Anybody keeping up with Auburn football these days knows that there’s an unsatisfied set of program boosters and a head coach who the brain trust has been itching to oust since this past February.
Tigers HC Bryan Harsin’s seat was warm after an unmitigated meltdown at the conclusion of the 2021 season, but it grew hot when the program’s brain trust–though not at the hands of the boosters as the “Yella’ Fella” Jimmy Rane insists–investigated the Boise native for a conduct policy infraction that ultimately never existed. One figures it became molten last Saturday as Penn State came down for the rematch of last year’s Week 3 razor-thin decision and blew the doors off Auburn football 41-12 in demoralizing fashion.
Harsin roared at reporters on Monday in a way that a literal Tiger would when backed into a corner. A question from the AP’s John Zenor set up Harsin for a condescending answer about Zach Calzada’s availability, or lack thereof, thus far.
The heat is clearly on the Auburn head coach like an Alabama summer day, but Harsin isn’t dead in the water just yet.
An eight-win season can save Bryan Harsin’s Auburn football tenure
With a quarter of the 2022 regular season already in the books, the Tigers stand at 2-1. That’s exactly where they were at this point last year, and the 2021 team proceeded to reel off four of their next five games.
There was the infamous five-game skid to close out Year 1 of the Bryan Harsin era on the Plains, but that had a lot to do with Bo Nix’s injury (the final three games at least) and in-fighting that would lead to a mass exodus of transfers and coordinators from the program in the offseason. That doesn’t have to repeat, nor should it.
2022 is a home-heavy year for Auburn football in the ‘Year of the Tiger’ according to the Chinese calendar, so winning 75% of the final games shouldn’t be seen as an unreachable goal. Assuming the trips to Athens and Tuscaloosa bring inevitable results, beating six of Mizzou, LSU, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Western Kentucky should be attainable.
If it’s not, Harsin is most certainly going to be shown the door. Seven wins used to feel like the magic number, but the Penn State beatdown and Harsin’s press conference hijinks have likely moved the goalposts.