AL.com’s Dana Hall McCain blames transfer portal for Bryan Harsin’s struggles

Auburn football is a victim of the ever-changing transfer rules set by the NCAA, so says AL.com’s Dana Hall McCain.

McCain is a faith, culture, and politics reporter for AL.com who is described as “not a sportswriter, but a Barner since the 70s and has seen a thing or two.”

We’ve all seen a thing or two that we wish we didn’t over the last week in the form of a slanderous, highly contentious push from the Auburn Board of Trustees to undermine Auburn football head coach Bryan Harsin.

Since we can finally stop speculating on what would happen if Harsin was removed and live in a present where he is still the man with the Tigers, Hall got into why his stint on the Plains has left plenty to be desired, evoking the name of the great Pat Dye in the process.

"One of the knocks on Bryan Harsin has been that he lost too many players to the portal in the first year. (Don’t even get me started on the staff chaos.)Pat Dye never had to contend with a grumpy player with 24/7 access to a large audience. For better or worse, social media gives these athletes power previous generations didn’t enjoy."

And Hall is worried that the transfer portal failures could spill over into other sports as well:

"The pot boiled over at Auburn more rapidly than in some places because we tried to execute a coaching transition amid this massive cultural sea change (Malzahn-to-Harsin). But these changes will cause cracks in other programs everywhere soon, if not accounted for."

Hall’s reasoning features plenty of criticism of the modern youth’s mindset and how the lack of character resilience is leading to early transfer portal exits to avoid the no-frills, hard-nose approach of the Boise native.

Ultimately, that may be true, but all of the BS Harsin has dealt with–that reportedly include not providing him a high enough budget to hire top name coaching talent–is equally as detrimental to his career as the Auburn football head coach.