hugh Freeze declaring on Twitter that he wasn’t interested in the Auburn football HC job.

All the twists and turns add to the journey, but let the record show that the War Eagle is oppositional to Bama Hammer’s assertion that this search was a fraud. If anything it shows you there is and will always be a list of candidates lining up at Auburn’s doorstep…and the cream awlays rises to the top.