Auburn football: AD John Cohen on the “long process” of coaching search

The Auburn football program has had a rough time during the 2022 season, but the Tigers changed direction with the firing of former head coach Bryan Harsin and the hiring of athletic director John Cohen shortly after. Although the team is in great hands with interim head coach Cadillac Williams, he likely will not be the next head coach, so the search is on.

Arriving on the Plains from Mississippi State University, Cohen has a lot of pressure on his shoulders to make a good hire for the Auburn football program, which is in serious need of a coach that can help turn the program around.

Cohen spoke to the media this week, and stated that the coaching search is taking up the majority of his time right now, and rightly so. The Tigers’ new AD demonstrated his understanding of how important this next hire will be for the football program, and noted that it would be a thorough process, per Auburn Live:

"“This is a very, very long process,” Cohen said on Tuesday as he was introduced as Auburn’s 16th athletics director. “It starts with this, culture, x’s and o’s and recruiting. Those three things have to be upfront, but there’s a whole bunch of other things that have to be answered before you get into doing anything.”"

As AD, Cohen was promised by the university president that he and he alone would have the final say in the hirings in the athletic department. With this knowledge, Cohen plans to gather as much information as possible and take his time with the head coaching hire, though it is pretty crucial that the Tigers have a coach named before early national signing day in December.

While fan favorites in the search are currently Lane Kiffin and Deion Sanders, other names have been mentioned as potential candidates including Dan Lanning, Hugh Freeze, and Jeff Grimes, among others.