Auburn football: AD hire must happen before Bryan Harsin is fired

With only one game left on Auburn football’s schedule before the 2022 bye week, many fans seem to believe that head coach Bryan Harsin could likely be coaching his last game as a Tiger this weekend in Oxford.

Auburn football is nowhere close to where folks hoped they would be at this point in the season, with a 3-3 record and only one SEC win under their belts over Missouri. With tougher games looming ahead and the real risk of the Tigers missing out on a post-season bowl game, is the time to make a change this Sunday?

Probably not. Though the hype and anticipation for the next Auburn football head coach is certainly building, it is largely rooted in fans’ dislike for Coach Harsin at this point rather than a real coaching search being conducted by the program while their head coach is still, in fact, employed.

And this, likely, stems from the fact that Auburn University is currently without an athletic director since the departure of Allen Greene. The school’s new president, Chris Roberts, is rightly focused on filling the role of AD before tackling the football coach problem.

According to Phillip Marshall of Auburn Undercover, the two most likely candidates to become athletic director are current interim athletic director Rich McGlynn or Utah State AD John Hartwell:

"What I believe – the operative word being “believe” as opposed to “know” – is that either interim AD Rich McGlynn or Utah State AD John Hartwell will be Auburn’s next athletics director. Could it be someone else? It could be, but I would be surprised."

It makes sense that the new athletic director would like a say in who the next leader of the football program is. Like Marshall says, this doesn’t mean that Harsin won’t lose his job this Sunday if the Tigers lose to Ole Miss, but while Harsin is still the head coach the top priority is finding a new athletic director.