Auburn analyst shares unpopular, but correct, Bryan Harsin opinion
The War Rapport’s Ike Jones shared an unpopular, but correct, opinion of the first half of the 2021 Tigers season under former Auburn football head coach Bryan Harsin: had a list of college football’s best coaches come out after Week 8 of the 2021 season, the Boise native would be on it.
On the #AuburnExpressPodcast @TWRIkeJones made the claim that, if the recent Top 10 list for best College Football coaches had been released after Week 8 in 2021, Coach Bryan Harsin would have had an argument to be on it!
— The War Rapport (@thewarrapport) July 4, 2023
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“I think Heupel is a little premature, I get that he has the win record, but this is also the reason why a guy like … if this list had come out — Auburn fans, get your tomatoes and hide them –, if this list had come out after Week 8 of Harsin’s first year, he’s probably on this list,” Jones prefaced before saying, “Considering what his record was at Boise and what his record had been to that point, the first year at Auburn in the SEC. He would. He had the credentials. He had the win-loss record.”
Everyone forgets how high Auburn football was flying following a takedown of Ole Miss at Jordan-Hare Stadium a year and a day prior to Harsin’s eventual firing. The reason Harsin was let go had little to do with what AU had done prior to rising to No. 13 in the AP Poll in early November 2021 and everything to do with an offseason from hell in which he lost most recruiting battles, had a slew of transfers leave the program, including star quarterback Bo Nix, and had an inquiry into his program for false allegations of having an affair with a staffer and more substantiated accusations of treating certain players a certain way based on immutable characteristics.
‘Real reason’ for inquiry into Bryan Harsin’s Auburn football tenure
Regarding that last point about substantiated accusations against the disgraced former Auburn football coach, Opelika-Auburn News editor Justin Lee revealed the real reason why the AU Board of Trustees was looking to fire Harsin with cause; thus wiping the ledger clean on what the school owed him after a firing/buyout.
“For whatever reason, the university omitted the real reason for the inquiry into the program — the investigation into the possible mistreatment of Black football players — and allowed him to make a statement suggesting it was about the affair rumors,” Lee tweeted out on October 9.
Harsin got his $15.3 million, hopped on the first plane back to Idaho he could, and is looking back in anger — contrary to what Oasis heard you say — after painting himself the victim in an interview with ESPN’s Chris Low that was published on May 25.