CBS Sports’ Tom Fornelli believes that Bryan Harsin is a better coach than his Auburn football tenure would lead you to believe, making a case for the Boise native in his college football second-year coach grades.
Fornelli still gave Harsin an F, of course — because taking a team that hadn’t had a losing season once with its last head coach and coaching them to two straight losing seasons is an objective failure, especially when the program has as many resources as Auburn does.
Still, Fornelli want as far as to say that Harsin is a good coach who merely was at the wrong place at the wrong time on the Plains from December 2020 to October 2022:
"“A hire that felt doomed from the start and ultimately proved to be. Harsin walked in the door at Auburn with people already plotting to get him out. The man survived the college football version of a booster coup after his first season but didn’t make it through the second. Better results would’ve helped, but Harsin went 9-12 and recruiting was not where Auburn wanted it to be. I still think Harsin’s a good coach, but Auburn was never the right place for him.”"
Bryan Harsin’s Auburn football tenure may ultimately not hold the program back in the long run
Because of the era of college football in which Bryan Harsin joined Auburn football, his botched coaching job will punish the program in the long run minimally. With the portal allowing most of the transfers across the country immediate eligibility, programs can be rebuilt on the fly. First-year head coach Hugh Freeze is doing that as we speak.
Freeze reloaded the RB room via Brian Battie with Tank Bigsby NFL-bound, found a new starting tight end in Rivaldo Fairweather to replace John Samuel Shenker, and has found three new starters along the offensive line from the Group of Five conferences.
The next step for Freeze and co. is to clinch a top 2024 class. Once he does that, Auburn football will be where it should be: competing with Georgia and Alabama for SEC supremacy year in and year out.